Reply to: Upskilling in Infrastructure Type Roles

[vwdan]

I think it very much depends on use case. Need the same software running 24/7 on specific hardware its going to cost serious money - need to do something for a few hours / days / weeks cloud is a better bet...

The best example I saw was a monthly batch job - 6 hours overnight. On prem costs were utterly insane compared with an Azure instance programmed to kick off at 2am and shut down when the task was finished....

Absolutely, like most things in IT I agree it has a place.

[eek]

Ditto. Done a number of feasibility studies and anyone looking to run serious infra in the cloud on the grounds of cost is in for some rude surprises. Not to mention the fact that the prices are only fixed for as long as the provider fancies. Combine that with a tendency to randomly pull services (Google in particular are horrendous for this - wouldn't touch them with a barge pole) I think the Cloud is still trading on magic and shiny.

I think it very much depends on use case. Need the same software running 24/7 on specific hardware its going to cost serious money - need to do something for a few hours / days / weeks cloud is a better bet...

The best example I saw was a monthly batch job - 6 hours overnight. On prem costs were utterly insane compared with an Azure instance programmed to kick off at 2am and shut down when the task was finished....

[vwdan]

Not sure where you are getting your costing from, but I have yet to see Public cloud that is cheaper.

Ditto. Done a number of feasibility studies and anyone looking to run serious infra in the cloud on the grounds of cost is in for some rude surprises. Not to mention the fact that the prices are only fixed for as long as the provider fancies. Combine that with a tendency to randomly pull services (Google in particular are horrendous for this - wouldn't touch them with a barge pole) I think the Cloud is still trading on magic and shiny.

[TydnA]

https://acloud.guru - Do the AWS Solution Architect Associate - £27 for the course / £150 for the exam. If you like Azure, you will really like AWS.

Buy the course on Udemy, its usually £10/15 and then you can transfer it over to acloud.guru

[Stevie Wonder Boy]

Almost finished studying for my 70-347 and 70-346 O365 exams - planning to take both in a week break I've got scheduled. I opted to do those purely because a friend of mine wants me to do an Office 365 migration for his rather large business, but they wanted someone certified...

Anywho, once I'm done with those cerrs I really, really am torn on what to study for next. I've been having a play with Azure and I like it; it works, the interface is nice. I know nothing of AWS or Google Cloud and I don't really see many roles advertised for the latter, AWS market seems saturated. Anyone else in this predicament? Private Cloud stuff with VMware is still ticking along but I don't want to invest a lot of time and money in a skill I feel will be mostly obsolete in 5 years time.

Anyone else stuck in the same situation wondering what skills to pick up next? I'm considering going down the MCSE: Messaging route and adding Skype for Business to my repertoire, but I really would be starting from scratch with that and haven't much experience in it.

Any advice appreciated.

https://acloud.guru - Do the AWS Solution Architect Associate - £27 for the course / £150 for the exam. If you like Azure, you will really like AWS.

[Lance]

Can you please point me in the direction of a medium to large business (500+ VMs), that is not web and is 100% or even +50% Public cloud?

There aren't many. Yet.

Not sure where you are getting your costing from, but I have yet to see Public cloud that is cheaper.

When did you last see a cost comparison that was based on what the cloud can do rather than just a direct apples/apples comparison?

Commenting on "over provisioned" DCs are you sure all this is not actually needed? If your experience is with small ADs with a 1000s of users and hand full of domains you might think so. If yo use the load on a PDC and Global catalog in an AD forest with 10+ domains and 100'000+ users you might reconsider.

This is a good example of how it's not just a straight comparison. With an AD of that size it's going to take years, or even decades to move that entirely to the cloud. The starting point would be to use ADFS and start to offload some of the work to the cloud, particularly branch sites, or new cloud applicaions. The key thing is that a direct cost comparison is not very helpful as an organisation this size would be treating any cloud use as part of business transformation.

You are certainly right that private infrastructure isn't going away, and the more inertia in an organisation the longer they'll keep it. But to simply state that 'cloud costs more' is a massive over-simplification and, in most cases, just plain wrong.

[SeanT]

Assuming we are both talking about Public cloud, as Private cloud is just a fancy wrapper around traditional virtualization, so the need for the underlying skills is still there.

And herein lies the problem...

[mattfx]

I find costs seem high until you start looking at redundancy at which point cloud suddenly becomes quite reasonable - and stupidly cheap once you start scheduling machine usage - hardware only used for weekly and monthly batch jobs is incredibly common...

Yep - this is very true. Use of JIT compute is becoming the norm and people are using it to drive the costs of Public Cloud down.

[eek]

Can you please point me in the direction of a medium to large business (500+ VMs), that is not web and is 100% or even +50% Public cloud?

Not sure where you are getting your costing from, but I have yet to see Public cloud that is cheaper.

Commenting on "over provisioned" DCs are you sure all this is not actually needed? If your experience is with small ADs with a 1000s of users and hand full of domains you might think so. If yo use the load on a PDC and Global catalog in an AD forest with 10+ domains and 100'000+ users you might reconsider.

I find costs seem high until you start looking at redundancy at which point cloud suddenly becomes quite reasonable - and stupidly cheap once you start scheduling machine usage - hardware only used for weekly and monthly batch jobs is incredibly common...

