NEIT14+Open+Space+2D+-+Rock+Room

NEIT14 - OpenSpace Session - Click "edit" to add notes for session.

Attendees:

Jonathan King - jking@riverdale.edu, RCS. Have fully local virtual infrastructure with two server rooms, SANs, multiple hosts, VoiP, Aruba, etc. Cloud hosted: Google Apps, a bunch of web sites, Moodle/LMS. Short goal: Get all our redundant services hosted externally.

Tammi Williams - tdwilliams@berkeleycarroll.org. Have just one server in the cloud for disaster recovery. Goal: Move file servers, database server, and phone system to the cloud. First I need the bandwidth, which is coming soon.

Brandon Wolf - bwolf@bhmsny.org

Charles Polizano - cpolizano@polyprep.org

Akbar Herndon - aali@gcschool.org

Notes: What is needed to complete a cloud project? Money - need to go to board, and how do you make the sell?

__ Risk Assessment __ Risk - lose ability to control your version - updates are automatically pushed Sometimes forced into version you don’t want - ie Google Docs

__ Benefits to the cloud __
 * Security - No physical access to servers
 * Somewhere else, but more secure in the sense that the data is stored with other users, encrypted, etc.
 * High upfront cost, much less expensive and easy to customize and scale as needed

Physical Layer - Network
 * Wifi - cloud provisioned config with Meraki, Aruba, Aerohive
 * Idea of customer-based consortium. Working as a group to suggest ideas to engineers and developers

Communication and Management
 * Communications about network through email, sms - directly to web page that allows administrative control. Remote management and control without VPN

How good is your ISP, bandwidth? 100Mbps at a minimum - For certain solutions, 100 is not even enough

Do an ROI Assessment - how much are you spending on supporting the physical layer and compare with costs of bandwidth and services?

__ Bernie McCormick: Mary McDowell Friends School __ Phone, file and document, backup (hybrid), backup images of desktops in cloud

__ Different Types of Clouds __ Private cloud - logicworks, rackspace, amazon - virtual space with strict firewall rules. Only allow access to users/networks you define. Hybrid cloud - physical and cloud-combined Public clouds - Google, Dropbox, amazon
 * Protect yourself against vendor changes - mobility
 * Pay more, but you call the shots
 * Data spread across multiple servers, multiple spaces

__ Assessments when planning __ Multiple vendors - redundancy Disaster Recovery - Assess how catastrophic failures have impacted you in the past, or could potentially impact you in the future. How quickly would it be with cloud-based vendor? Vetting vendors - success stories Money spent on space, air conditioning, power

When moving to the cloud, you must be a loud client - if you’re paying someone to host something you could host in-house, then you must push them to keep up their end of the bargain

__ Hosted voice solution __
 * Must maintain copper for alarms and elevators
 * PoE phones connect to network and communicate with cloud instance
 * Multiple layers of redundancy

__ What do you not want to put in the cloud __
 * Physical security - door locks, PA systems, emergency management
 * Assess the risk of losing internet

__ Virtualized Desktops __
 * Windows terminal server
 * Thin clients
 * Windows - turnkey solutions.
 * Performance issues with media editing

Will keep file server in house as backup. Replicated from cloud instead of to cloud - internet failure simply requires dns change

Differential backups to cloud: no more need to nightly

LiveDrive, ExpandDrive - cloud services to sync services

Domain controllers - cloud-based, rollover to internal dc

Apple - not legal to create virtual servers

Still want to keep redundancy internally

__ Different Solutions __ MMFS using two solutions - Amazon and Rackspace. Rackspace replicates to Amazon Rackspace - turnkey solution, located in NY with colocations in NJ and VA Backupify, Spanning and Vault for Google Docs

__ Transitioning to cloud __ Virtualization P to V process - physical to virtual Allows for sandbox in cloud.

Personnel transitions - delicate topic

Should still keep hard copies of critical documentation for disaster recover