The Anatomy of a Great Cloud Infrastructure

The cloud is an exciting new frontier in computing that provides a host of benefits to businesses. The cloud can improve the speed and efficiency of business operations and even save money—but only if you choose the right provider and ensure your infrastructure is built correctly.

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Secure hardware

The security of your cloud infrastructure is a significant concern when building a data center. The first step in protecting the data you store in your cloud infrastructure is encryption, which ensures that only authorized users can access it. You can use four different types of encryption to protect your data:

• Hardware-based encryption uses specialized hardware components to protect data on disk drives or in memory; this type of protection is beneficial for mobile devices because it doesn't require any software changes or additional applications to work correctly.
• Software-based encryption relies on programming code installed on servers or other devices within your infrastructure; the benefits include greater flexibility and scalability than hardware-based methods. However, that comes at the cost of increased complexity, particularly if you need multiple layers of protection (for example, one software-based method alone might not provide enough security).
• A combination approach combines hardware and software to complement each other instead of competing against one another. This approach has been shown to prevent loss even when both methods fail individually due to bugs or other unforeseen circumstances, such as theft/damage due to misconfiguration errors made by the end user (such as forgetting their passwords).

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Highly available networks

• Redundant network connections (multiple connections to the same destination)
• Redundant network hardware (various switches and routers)
• Redundant network services (services running on multiple servers)
• Redundant network components (devices that can be swapped out easily)

If you're building a SaaS infrastructure, you'll want to ensure all of these things are in place before moving forward with your project.

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Less downtime and downtime reminders

It's much easier to manage a cloud infrastructure than on-premise hardware, which means you have more time for projects that help your business grow—and less time dealing with downtime. That's why some of the best cloud providers offer downtime reminders.

An automated process sends notifications when an event occurs, such as a server going offline or corrupted data. This process can be managed within the same tool as other alerts or in another tool (like Slack).

It's important to know what causes downtime to address the problem before it causes even more problems down the line. For example, suppose someone forgets to update their dependencies and suddenly encounters an error. In that case, they'll need to fix this immediately so their code won't break during the production launch in the QA testing stage. If something like this happens again next month—even though we've already solved it once before—it'll give us insight into potential improvements we could make along those lines; maybe there should be better documentation around updating dependencies? Or perhaps these issues should happen less often because our test procedures are already thorough enough?

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No single points of failure

• No single points of failure: You need multiple data centers and network connections to prevent a single point of failure. In addition to the physical components of your cloud infrastructure, you should also have redundancy within your software components. You can achieve this by using multiple cloud providers, platforms, services, and applications, as well as users and administrators.
• Flexibility: The flexibility of your infrastructure should allow you to quickly scale up or down based on demand without having to make significant changes, such as moving all of your users from one provider to another at once (which would be disruptive).

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Real-time monitoring

Monitoring is one of the most important parts of cloud infrastructure, and an independent third party should perform it. You can use a variety of tools to monitor your environment, including:

• SNMP monitoring
• Java monitoring
• System performance monitoring (i.e., CPU, memory, storage)

In addition to these tools, you should also ensure that your security controls are working. This includes things like the following:

• Firewalls with intrusion detection systems (IDS) on each network segment/segmentation point to detect unauthorized access attempts.

Less downtime and downtime reminders

It's much easier to manage a cloud infrastructure than on-premise hardware, which means you have more time for projects that help your business grow—and less time dealing with downtime. That's why some of the best cloud providers offer downtime reminders.

An automated process sends notifications when an event occurs, such as a server going offline or corrupted data. This process can be managed within the same tool as other alerts or in another tool (like Slack).

It's important to know what causes downtime to address the problem before it causes even more problems down the line. For example, suppose someone forgets to update their dependencies and suddenly encounters an error. In that case, they'll need to fix this immediately so their code won't break during the production launch in the QA testing stage. If something like this happens again next month—even though we've already solved it once before—it'll give us insight into potential improvements we could make along those lines; maybe there should be better documentation around updating dependencies? Or perhaps these issues should happen less often because our test procedures are already thorough enough?

