[AccessD] To the Cloud or Not to the Cloud. that is the Question

Jim Lawrence accessd at shaw.ca
Fri Mar 28 22:24:33 CDT 2014


Hi John:

I think that Cloud early adopters suffered greatly from continuous Cloud/internet outages....but things have improved dramatically and now anyone can just get many Gigs of storage, from a dozen companies offering basic backup even for free. I have taken advantage of this and now all of my desktop(s) and operational files can easily be accessed from anywhere there is a internet access point. (But I wonder if the NSA will ever sell backup services?...it should be free to all American of course as you guys pay for it in your taxes.)

Like you I believe that complete dependence on the web or any place for that matter is unfounded and the more diversified your data and software holdings are, the better. Initially, there is nothing cheaper or easier than just getting up and running than using Cloud services. That said, in the long run it can end up being a lot more expensive if you rely completely on web services as it is like a tax you must pay every month forever. Someone may say, that paying $100 a month for a full server is cheaper, but then there is the additional costs of access time, numbers of users, gigabytes of data processed and so on, and the cost can quickly creep up to $350 a month...without a good provider you can be nickel and dimed to death. Then calculate that out for ten years and it can starts to look expensive...then add on additional features like monitoring, backups, upgrades and security...and that of course does not count the real road block of throughput as performance is rated by how fast data can moved back and forth across the relatively slow internet network. As soon as real fibre-optic cabling is the default internet this will not be a problem, but as of yet, there is no match to a networks performance.  

The big improvement to the whole Cloud experience is type of scaling the providers are now using...I think all have switched over. As you know RAID 6 is probably one of the secure methods of managing data with a million to one chance of loss. The next level up is the use of the RAID ZF or the use of the ZFS drive formatting. This format is the most secure method of handling data known. It is said that Linux ZFS, on a properly setup site, can rate data loss in billions to one. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS) Maximum size of drive cluster is 256 zebibytes....more data than all the data storage in the world today. So I think issues of data lost have almost moved to zero.

The next issue is how stable is this network. When the Cloud initially started, a provider's fail-over servers and services were rather limited. Now the big providers have servers all over the world so the chances of the system going down is now more of a regional concern.

In summary, remote regions without excellent internet service are going to be left behind in this new development and will languish in the background for years to come. If you are fortunate enough to live close to main centres, the costs of Cloud service can only come down as competition and hardware costs continue to drop and the Cloud becomes very cost effective.

Jim          

----- Original Message -----
From: "John W Colby" <jwcolby at gmail.com>
To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving" <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 2:08:39 PM
Subject: Re: [AccessD] To the Cloud or Not to the Cloud. that is the Question

My biggest concern with cloud computing is reliability.  I don't remember how long ago it was (last 
year?) but several of the internet "cloud" providers had outages. Unrelated, just "stuff" at the 
servers.  The internet is still (IMO) inherently less reliable than an in house system.

That said, the companies involved have a huge incentive to get the issues fixed.

Several years ago a client up in CT was having issues just getting (staying) on the internet.  
Internet up / down / up / down / up.... down / up.... It was an issue with the phone company 
routers.  it went on for days.

If the db is in the cloud, then you are twiddling thumbs during the down cycles.

It feels like the internet is getting more stable, but it is the nature of the beast that things 
might happen.  Last year a group of hackers working for one of the Arab "terrorist" groups took 
several banks offline using DOS attacks.  For days at a time the users couldn't do web banking.

If the db is in the cloud, then you are twiddling thumbs during the down cycles.

John W. Colby

Reality is what refuses to go away
when you do not believe in it

On 3/27/2014 4:37 PM, Brad Marks wrote:
> All,
>
> A few days ago, I posted a question regarding a new database that will
> be needed for a new small application (perhaps using Access 2007, MySQL,
> or Microsoft SQL Server).  I received a number of replies to my question
> and I appreciate the insights that were shared.
>
> In the mean time, I have also been doing some R&D work with Microsoft
> Azure SQL Database.
> So far, I have been impressed.
>
> Yesterday in less than one hour, I was able accomplish the following -
> Set up a new Microsoft Azure Account
> Set up a new SQL Database
> Then with a small Access 2007 application using ODBC and Pass-through
> Queries I was able to
> Add a new table to the new test database
> Insert rows into the new table
> Retrieve this data.
>
>
> My background is in mainframe databases (Primarily IBM's DB2 and
> Cincom's Supra).  I can remember how much work it was to accomplish
> these same simple steps with these databases.  Sometimes we would spend
> days, just wrestling with DB2's security.
>
> It is my understanding that other Access users are using Azure with some
> success.  It also sounds like the costs for our use of Azure will be
> very small ($5.00 - $10.00 per month).
>
>
> At this point in time, it seems like this is a good option for our
> little project. (We don't have Microsoft SQL Server installed
> "in-house").
>
> I am curious if others have looked closely at Azure and decided to not
> go down this path.  Perhaps there are downsides that I have not yet read
> about. Perhaps I am missing some important considerations.
>
> Thanks,
> Brad
>
>

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