Any discussion of moving services to the cloud needs to begin with a discussion of budgetary impact. I say this, because it is a board member who brings it up, throwing this back to them with some data along these lines might give this individual board member something to truly consider. Yes, it will require a lot of work, but I think you'll gain a lot from the process. Begin with your current challenges, lack of bandwidth, outages and how you'll address those issues and the cost and stipulate it as a requirement before moving forward. Then, look at migrating services to the cloud and the costs related to that. Use five year estimates or actually use the lifecycle of your equipment, when I was working for a school, I still had three servers that were 7+ years. My hunch is that the costs will be at best equal but more than likely in favor of maintaining your own infrastructure.
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 12:03 PM, Raper, Jonathan - Eagle < [email protected]> wrote: > I see the point your board member is making, but the other side of that > coin, from my standpoint is, who controls the data? What happens to the data > when cloud provider of choice goes poof? What are your RPO and RTO, and how > will you achieve recovery if the primary provider goes poof? > > Also, what happens when you lose your internet connection for the better > part of a day? Or, better yet, your provider loses their internet connection > because a really advanced student or two have decided to perform a DDoS on > that cloud provider because they don't want to take an exam that is brokered > by, you guessed it, a server in the cloud... > > Far fetched, I know, but like everything else, a business impact analysis > should be performed to weigh the risks and benefits. > > Jonathan L. Raper, A+, MCSA, MCSE > Technology Coordinator > Eagle Physicians & Associates, PA > [email protected] > www.eaglemds.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: techconnect [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 11:44 AM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: domain controller in the cloud??? > > We are a private k-8 school and we have a board member who is telling us > that we should not buy any new servers to replace the current ones, he says > everything is moving to the cloud and so should our stuff(user folders, > authenication AD win 2003 R2 and Exchange 2003 is what we're using, they > want to move to gmail but there's no central management there I know of,and > offsite backups only.) We have about 350-400 students and faculty and they > want to be on the bandwagon to the cloud I think without understanding > everything about it(I'm not entirely clear either) and was looking for > thoughts and opinions or resources. > > Thanks, > Jason > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to [email protected] > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > Any medical information contained in this electronic message is > CONFIDENTIAL and privileged. It is unlawful for unauthorized persons to > view, copy, disclose, or disseminate CONFIDENTIAL information. This > electronic message may contain information that is confidential and/or > legally privileged. It is intended only for the use of the individual(s) > and/or entity named as recipients in the message. If you are not an intended > recipient of this message, please notify the sender immediately and delete > this material from your computer. Do not deliver, distribute or copy this > message, and do not disclose its contents or take any action in reliance on > the information that it contains. > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to [email protected] > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
