The reasons and the benefits of moving to the cloud have been a topic of conversation for quite some time now. Even those of us in the IBM i community, who may have never thought of the idea some years back, are quite likely to have at least given it some consideration more recently. Maybe not for our critical core production systems, but perhaps for less critical testing and development systems.
And the benefit are quite well known …
- Moving CAPEX to OPEX: This is one of the more familiar catch phrases from the early days of the cloud. Instead of taking the traditional tech refresh approach, which requires a large capital expenditure upfront every 3 to 5 years, the cloud model provides you with more predictable monthly or annual expenditure;
- Resources on Demand: Instead of being fixed to whatever you paid up front for on-premise, the cloud model allows you the flexibility to increase and decrease memory, disk, and so forth (and their related costs) as you need them. You can even create new instances (a short-term testing environment, perhaps) as you need them – and only for the period that you need them;
- Overcome IBM i Staffing Crunch: Staffing is a concern for many IBM i shops. By moving to the cloud, you offload the management of your IBM i to someone else, freeing up your IBM i staff for more critical work. Cloud vendors can be tasked with managing your backups, restores, HA/DR needs, as well as your day-to-day system monitoring;
- You Are No Longer A Data Centre: And do you really want to be a data centre? And be responsible for all the headaches and costs that involves? Moving to the cloud enables you to reduce your hardware footprint, your server room size, and all the infrastructure around that. And your cloud centre vendor becomes the one responsible for the physical security responsibilities – such as HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning), fire control systems, telecommunication, and access controls.
The list goes on … but the reasons for, the why, is not what I want to focus on in this discussion. What I do want to talk a little about here is the HOW?
The HOW of Moving to the Cloud
Perhaps the most important thing to be aware of straight up is that moving to the cloud is a big project. And it deserves the respect of the big project. There are a number of key issues to consider, and you will need to sit down and do your homework and do some solid planning before diving into it.
The following are just a few points that you will need to consider. Apologies, but I am not going to provide any answers to these issues in this article. But knowing the questions is often the first step.
Operating System
What OS are you currently on? Does your cloud vendor support that OS? If things are aligned then great. If not, then are you willing to upgrade? Alternatively, if they support your current OS, but there is the option to upgrade to the latest OS then could this be an opportunity to upgrade to the latest and greatest? Since you are going to be going through a number of the steps involved in an upgrade anyway, why not kill 2 birds with one stone?
Connections to Other Things
Whether its devices like printers or applications on other servers (in the same cloud, another cloud, or on prem), you are going to need to consider how these connections are all going to work from your IBM i in the cloud.
Network
This is a biggie. Everyone who currently has access to your system when it was on prem will want the same access when it is in the cloud, so you will need to put a lot of thought in to how that will work. Do you want your users to simply access over a regular internet connection (if the cloud provider allows for that – some may not)? Some cloud providers will require you to meet their own unique network schema. And you will need to consider the security implications of each approach. Also be aware that, while the cloud vendor will be happy to provide you with advice and recommendations on how to connect to their cloud, they will most likely not want to get involved in your internal network configurations – your side of the network is still best handled by yourselves.
Migration Strategy
Migration is a major exercise and is another topic that needs to be given a lot of consideration. Many of the steps for migration are quite standard and exactly the same as you will have done many times for moving applications and data between any 2 on prem servers. So it might initially appear to be quite routine. Complications however, can arise around how you get that saved system file(s) up to a server in the cloud, and the impact that will have on the downtime you can accept as you move users from your on-prem to you cloud sever. The approach you take will likely be greatly affected by what systems you are moving – you will likely accept a much shorter downtime period for your production system than your testing or development systems. Your vendor will have their own recommendations, but here are a few approaches:
- Tape backup & restore
- This is probably the simplest approach. You save to tape, ship it to the DC site, and they load it into a tape drive, and they (or you, remotely) restore it. There are couple of areas of concern with this approach. First up, depending upon the location of the DC, there could be at least a couple of days between your save and the restore – can you afford that downtime? Another point to clarify early on is, does your cloud vendor allow this approach? Some will not, as they do not want (or are not allowed) to have tape drives attached to their networks (because this would present a data security risk due to their engineers having physical access to such systems and data … and your precious tape);
- Network Upload
- While this of course makes a lot sense as an idea, just be aware that you are very likely talking about uploading very large files. Therefore, what is your bandwidth between you and DC like (in some cases, the office network may be a limiting factor)? And is that connection stable enough over the long period of uploading? Before you commit to any timelines, you might want to do some test uploads of your save files, and have measures in place to roll back to your on prem system should the upload drag on too long;
- Replication Software
- Just as you would for a HA environment, using a replication solution to synchronise the applications and data between the on-prem and cloud systems make a lot of sense from a logistics perspective, as it will ensure that cloud system is a mirror of the on-prem system, thus significantly reducing that downtime period associated with the data migration itself. Of course, testing needs to still be conducted, but much of that can be done prior to swapping over to the cloud server, and then it simply becomes a regular role swap exercise. If you budget allows for it, you might want to approach your replication solution provider about the licencing involved for such a move.
Application Licencing
Many licences for applications running on IBM i are tied to a specific machine, or even LPAR. In a true cloud environment, your systems may not be tied to any one machine. Application vendors are addressing this issue, but you will want to get clarification from them on how licencing will work in the new cloud environment, including what transfer fees may be involved.
Backup & Recovery
You will want to get an understanding on this and decide on the best approach for yourself. And whether you want the vendor to manage this, or simply do so yourself. Chances are you will not have an option to back up to a tape drive, so may have to look at VTL options, or simply traditional command line driven backups (depending upon the complexity of your system and backup and recovery targets).
Do Your Homework
Now, the purpose of this article is not to scare you off the cloud. Not at all – there are tremendous benefits to be gained from moving to the cloud. My purpose here is to give you a heads up that you need to prepare yourself, do your homework well in advance, and put in place a solid plan. Moving to the cloud is a noble goal. Getting there requires some attention.
Moving your IBM i to IBM Power Virtual Server
On April 8th, in conjunction with IBM, Joule Tech will be holding our first webinar for 2022. As a part of this session, IBM’s James Leong will be taking us through a few of the steps involved in moving your IBM I to IBM’s Power Virtual Server. To learn more about this topic, REGISTER HERE for this event, or contact us directly here at Joule Tech.
