Cloud Computing For Dummies®

Chapter 20. Managing the Cloud Environment

In This Chapter

• Grasping the complexities of managing services in the cloud

• Helping customers fix problems

• Determining the root cause

• Tracking service levels

When you deploy applications on your own premises, you can control your resources and you (hopefully) know who's responsible for maintaining the integrity of the overall environment. When you move some of your computing to a cloud environment, the way you think about managing changes dramatically.

You need to find the right balance between the oversight you must provide to internal customers and the way you monitor your cloud provider. We expect that many companies will have a combination of on-premise data centers combined with some cloud-based services. Therefore, you have to juggle a variety of management approaches.

Whatever path you choose, one thing is clear: You do not relinquish authority at the door. You need a consistent view across both on-premise and cloud-based environments. You need to make sure that you understand how the provider is going to support what you're doing in the cloud, whether it's computing capability, building your own applications, or using another provider's applications.

When you begin to leverage cloud services, you must have a clear understanding of how that resource will be managed by that provider. The company you have partnered with has to manage the underlying infrastructure that you're using (along with its multitude of other customers). This includes ...