Enterprise Server Strategies for the CIOIn Windows shops, Active Directory is the authoritative user directory that governs access to email, file sharing, and often a broader set of business applications. So, it's clear why so many IT managers are skeptical about putting AD into the cloud. Simply put, it’s too strategic an asset.
There is an answer to skeptics however, who do not want to insert AD into the heart of their cloud computing strategies.
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As Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
applications continue to grow, AD in the cloud can help organizations better apply these software
packages to their advantage. So, instead of pushing AD to the cloud, it is replicated. The goal
here isn't to outsource the AD function, but rather to make a cloud-ready copy. The purpose of this
becomes clear with the application of the technology.
Assuming a corporation uses Salesforce as its CRM tool, that company can now use a cloud-based AD system to tackle the following challenges:
1. Synchronizing user data - As users are added, removed, or moved in various OUs these changes are then automatically reflected in the SaaS application.
2. Single Sign-On – By allowing users to authenticate against their Windows-based password you remove the need to have additional sets of credentials for a SaaS application.
In fact, Microsoft has taken this a step further with something called Active Directory Federation Service 2.0 (ADFS). ADFS uses a set of secure protocols like SSL and Public Key encryption to provide Single Sign On to applications that are not hosted inside your network. This technology can then be applied to Office 365, SharePoint, Windows Azure and more.
Server cloud computing best practices tips
Cloud computing is relatively new, and the industry is still establishing best practices. However, the idea of the cloud has been around for some time enabling IT managers to learn from some of the more mature technologies.
- Licensing: IT shops can use cloud environments to mitigate spikes or increases in data traffic by spinning up VMs remotely. If your environment uses a cloud product, make sure it can be installed in this fashion. Certain products restrict licenses to be used from a cloud perspective. This is especially true of commercial Grid, HPC or DataGrid vendors.
- Data Transfer Costs: If you plan on using a cloud provider such as Amazon, make sure you fully understand its cost model. Make sure the cloud model has a distinct difference between data transferred internally compared to what is transferred externally. In this example, Amazon's pricing model states that traffic designated as internal is free while anything over an external IP is charged extra.
- Latency: If the work environment has very precise low-latency requirements, then the cloud may not be the best way to go. Remember, using the Internet to transfer data means anything can happen at any time in multiple locations. The cloud server could go down and it may not even be the fault of the provider or environment. It is absolutely essential to understand performance requirements of the environment and have a clear understanding of what is deemed business critical.
- Redundancy: IT teams should always make sure that the cloud service it approaches has some sort of redundancy. When a critical application goes down and then is recovered, many times all local changes will be wiped out and the user has to start with a clean slate. To combat this problem, many cloud service providers now offer something called persistent state storage. This means the data being used can remain linked to a specific computing instance at all times.
Cloud computing continues to advance and stabilize. In the next few years, IT managers will begin to see definitive advantages to offloading some of their server infrastructure to the cloud. Everyone will have different reasons to adopt cloud services including smaller hardware footprint, cost savings, disaster recover, or business expansion. As virtualization and the concept of service-oriented architectures continue to evolve in the datacenter, the ability to run workloads in agile, scalable environments will eventually put every enterprise into the cloud one way or another.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill Kleyman is the director of technology at World Wide Fittings, a manufacturer and
distributor of steel hydraulic tube and fittings headquartered in Niles, Ill. He can be reached at
BKleyman@WorldWideFittings.com
This was first published in June 2011
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