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Webitects in the Cloud
We've been hosting websites and email since the early days of the web. In the beginning, this was as simple as configuring physical servers connected to a dedicated internet connection or co-locating servers in a network operating center (NOC).
As hosting options grew in sophistication so did the expectations of our clients. We moved to dedicated managed servers that allowed us low level control but shifted hardware responsibility to the hosting provider. Still, when hardware failed, a server could be offline for several hours or more while replacement hardware was provisioned and installed.
Email hosting used to be one of the more difficult services we provided. Clients are very sensitive to email outages. Plus, a user's perceived quality of email service is affected by spam, viruses, and email client software (things that were often beyond our control). When Google began offering its GMail service as "Google Apps for Business" we jumped at the opportunity to change the way we handled email hosting for clients. Today, dozens of our clients rely on Google Apps to host their email. Webitects.com email is also hosted on Google Apps. For organizations needing ten mailboxes or less, Google Apps is free.
Our positive experience with Google Apps led us to consider other cloud-based services. About three years ago we began taking a serious look at Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS began as the infrastructure behind Amazon.com and evolved into a suite of services that are now used by thousands of organizations.
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is central to AWS. EC2 enables us to easily create virtual web, application, and database servers. Since these are virtual servers we can easily take snapshots of disk storage or an entire server. If underlying hardware fails redundancy ensures that our servers remain online. Occassionally Amazon notifies us of underlying hardware problems affecting our server instances. When this happens, we simply reboot the affected server. When it comes back online it uses different underlying hardware resources. Worst case, we build an entirely new server from a server snapshot (typically only a few hours old). New servers can be up and running in 30-60 minutes with zero data loss. Much quicker than waiting for a tech to make hardware repairs!
Other AWS offerings that we use include...
Simple Storage Service (S3) for redundant data storage and backups.
Elastic Block Store (EBS) for persistent off-instance data storage (virtual hard drives that can be migrated between virtual servers).
CloudFront, combined with S3, to provide a content delivery network for streaming and non-streaming content.
Simple Email Service (SES) to send bulk and transactional email.
Today, the majority of the websites that we host rely on AWS. Our experience with Amazon's Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings has been very positive. These services are affordable and allow us the control and flexibility we need.
Ask us how your organization might benefit by leveraging cloud-based services.