Cloud server hosting

[Chclark]

Hi

 

We are looking at hosting some of our core central servers in the cloud as at the moment they are dotted around the estate.

 

Interested to know who if any of you host with and costs as the couple of places we have looked the costs are high and just doesn't seem justifiable.

[ZeroHour]

What kind of roles would they be doing?

[Chclark]

Main ones we would like to move up is our central print server(papercut), a DC, cashless catering server to start. Edited February 23, 2023 by Chclark

[Jcx500]

I know of a few trusts who have centralised there servers into collocations or a trust data centre instead of moving servers to the cloud.

 

I know sql servers can be quite costly on azure.

[localzuk]

I would really caution against "lift and shift". Simply grabbing existing servers and putting them in the cloud will be an expensive task.

 

IaaS, which is what you're discussing, is honestly not all its cracked up to be.

 

SaaS - where you buy specific services in the cloud? That's where the real change happens. Moving from an onsite MIS to a cloud MIS, for example.

 

We are now effectively "hybrid" here. We use a number of cloud services - our MIS, finance system, HR system, single central record, Office 365/Google Workspace etc... But, there's certain things that simply don't lend themselves to cloud hosting yet, so we have maintained a central cluster of servers to run these things, and all our schools utilise these via our WAN.

 

To put that into numbers - to host what we do on our cluster in Azure, we'd pay more every 6 months than we did for the entire capital cost of the cluster of servers.

Edited February 24, 2023 by localzuk

[Roberto]

I'd absolutely echo localzuk's point - moving to the cloud by lifting and shifting VMs or physical servers 'as is' is inefficient and ineffective. It may make sense in some circumstances (e.g. if you have no choice but to vacate a server room and no capital to buy/convert space for a new one) but it's a poor use of cloud. I'd look to use SaaS if I could ahead of running my own VMs.

 

For example of why SaaS is often better, consider email. Using O365 is almost certainly more cost effective than creating your own Exchange server in Azure. Especially once you start to consider redundancy, patch management, etc.

 

Taking that thinking back to your servers, instead of moving your papercut server to the cloud you might look at Papercut Hive. You might speak to your cashless vendor about what options they have for a cloud navite or a hosted service, or if at least they'll support Azure SQL instead of forcing you to lift and shift a SQL server, which could well be costly (I'm assuming that's how they store data).

 

In addition, if you do need to build servers in the cloud, your servers on prem are probably specced for your anticipated growth during the expected lifetime of the server. You don't do that in the cloud because if you build a cloud server today with 'spare capacity' for what you anticipate needing in year 5, that's a long time to pay for capacity you might need one day, when its trivial to just wait until you need it and add that capacity. This includes changing the machine type to upgrade CPU and RAM, as well as storage btw.

Edited February 24, 2023 by Roberto

[dmj]

^ 100% don't do a lift and shift if you even vaguely care about costs.

 

Convert as many of your applications to PAAS as possible, if you can't - choose a SAAS option.

There are a variety of SAAS options for active directory - GCP, AWS (Ironically Azure AD isn't actually AD)

https://cloud.google.com/managed-microsoft-ad/docs/overview

https://aws.amazon.com/directoryservice/

 

For the others (and AD if you need), convert them to containers and deploy directly or run a k8s cluster if you need more control.

https://github.com/HP41/docker-papercut

https://www.papercut.com/blog/print_basics/the-power-of-docker-and-containerization/

[Chclark]

I would really caution against "lift and shift". Simply grabbing existing servers and putting them in the cloud will be an expensive task.

 

IaaS, which is what you're discussing, is honestly not all its cracked up to be.

 

SaaS - where you buy specific services in the cloud? That's where the real change happens. Moving from an onsite MIS to a cloud MIS, for example.

 

We are now effectively "hybrid" here. We use a number of cloud services - our MIS, finance system, HR system, single central record, Office 365/Google Workspace etc... But, there's certain things that simply don't lend themselves to cloud hosting yet, so we have maintained a central cluster of servers to run these things, and all our schools utilise these via our WAN.

 

To put that into numbers - to host what we do on our cluster in Azure, we'd pay more every 6 months than we did for the entire capital cost of the cluster of servers.

So we main thing we are transitioning on is moving data from onsite to cloud storage, everything else we purchase is SaaS mis is now to Arbor etc and have reduced the amount of servers across the trust down significantly. sounds we are doing things very similar each site has some dedicated servers eg file server etc, print,access control, catering etc are shared central servers we host them spread out across the sites on their hardware, the issue we have is when the internet gets taken out at one of these sites the others loose any possible shared central server hosted there.

[nicholab]

I would say don’t lift and shift file servers it might make sense to lift and shift others. DR may work better in the cloud it may mean no hardware to be purchased.

[Chclark]

I would say don’t lift and shift file servers it might make sense to lift and shift others. DR may work better in the cloud it may mean no hardware to be purchased.

 

sorry wasn't saying lift and shift file servers i mean migrate data from them to office365 storage.

[Roberto]

sorry wasn't saying lift and shift file servers i mean migrate data from them to office365 storage.

 

If you're looking to replace file servers, have you considered Azure Storage - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-introduction

 

This is handy if you have an app (or people) who insist on having a drive letter to store things on.

[Chclark]

If you're looking to replace file servers, have you considered Azure Storage - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-introduction

 

This is handy if you have an app (or people) who insist on having a drive letter to store things on.

 

not really as use use CDM to map the sharepoint\teams\onedrive storage as drive letters at the moment, quite happy with the idea of moving shared drives on prem to there shared drive storage areas in sharepoint.

[nicholab]

Sharepoint data storage is free for educational use but Azure files are not. I would only use Azure file storage for special cases it also a bit of a challenge setting up authentication to azure file storage to use AD users credentials.

 

Also I am not sure many MIS support using Azure SQL.

 

Remember your on prem AD sever can be in Azure.

 

I do feel that the original MS/Edugeek cloud guide needs some updating. Please mods would this be possible? Thanks

Edited February 24, 2023 by nicholab

[amartin]

Good morning,

 

Sorry bumping old thread but did you ever move your Papercut MF Application server to a cloud hosted instance? or has anyone for that matter?