Today more and more companies are adopting big-data and cloud-based architectures to meet growing business demands. However, while these new technologies offer a number of operational benefits, there are some key problems which must not be overlooked.

Benefits of migration

The key benefits of migrating databases to the cloud are similar to those associated with moving any workload to the public cloud; agility, accessibility, scalability and cost-effectiveness.

“That said, there are also more specific benefits relating to databases that can be achieved,” says Mark Shaw, manager of Systems Engineering Western Europe at Rubrik. “When organisations migrate databases to the cloud, they can take full advantage of the additional services which exist in public cloud that may not be available on-premise. Cloud also offers an elastic scalability- which is useful when demand is high for a particular database.”

Eric Schrock, CTO at Delphix, says that organisations may want to re-platform to a new architecture to support evolving business needs.

“This could include moving to a managed database service such as Amazon RDS, adopting open source technology such as PostgreSQL, or moving to a horizontally scalable data store like Cassandra,” says Schrock. “This can lower costs while increasing velocity through modern tooling. This is a significant investment reserved for critical initiatives; but the first step is often getting the application, and hence its data, to the cloud in its current form.”

When should a database be moved

The scenarios that could merit migrating a database to a cloud service are generally driven by business requirements. For example, when an on-premises application service is being re-architected as part of a digital transformation strategy.

Other examples may include “seasonal businesses which scale on-premises for peak and wish to challenge the status quo”, says Martin Jones, professional services director at SCC. In that case, companies are able to “use cloud database services in line with performance requirements, or when a business wishes to use a wider suite of tools, to gain insight into their application, which could be prohibitive if carried out on-premises,” adds Jones.

Can a database be moved to the cloud in isolation?

Unlike a collaboration system, which is a natural candidate to move in isolation to other IT systems, a database is by its very design connected to a variety of other systems and services making up a multi-tiered architecture.

This architecture can then be queried and updated by users belonging to different groups, such as employees, partners, and customers, and also mined by analysts and researchers seeking future trends.

“It is vitally important to remember, in order for the database to be migrated successfully, that all the associated tiers and systems are known, their function clearly understood, and their performance benchmarked,” says Paul Griffiths, senior director of Advanced Technology Group at Riverbed.

“Only with a complete view of all the components and their interactions with each other, can it be decided which elements need to be migrated along with the database itself.”

Moving a database

Migrating a database to the cloud can seem like a daunting task, and in some cases, it’s the initial challenge of figuring out what all the “moving parts” are which can cause migration projects to fall at the first hurdle.

“This can lead to organisations never being able to fully exploit the benefits of cloud. While that may not bring about the demise of a company, it could affect how competitive they are able to be in the market,” says Griffiths.

Schrock says that the first challenge is realising that database migration is not a one-time event. Moving your database to the cloud is only relevant if you migrate the application, too, which is cumbersome and can take days to weeks to months. During this time, teams must ensure that their applications will run in the cloud, that they can develop effectively within the cloud, and minimise disruption during the final transition.

“All of this requires high-quality data in the cloud for continuous testing across the application, cutover process, and SDLC integration,” says Schrock. “Failure to drive quality testing will at best slow down the project, and at worst cause significant disruption, poor quality post-transition, and an inability to move quickly to address problems.”

Shaw says that security concerns are often another huge barrier when it comes to migrating databases to the cloud.

“Data has become the most valuable and important asset for all organisations and, therefore, effective protection is paramount for the success and future growth of the business as a whole,” says Shaw. “If your business’s data protection is not adequate and you suffer a breach then your reputation, brand and, by extension, the entire business is at risk. Hence the reluctance of some businesses to adopt new strategies and embrace cloud.”

Move it, then monitor it

When a database has been migrated, it’s important to use tools like SQL Server Query Store to monitor, evaluate and understand the baseline data – for example, transactional throughput and surges of daily/weekly/monthly activity.

“These metrics will help organisations to determine whether to move from standalone PaaS databases to PaaS Elastic database pools. Lastly, it makes good business sense to use the data to show the TCO reduction to key stakeholders such as the CTO,” says Alan McAlpine, senior consultant of Enterprise Data at IT services firm ECS.

