To run and manage our customers’ applications, we rely on a variety of public cloud providers, including Amazon, Rackspace, Google, and others. We also deploy private cloud platforms atop Xen, Cloud.com, and Openstack. We also use tools like Zendesk and Nagios to manage incidents and monitor system health.

While the monitoring, infrastructure, and configuration of systems varies from customer to customer, we’ve developed a variety of configurations that work well for specific applications in private, hybrid, and public cloud environments.

Web

We’ve been running production web environments for over a decade. In fact, we published the first industry-wide study of load balancing in 1999, and authored the first research into SSL and web performance that same year. Since then, we’ve been finding new ways to squeeze the most out of web architectures using a blend of dedicated and on-demand components.

  • For private web environments, we optimize performance through a combination of monitoring, web acceleration, and systems optimization.
  • In hybrid web deployments, we build public front-end/private back-end configurations that allow the presentation layer to scale automatically with traffic, while keeping data and application tiers on-premise. We also configure multi-site high-availability failover for websites, and can design hybrid applications that burst into clouds to handle traffic spikes.
  • With purely public cloud platforms, we create elastic cloud architectures that can spread traffic across multiple geographic regions for maximum performance, or switch dynamically from one region to another to mitigate attacks or failures. We also design web architectures that automatically add and decommission virtual machines as traffic changes.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

VDI is an important new way for companies to manage their desktop resources, improving security and helping them to recover from outages while simplifying everything from license management to upgrades. It’s also tied to cloud computing, because once desktops are virtual, they can live anywhere.

  • For private environments, build VDI configurations in which employees access their desktops through web and mobile devices, streaming, or remote desktop models. We also help configure kiosk and golden-image delivery models that encourage standardization and speed up recovery.
  • For hybrid VDI configurations, we deploy private desktops atop public Infrastructure-as-a-Service clouds, and create publicly available desktops with controlled access to enterprise data.
  • For public cloud environments, we configure and run pre-provisioned, fully secure desktops that can be provisioned automatically either through streaming, remote clients, or mobile and web clients.

Disaster Recovery

Cloud Computing has significantly altered the DR equation. Once, in order to recover from outages, a company needed to spend more than twice as much on infrastructure—double, because it had to be redundant, and then extra, for the tools, bandwidth, and hardware to keep everything in sync. The shared, pay-as-you-go model of clouds is a perfect way to reduce these costs. Virtual desktops further simplify recovery, because users can simply launch their work environment from alternate locations.

  • In a private model, we help companies build multi-site configurations in either active/active, or active/standby configurations.
  • In a hybrid model, we let companies work with on-premise VDI, but make a cloud available as an active/active, or active/standby model. The cloud is an economical alternative to a second physical site; in a standby configuration, it’s also extremely affordable.
  • When using entirely public infrastructure, we can configure active/active or active/standby deployments, or set up an off-site backup plan to ensure recoverability of critical data.

This is just a short list of the kinds of configurations that we build, deploy, optimize and run for our clients. Cloud computing has created a wide range of new approaches to solving performance, availability, scalability and security challenges. To find out how we can put clouds to work for you, contact us.