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No single points of failure

• No single points of failure: You need multiple data centers and network connections to prevent a single point of failure. In addition to the physical components of your cloud infrastructure, you should also have redundancy within your software components. You can achieve this by using multiple cloud providers, platforms, services, and applications, as well as users and administrators.
• Flexibility: The flexibility of your infrastructure should allow you to quickly scale up or down based on demand without having to make significant changes, such as moving all of your users from one provider to another at once (which would be disruptive).

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Real-time monitoring

Monitoring is one of the most important parts of cloud infrastructure, and an independent third party should perform it. You can use a variety of tools to monitor your environment, including:

• SNMP monitoring
• Java monitoring
• System performance monitoring (i.e., CPU, memory, storage)

In addition to these tools, you should also ensure that your security controls are working. This includes things like the following:

• Firewalls with intrusion detection systems (IDS) on each network segment/segmentation point to detect unauthorized access attempts.

Incident reporting

A good cloud provider will have a 24/7 response team. This is where all incidents are reported and handled, so it should be clear and concise. They should also have a straightforward escalation process that outlines how to move from one level of support to the next.

This is critical because if you have an incident, your IT team cannot do anything about it until they know what's going on. And even then, they may not be able to fix it themselves unless there's a workaround available on their end.

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Encrypted cloud storage

Encrypted cloud storage protects your data at rest. Encryption is necessary because it provides an extra layer of protection against hackers and other malicious actors. This means you can sleep better at night, knowing that even if someone broke into your cloud provider's servers and stole your data, they wouldn't be able to do anything with it. And encrypted data will likely remain recoverable if something happens to your cloud provider (like a natural disaster).

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SSL by default

SSL is a security protocol that encrypts data. It's used to protect web traffic and data in transit, but it's also used to protect data at rest. SSL is a catchall term for several protocols—TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and TLS 1.2—and their successors (for example, TLS 1.3). These protocols use public-key cryptography algorithms like RSA or ECDSA to create an encrypted channel between two endpoints: the server and its client (typically a browser).

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Patch management and security updates

Patching is integral to a cloud infrastructure, but it's not always easy. As the owner of your infrastructure, you must ensure that you're patching and keeping up with the latest security updates.

It's not just a one-time thing either—it needs to be maintained on an ongoing basis. The nature of the cloud means that things are constantly changing, making it all the more important to stay on top of these changes by keeping your systems patched up to date as often as possible.

Patching is about much more than simply stopping hackers from getting into your system. It can also ensure that your business continues operating smoothly without downtime or interruptions for customers who rely on using its services to get their jobs done efficiently every day! It's also important not to treat patching as just a security issue—there may be other reasons why updating software could be necessary (e.g., new features or bug fixes).

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Redundant data centers

Redundant data centers are a vital feature of good cloud infrastructure. You want to be able to keep your business running in the event of a disaster at one of your data centers, and you want to be able to recover quickly if that happens.

The most robust cloud infrastructure will have multiple redundant data centers worldwide, preferably on different continents, so an issue in one area won't knock out all your services. Suppose there's an earthquake in California or an ice storm in Canada, for example. In that case, you'll still be able to maintain operations across other regions (assuming you've designed your system well enough).

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Book a free consultation with our certified Cloud team

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Backups and restores (and a good disaster recovery plan)

Backups and restores are essential for disaster recovery.

You should have regularly tested backups stored on a separate network (in case of fire), and stored at another location (in case of a flood).

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Every business can benefit from the cloud, but not all clouds are created equal.

The cloud is a complex system. It's not just hardware and software but also includes network components that require careful management to deliver the best experience for your users. For example, you need to be able to control the number of servers you're running, so you don't waste money on unused capacity. And since Amazon's pricing model doesn't work for everyone—some businesses need a little more customization than AWS provides—you should talk with your vendor about other available options.

The bottom line? Every business can benefit from the cloud, but not all clouds are created equal.

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Conclusion

We've covered what we believe are the essential components of excellent cloud infrastructure. If you're considering moving to the cloud and want to prevent any significant disruptions in service, it's vital to ensure that your cloud provider has a reliable system for preventing downtime. Keep these features in mind as you evaluate your options, and if you don't see them somewhere on the website or advertised by your provider, ask about them! It's better not to leave anything to chance when choosing your future cloud provider.

If you're interested in learning more about what we offer, don't hesitate to contact us today for more information or to schedule an introductory consultation with one of our expert representatives.