Leaving databases on-premise

Not all databases should go to the cloud, explains Roberto Mircoli, EMEA CTO of Virtustream. “Once you have identified a specialised enterprise-class cloud provider which guarantees the level of security, compliance, performance and availability required by your business, then what should be left on-premise is really only what’s constrained by residual latency limitations or extremely stringent regulatory requirements.”

“So for example, some particular applications in the automotive industry leverage manufacturing integration and intelligence to collect data in real-time from the automation systems to plan the procurement of components and materials; in these particular cases, 20, 15 or even 10ms of latency are not acceptable,” he says.

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Google has introduced a number of security and feature enhancements to Google Chrome Enterprise, as well as announcing several partnerships, to help businesses bolster their defences and manage their IT estate.

The company has added four new management controls to its enterprise version of Chrome OS: per-permission extension blacklisting, the ability to disable sign-ins from outdated versions of the OS, preventing non-managed devices from accessing single sign-on, and automatic forced re-enrollment.

The first of these means admins can restrict access to extensions based on the permissions required, such as webcam access, for example. This allows administrators to give users access to the Google Chrome Web Store, while still maintaining granular control over permissions.

Automatic forced re-enrollment, meanwhile, means Chrome devices that have previously been enrolled on the corporate network but subsequently wiped or recovered can connect once again without admin intervention.

In addition to these enhancements, Google also announced enterprise mobility management (EMM) partnerships with Cisco, Citrix, IBM and ManageEngine (part of Zoho) that it claimed will allow admins to manage their IT estate more effectively.

Cisco Meraki provides various management capabilities, such as the ability to lock, disable and control devices, enable auto-updates, set idle settings, and push custom, Chrome and Android apps. This is all controlled through the Meraki web-based dashboard.

Citrix XenMobile, meanwhile, offers device and application management and is supplemental to integrations with various other Citrix products, such as XenApp and Receiver, that were announced in November.

Finally, IBM MaaS260 with Watson brings IBM’s AI and cognitive computing to endpoint management, while ManageEngine Mobile Device Manager Plus is a console that allows admins to configure, manage and secure mobile devices, desktops and apps.

In a blog post, David Karam, product manager of Chrome, said: “All of today’s announcements help admins stay on top of their organization’s security, and these features are in addition to the benefits admins already get with Chrome Enterprise.”

He added that more information about what these enhancements can mean for business will be released in the coming weeks.

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Cloudian has acquired software-defined storage business Infinity Storage, helping the object-based storage company reduce its customers’ IT workloads with a scalable file system.

Cloudian’s integrated file and object-based storage services collate unstructured data into a scalable storage pool, making it easier for IT teams to manage and significantly reduce costs compared to traditional NAS-based systems.

Learn more about the benefits of deploying both an object storage platform and enterprise file services together in this whitepaper from IDC and Cloudian.

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“For more than a decade, Infinity Storage software has helped enterprise customers simplify file management with enterprise-class features that provide a familiar user experience on next-generation storage platforms,” Infinity Storage’s founder Caterina Falchi said.

“While launching HyperFile with Cloudian, we immediately recognised that our company cultures and technologies meshed perfectly. We are genuinely thrilled to be joining the Cloudian team.”

Cloudian and Infinity Storage have worked together on a number of projects in the past, including the launch of the Cloudian HyperFile NAS controller, which delivers enterprise-level file storage services such as SMB(CIFS)/NFS support, snapshot, WORM, non-disruptive failover, scale-out performance, POSIX compliance and Active Directory integration from Cloudian Hyperstore.

“This acquisition further accelerates Cloudian’s efforts to reduce IT workloads with self-protecting and easy-to-scale file systems that analysts agree are critical for next-generation storage management,” said Michael Tso, CEO of Cloudian.

“Not only does Infinity bring deep technology expertise to the table, but also our two companies’ cultures fit perfectly, with the same uncompromising dedication to the customer, to the team and to technical excellence. We are excited to be growing together.”

Infinity Storage is Cloudian’s first ever acquisition but demonstrates the company’s drive to build upon its core services and offer businesses a wider range of enterprise services to help them realise the benefits of object-based storage.