Most businesses are moving towards adopting the cloud in some form, either public, private, or a hybrid. However, before deploying the cloud, businesses should know what cloud management tools will best suit their goals and market strategy.
Businesses have multiple choices when it comes to the types of tools they wish to use for cloud management. A virtualization suite, for example, will have some tools already included. For businesses looking to use third-party tools, many offer the ability to integrate information from multiple sources into a single display. Whatever a business chooses, there are a number of common elements that should be kept in mind in order to maintain good visibility.
Alarms and Alerts
Good cloud management tools work proactively to catch issues and alert administrators before real problems arise. This means that the system will minimize downtime. Just as importantly, alerts should be set up so that the right person for the job is informed of the problem quickly and can move to correct it.
Failover
Proper failover capabilities allow cloud users to continue their work uninterrupted when a problem arises because the system moves the user to another server, usually automatically. Alerts are also important here, especially if a physical host becomes unavailable. If this happens, the virtual machines on that host should be migrated and the administrator notified.
Privileges
It’s important for administrators to be able to use cloud management tools to build and maintain privileges into the system. Isolating each department in its own section makes it easier to monitor activity and reduces the risk that an employee will accidentally make changes to a part of the system that he or she isn’t responsible for.
Resource Management
Cloud management and visibility go hand in hand, especially when it comes to managing physical resources within the cloud. Administrators should be able to see charts and graphs in order to gather statistical data and make future plans. This will also save money for the business; administrators will be able to see what’s available and where it’s allocated so that they may reallocate if needed.
Service Level Agreements
Third-party vendors mean that businesses aren’t in control of every aspect of the system, which makes service level agreements (SLAs) particularly important. Administrators need to have visibility into their SLA so that they can monitor important data such as environment usage and uptime.
Testing and Maintenance
Cloud environments can’t be left to their own devices without regular maintenance and testing. When looking into cloud management tools, businesses should look for those that allow performance of general maintenance tasks, such as server patching and updates. It’s also important that administrators be able to test failover capabilities and bandwidth.
User Number
Even with failover capabilities, administrators should always be aware of the user load on cloud servers. Good cloud management tools allow the administrator to see the number of users accessing the cloud, exactly what they’re accessing, and the servers they’re using to do it. In this way administrators are able to effectively load-balance the cloud servers to avoid disruption and downtime.
As with all business considerations, the choice of cloud management tools comes down to what the business needs in order to support employees and customers as well as future goals. The right tools will enhance and support these goals, enabling the business to reduce costs and increase efficiency.