For a third time this month, AWS has experienced a data outage in one of its data centers. This morning a data center in Northern Virginia was impacted by a power outage. Apps like Slack, Asana, and Epic Games, among others, were impacted.
This same data center had an outage on Dec 7, 2021, due to a networking issue. Then on December 17th, an outage impacted connectivity between two of its West Coast region and took down services from Netflix, Slack, and Amazon Ring.
Most of the news stories cover the impact on large companies like Netflix and Slack, but what is the impact on your business? What can you do to protect your company from these situations?
What is AWS?
Amazon Web Services or AWS is a large, cloud platform hosted by Amazon that allows companies to rent storage space, computing power, and other infrastructure as a service. The idea behind it is that you can buy only what you need at a lower cost than you could go and build it yourself. It also provides the ability to scale more rapidly because you can add more services or increase storage quickly.
Amazon builds out the infrastructure in their data center and companies rent what they need. It’s kind of like renting an office space. Your landlord owns the building (Amazon) and you rent the space that you need from them. Other people also rent space from Amazon and you may share some common features with them such as hallways or bathrooms. The same thing goes with AWS. Other companies are running on the same platform and in the same data center.
The consolidation of the Internet’s once distributed capabilities means a single failure can have a ripple down effect. Impacting hundreds, if not thousands, of companies and having effects felt around the globe.
AWS is the world’s largest provider of cloud-computing services, with 40 percent of the worldwide market last year for infrastructure cloud services, according to the market research firm Gartner. Microsoft was a distant second, with roughly 20 percent.
What can you do to protect your company?
Many businesses, especially small to mid-size companies, trust Amazon and AWS services. Brand recognition and years of reliable service have made many businesses feel safe. These recent events should change their mind. Business owners, IT professionals, and anyone responsible for systems running in AWS should look at what they can do to protect themselves in the future.
What are your options?
Multi-cloud approach
There are multiple providers of cloud computing services. Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud both are competing products. Companies have begun looking spreading systems out across different vendors or running concurrently on different products.
But moving among the biggest cloud computing providers can be a challenge. Each system works differently and relies on its own infrastructure.
This approach also increases the cost and complexity of your IT systems. You’re now paying multiple vendors for redundant systems. A direct contradiction to the reason for switching to the cloud in the first place – lower cost and simpler infrastructure.
Private cloud approach
The private cloud is a computing service offered either over the internet or private internal network and only to a select group of users instead of the general public. It can be similar to running your own on-premise network, but in the cloud instead.
In our office example, instead of sharing space with other tenants, you have the entire building to yourself.
You can still experience outages, downtime, or other problems with a private cloud. The difference is it will only impact your business and other businesses won’t impact your systems.
Some advantages to the private cloud:
- Control – You have control over your environment with a private cloud approach.
- Customization – You can build your environment with the features and functions that you need for your business.
- Security & Privacy – All data is secured on servers exposed only to your company and not shared with anyone else.
Hybrid cloud approach
The hybrid approach tries to put the benefits of the public cloud with the best of the private cloud. Kind of a best of both worlds. You might have separate sensitive workloads from the less-sensitive workloads. For example, your financial information might stay on your private cloud while other enterprise applications run on the public cloud.
Some advantages that the hybrid approach provides:
- Scalability – Hybrid is more scalable than a private cloud approach. You can add resources, especially on the public cloud, quickly and easily.
- Security – You can take advantage of the security offered by the private cloud. For data that must go back-and-forth between public and private clouds, you can implement encryption methods to make sure data stays secure.
- Cost benefits – Less expensive than a multi-cloud or full-blown public cloud approach. Because it’s easier to scale a hybrid cloud system your long-term cost is lower than it would be with other options.
- Control – In the hybrid model you have control over your private cloud and you don’t have to rely on third parties. You can customize the private cloud with whatever infrastructure or applications you need.
There are pros and cons with whatever model you select. It’s important that you understand your situation and the risk with each option. The future of your business could depend on it.