With AWS cloud computing catching up quickly across industries and verticals, more and more applications are being moved to the cloud. Most cloud infrastructure providers are innovating at a furious rate to provide new features. While the features are constantly being added, the Cloud management Admin Console which is the central portal for technology managers to configure their infrastructure is growing in complexity at a rapid pace. Below are the four crucial aspects in designing the admin console that will help tame the AWS cloud management complexity using a right-sized cloud management console.
1) AWS, Hyper Growth and Cloud Complexity
The complexity of the Cloud Platform and tools makes it difficult for the early stage companies to migrate to the Cloud. Even companies with already some applications hosted on the Cloud find it difficult to be sure of whether their infrastructure is configured to take the best advantage of the recent innovations in terms of performance, security and cost perspectives. While Cloud management technology specialists and tools have emerged to assist the organizations, the need for innovation and optimization in the Administration Console is key for organizations to have better visibility and control over their Cloud deployment strategy.
2) DevOps — the right User Group for the Cloud Dashboard
The Right Admin Console for the Cloud Management Platform should start from the assumption that the key user group of the tool should not be “Cloud Specialists”. If this is not the case, the team that is managing the application deployed on the cloud should be forced to have cloud specialists amongst them, defeating the key purpose of having a cloud management platform itself
If cloud specialists is not the user group, then who should be the key user group? DevOps. DevOps are the cloud managers. While they constantly monitor the AWS service health, they also take decisions on adding and removing resources to fine tune the application performance. If the dashboard which allows the DevOps to manage the performance of the Cloud Infrastructure help them consider cost implications of the performance tuning without having to be Cloud technology specialists, it would
be an ideal tool. Such tools that support DevOps would actually transform cost management into an engineering task.
Today, every IT team whether in startups or large enterprises would have a DevOps among their ranks. If the Cloud Management dashboard can help the DevOps manage the Cloud Configuration management also, it would help organizations tame cloud complexity without having to incur the cost of an additional human resource.
3) Network Visualizations
Visualizations are powerful tools that help managers understanding the underlying data. Cloud management platforms should help administrators visualize their underlying network elements and how they are configured and related to each other. Here’s why: The network visualization provides a visual overview of all the features of the cloud infrastructure such as load-balancers, storage buckets, databases that have been leveraged to configure the current network.
4) Action Oriented Dashboard
While the cloud management platform would have to leverage advanced operational analytics and use data from diverse information sources like operating systems, cloud configuration managers, log managers, application managers etc., the dashboard should mask the complexity of the under the hood and present a functional view of Cloud in business terms such as Cost Management, Security, Backup and Disaster Management etc.
Even if the insights are presented in terms of KPIs, a cloud technology specialist might still be needed to interpret the KPIs and translate them into actions. Only if the right cloud admin dashboard can translate the insights into suggestions for actions, DevOps would be able to implement them quickly without having to dig deeper into the implications of each insight.
The Bottom Line
The key to optimizing the cloud Infrastructure is to avoid common mistakes and implement the best practices. A right-sized cloud management console aggregates all the common mistakes which are reported and automatically scans whether the particular configuration has any of these wrong configuration settings and immediately alerts the administrator to implement the remedial action.
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