Is 99.999% reliability good enough?

From PC Break/Fix to CloudMASTER®

By G C Network | August 29, 2016

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevendonovan It was late 2011 and Steven Donovan was comfortable working at SHI International Corporation, a growing information technology firm, as a personal computer break/fix technician. His company had been…

Is Data Classification a Bridge Too Far?

By G C Network | August 17, 2016

Today data has replaced money as the global currency for trade. “McKinsey estimates that about 75 percent of the value added by data flows on the Internet accrues to “traditional”…

Vendor Neutral Training: Proven Protection Against Cloud Horror Stories

By G C Network | August 10, 2016

Cloud computing is now entering adolescence.  With all the early adopters now swimming in the cloud pool with that “I told you so” smug, fast followers are just barely beating…

Cognitive Business: When Cloud and Cognitive Computing Merge

By G C Network | July 21, 2016

Cloud computing has taken over the business world! With almost maniacal focus, single proprietors and Board Directors of the world’s largest conglomerates see this new model as a “must do”.…

Government Cloud Achilles Heel: The Network

By G C Network | July 9, 2016

Cloud computing is rewriting the books on information technology (IT) but inter-cloud networking remains a key operational issue. Layering inherently global cloud services on top of a globally fractured networking…

System Integration Morphs To Cloud Service Integration

By G C Network | June 19, 2016

Cloud Service Brokerage is changing from an industry footnote toward becoming a major system integration play.  This role has now become a crucial component of a cloud computing transition because…

Networking the Cloud for IoT – Pt 3 Cloud Network Systems Engineering

By G C Network | June 17, 2016

Dwight Bues & Kevin Jackson (This is Part 3 of a three part series that addresses the need for a systems engineering approach to IoT and cloud network design.  Networking the Cloud for IoT –…

Networking the Cloud for IoT – Pt. 2 Stressing the Cloud

By G C Network | June 12, 2016

Dwight Bues & Kevin Jackson This is Part 2 of a three part series that addresses the need for a systems engineering approach to IoT and cloud network design. Part…

Networking the Cloud for IoT – Pt. 1: IoT and the Government

By G C Network | June 7, 2016

  Dwight Bues & Kevin Jackson This is Part 1 of a three part series that addresses the need for a systems engineering approach to IoT and cloud network design:…

Parallel Processing and Unstructured Data Transforms Storage

By G C Network | May 31, 2016

(This post originally appeared on Direct2Dell, The Official Dell Corporate Blog) Enterprise storage is trending away from traditional, enterprise managed network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SAN) towards a…

According to Reuven Cohen in his recent post, Cloud Failure: The Myth of Nines , the whole concept of reliability may be meaningless.

“In the case of a physical failure such as Flexiscales recent one, the hardware downtime might be small, but the time to restore from a backup might be considerably longer. A minor cloud failure could cause a cascading series of software failures causing further application outage of hours or even days for those who depended on the availability of the given cloud. Meaning your cloud may achive five nines, but your application hosted on it doesn’t.”

I agree. When dealing with a system of systems, like the cloud, component and function SLA’s are meaningless. The cloud architect must brush up on their Bayesian probability theory, plan for failure and ensure that no matter what happens, the users can complete whatever workflow is requested.

“One of the major benefits to using cloud computing is that you can make these types of failover assumptions well before they happen using an emerging global toolset of cloud components. It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when, when you take into consideration that application components will fail then you can build an application that features “failure as service”. One that is always available, one with Zero Nines. “

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G C Network