Challenges of Cloud Application Deployment
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Time
12 hours 57 minutes
Difficulty
Intermediate
CEU/CPE
13
Video Transcription
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>> Although most organizations
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desperately want to take advantage
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of the scalability and flexibility,
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as well as the cost savings that come
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with Cloud deployments,
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there are a lot of challenges when it comes
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to deploying Cloud applications.
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In this lesson, we're going to talk about
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the application issues that
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make Cloud migrations difficult.
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We're going to talk about aspects of Cloud deployments
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themselves that complicate application administration,
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then we want to just think about other considerations
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for maintaining a Cloud-based application.
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First and foremost, applications that are
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originally designed for on-premise do
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not always perform as well on the Cloud.
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There can be a number of different reasons for this,
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but first and foremost,
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is that in the Cloud,
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bandwidth is one of the limiting factors.
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A Cloud or an on-premise application
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can delicate, could be fat.
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The code may not be designed as
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efficiently and on-premise solutions
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can utilize quicker routing to handle
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different number of calls to
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make the application perform quickly.
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However, when that application
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is deployed in the Cloud environment,
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those numerous calls can
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bog down and make that application really perform
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poorly because it's taxing
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the bandwidth used to
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administer the application in the Cloud.
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One of the other things is that in
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the Cloud, by nature of it,
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there are going to be more shared resources that are
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used to balance and make applications run.
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That may not necessarily be
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the case in on-premise where there's
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dedicated resources for an application.
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Then, is the Cloud application even Cloud ready?
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Ideally, companies want to,
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what they call forklift,
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meaning just take their application
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from an on-premise situation
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and just begin hosting it in the Cloud without
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making any changes to the underlying code.
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But as we alluded to
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first in that performance issues piece,
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that's not always going to work.
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Some applications often need to have their code
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fixed and optimized for a Cloud environment.
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Now, there are some applications that can easily move to
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the Cloud with minor shifts.
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Those that require a lot of
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calls to databases or accessing
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data perform much better in the Cloud for the most part.
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Another important thing to consider about whether
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an application is Cloud ready is
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from an architectural perspective.
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Encryption may need to be employed in the Cloud to
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ensure that data is adequately protected in transit.
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Many of those things aren't often
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considered when an application is running on
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an on-premise situation because it's within the confines
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of protection of the organization's network security.
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In the Cloud, with data traversing
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different environments and potentially
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leaving a customer's instance,
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you do need to look at everything and
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ensure that there's adequate encryption
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and security for data in transit at rest in a process.
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Let's say you've added your application,
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you've made the tweak you think you need to make,
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often one of the challenges developers run into
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is that there really is poor documentation.
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Developers are often under the gun
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to develop and deploy code on a timely manner and
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documentation might not be adequate to
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competently deploy their solution in the Cloud
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given some of the constraints or
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ambiguities in what's been documented so far.
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Then let's say you've figured everything out,
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you've got your applications
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securely deployed in the Cloud,
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then there are some challenges that come with
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the secure administration of Cloud applications.
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Namely, it's ensuring that
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the application programming interfaces are secure.
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APIs are used to communicate and transfer data
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between Cloud applications and
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customers or used in administration.
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The benefit is they're very flexible.
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Organizations as well as on an individual level,
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developers can choose the APIs that best
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suit their use case or what they're trying to develop.
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However, this opens up a new security challenge,
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how do we ensure that the APIs that are being used are
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themselves secure and developed by a trusted party?
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An organization really needs to evaluate and create
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an effective process for evaluating and
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choosing APIs to ensure that they're valid,
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meaning they're developed by a trustworthy source
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and that the design
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of the API is secure
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and meets the organization's standards.
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Then another difficulty in
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terms of the Cloud environment is tendency separation.
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As we've talked about,
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especially in the public Cloud,
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an organization doesn't own
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their underlying infrastructure and there's going to be
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shared resources that they
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are leveraging from the Cloud provider.
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Well, this means that the organization needs to
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put a lot more emphasis on ensuring that
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their data doesn't bleed over into other instances within
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the same Cloud environment through
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more effective isolation techniques which we've covered,
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talked about, very important,
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that access control needs to be locked down and
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that secure remote administration
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needs to be configured properly.
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Let's deal with the quiz question.
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Which of the following refers to moving an application
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to the Cloud without changing any of the underlying code?
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Forklift, Cloud transplant, Cloud shift.
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If you said forklift, you're correct.
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Ideally, many organizations want to
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just pull their applications
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out of their on-premise environment,
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stick them in the Cloud and get
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all those cost efficiency benefits of moving it there.
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It's not as easy as you initially
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might think if you're not a technical person.
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You really need to evaluate
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your code, do adequate testing,
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re-evaluate the architecture to ensure that you have
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proper encryption and that
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the code is optimized to perform in a Cloud environment.
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In summary, talking about
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the challenges with Cloud application deployment,
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issues with Cloud application for
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differently an on-premise environments versus
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the Cloud based on how they're designed.
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We talked about how there really needs to be
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proper testing to ensure that
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the Cloud application is performing
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properly and that the architecture needs to be reviewed.
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Then from an administrative perspective,
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there are differences between how
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Cloud applications are administered versus on-premise,
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APIs are going to be the main way
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of administering and deploying it,
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connecting to the Cloud application
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>> that was needed to be
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>> vetted to ensure that they're from
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a trustworthy source
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>> and that they're securely developed.
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>> Then care needs to be taken to ensure
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that there's appropriate tenancy separation between
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your organization's Cloud application and
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the tenants of the Cloud environment.
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I'll see you in the next lesson.
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