Cloud Infrastructure Management Services

Cloud infrastructure management is the foundation for successful cloud adoption journeys. Different types of applications – web apps, data analytics, AI/ML implementations, games – different types of domains – healthcare, fintech, edtech, retail - workloads - VMs, containers, databases, data warehouses – all are dependent on the underlying infrastructure. As part of cloud infrastructure management services, we ensure that the foundation of your cloud-based workloads is built strong and resilient.

We can assist you at various stages – from strategy formulation to implementation and monitoring, and management.

Cloud Strategy

We start with helping you build your cloud strategy. Should you opt for IaaS or PaaS? Should you choose cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid cloud? Should you go in for modernization? After a detailed understanding of your application, architecture, business, and technical requirements, we will develop the right approach for your cloud strategy. Along with the strategy, we also build a road map to achieve the strategy based on immediate and long-term goals to be achieved.

Infrastructure Management Process

The methodology can be summarized as follows:

Assessment.

The first step in any cloud management/implementation strategy is assessment. Whether it is an assessment of existing infrastructure, the need for expansion for newer and different workloads, or fresh implementation, we start with understanding the needs of the customer.

Architect /Refactor

The assessment phase leads into the architect/refactor phase, where we come up with an appropriate designs for the current and projected requirements. The foundation of any cloud workload is the infrastructure. Infrastructure design involves choosing:

1. Compute - choose the correct options in terms of machine types, disk types, amount of resources such as CPUs and memory. This is applicable for compute only workloads as well as for containerized workloads.
2. Network - design firewalls, load balancers, subnets, WAF etc
3. 3. Security - roles and permissions, users and groups, etc

We work closely with our customers and finalise on the infrastructure giving due consideration to :

1. Present and projected usage
2. Current and Target Cost
3. Current and Target Performance.
4. Other objectives such as modernization needs and use of managed services.

In addition, requirements for HA and DR are considered. Based on business needs and SLAs, appropriate HA and DR strategies are developed. These could be active-active or active-passive. For HA and reliability, choice of using multi-region, multi-zonal resources are made based on business and technical requirements

ADeployment Phase

Once the assessment and initial design is done, we get into deployment phase which involves:

• Optimization
• Testing
• Monitoring
• Optimization

Implementation

The inputs to this phase can come from either the assessment and architect phase or the optimization phase. The Assessment and Architect activities are undertaken when a new project, customer engagement is initiated. Optimization leading to implementation of changes recommended is part of a continuous process of management. Implementation of the desired changes is done following best practices using as much automation and scripting as possible.

Testing

Implementation phase is followed by the testing phase, which includes infrastructure testing as well as relevant application testing.

Monitoring

An active monitoring system is developed in parallel with the implementation phase. An effective monitoring system can be built as follows:

• Identity metrics to be measured and thresholds to be monitored for all relevant parts of the system.
• Define application endpoints for application health check
• Create dashboard for effective communication of overall system state
• Build alerts and notification system for prompt and timely action in case of events Define activities and actions to be taken in case of events.
• Setting up log retention policies
• Set up audit policies.

Optimization

Monitoring insights and analysis are then used for coming up with optimizations. The optimizations could be for cost or performance. Once these are finalized and agreed upon with all stakeholders, the insights are then circled back into the deployment phase.

The deployment phase is a repetitive construct used in various types of projects.

“SELA Cloud is a premier partner with Google Cloud Platform and has vast experience with managing infrastructure on Google Cloud. We are experts applying GCP best practices right from the design to implementation to management of workloads on Google Cloud. Our experience gives the ability to choose the right tools for infrastructure management from the various options available from Google Cloud Platform.”

Infrastructure Services in Google Cloud.

Google Cloud Platform provides various services for infrastructure and infrastructure management.

Services such as Google Cloud Compute Engine and Google Cloud SQL provide most commonly used infrastructure services such as VMs, disks and databases. Built on top of these underlying services, container orchestration services such as Google Kubernetes Engine are available.

Supporting these compute services, Google Cloud networking products such as Cloud DNS, Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud VPN and Cloud CDN.

To monitor these services, Google Cloud provides Google Cloud Operations Suite that helps you gain visibility into the performance, availability, and health of your applications and infrastructure.

To ensure security, in addition to basic Identity and Access Management, Google Cloud provides several advanced options such as Cloud Armor and Google Cloud Security Command Center. The Security Command Center helps discover misconfigurations and vulnerabilities and detect threats. Together these form a formidable set of tools for us for effective infrastructure management.