[sal]

VMware and Hyper-V are both old tech now; Public Cloud is the way forward for any business looking to refresh their estate or a startup / new arm of a business looking to build new. There are still use cases for internal kit such as VDI, but even these use cases are becoming limited.

The reason so many businesses think Public Cloud is too expensive is because they don't size it correctly. I've seen Domain Controllers in the cloud with 8 GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores assigned - because that's what it was on prem. If you let resources run away like that then of course it's going to be expensive! It's a little bit like buying a Ferrari and then taking it over to Jersey where you can only do 20MPH, then complaining of a massive fuel bill.

It's just my opinion and people can take it or leave it but, VMware are in trouble which is why they're spending so much time innovating in the AirWatch and Horizon View space. They sold vCloud Air off to OVH because they couldn't compete and were too late to the party, now they've got to hope that they find another niche before vSphere dies a death.

In relation to the comment made about let everyone jump to the new platforms, then be one of the few "old guard" left that knows how to service old stuff, that only works for so long before you bankrupt yourself, surely.... That said, I know some guys working on Windows 2003 servers who make a killing.

Can you please point me in the direction of a medium to large business (500+ VMs), that is not web and is 100% or even +50% Public cloud?

Not sure where you are getting your costing from, but I have yet to see Public cloud that is cheaper.

Commenting on "over provisioned" DCs are you sure all this is not actually needed? If your experience is with small ADs with a 1000s of users and hand full of domains you might think so. If yo use the load on a PDC and Global catalog in an AD forest with 10+ domains and 100'000+ users you might reconsider.

[gables]

In relation to the comment made about let everyone jump to the new platforms, then be one of the few "old guard" left that knows how to service old stuff, that only works for so long before you bankrupt yourself, surely.... That said, I know some guys working on Windows 2003 servers who make a killing.

It was me just thinking out loud and maybe you're right, it'll depend where you are in life? But also you provided an answer yourself to the opportunity.

[Lance]

Yeah, I'm reasonably aware of it although i've not delved into it - Azure AD is a totally flat structure isn't it? I.E. no OU's or anything?!

I designed an ADFS solution for a customer a couple of years ago, but that was easy... Read requirements, shove on to diagram, do pre sales stuff, hand over to installation team. That's as much as i've had to do with it really. Although I'm pretty sure everything I suggested worked, I won't know because I'm no longer in touch with those people and I wasn't responsible for carrying out the on site bit! That and everything is always changing and that was a couple years ago.

spend £330 a year for the MS Action Pack. You'll get 5 x Office365 E3 licenses and £75 a month Azure credits ( as well as a heap of other software and licenses). Build your own instead of doing certs.

[Lance]

The reason so many businesses think Public Cloud is too expensive is because they don't size it correctly. I've seen Domain Controllers in the cloud with 8 GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores assigned - because that's what it was on prem. If you let resources run away like that then of course it's going to be expensive! It's a little bit like buying a Ferrari and then taking it over to Jersey where you can only do 20MPH, then complaining of a massive fuel bill.

Exactly this....

Small DCs in geo-redundant locations, federated to Azure AD for the heavy-lifting would be a fraction of the cost, more reliable and more flexible.

I've seen a company do a VM for VM costing against Azure and it cost about 20% more on Azure. MS told them that as they are Enterprise licensed they don't have to pay the full price for the Windows VMs. And that was before they looked at a technology refresh once there.
IaaS should only be used where required, or as a stepping-stone. What's the point in managing, for example, a SQL server cluster when you can buy an Azure SQL PaaS?

[mattfx]

you're welcome. Don't confuse Azure AD with ADFS, or the AD you already know though. It's totally stripped down to support Azure/O365 only. You can integrate with on-prem AD (or build AD on IaaS in Azure). And there is Azure AD premium which costs more and is still different.

Yeah, I'm reasonably aware of it although i've not delved into it - Azure AD is a totally flat structure isn't it? I.E. no OU's or anything?!

I designed an ADFS solution for a customer a couple of years ago, but that was easy... Read requirements, shove on to diagram, do pre sales stuff, hand over to installation team. That's as much as i've had to do with it really. Although I'm pretty sure everything I suggested worked, I won't know because I'm no longer in touch with those people and I wasn't responsible for carrying out the on site bit! That and everything is always changing and that was a couple years ago.

[mattfx]

VMware and Hyper-V are both old tech now; Public Cloud is the way forward for any business looking to refresh their estate or a startup / new arm of a business looking to build new. There are still use cases for internal kit such as VDI, but even these use cases are becoming limited.

The reason so many businesses think Public Cloud is too expensive is because they don't size it correctly. I've seen Domain Controllers in the cloud with 8 GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores assigned - because that's what it was on prem. If you let resources run away like that then of course it's going to be expensive! It's a little bit like buying a Ferrari and then taking it over to Jersey where you can only do 20MPH, then complaining of a massive fuel bill.

It's just my opinion and people can take it or leave it but, VMware are in trouble which is why they're spending so much time innovating in the AirWatch and Horizon View space. They sold vCloud Air off to OVH because they couldn't compete and were too late to the party, now they've got to hope that they find another niche before vSphere dies a death.

In relation to the comment made about let everyone jump to the new platforms, then be one of the few "old guard" left that knows how to service old stuff, that only works for so long before you bankrupt yourself, surely.... That said, I know some guys working on Windows 2003 servers who make a killing.