If you have your website, web application or databases are deployed in Amazon Web Service, should you be concerned about being dependent on Amazon Services? These concerns are genuine for any organization before moving into AWS.
What does Cloud Lock-in mean?
Whether it is an application, an online service or a cloud provider with unsupported data format, you are locked-in if you are aware that you cannot migrate your website, application or online service to another provider.
Let’s say that you’ve migrated your on-premises data center to one of the cloud providers and later decide to switch to a different cloud provider for many reasons such as cheaper service, higher availability or high performance, etc. But you can’t, due to unsupported formats between the two cloud providers. This is known as Cloud Lock-in. But that does not necessarily mean that you are locked-in to AWS cloud forever.
When Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006, it was very much self-contained in its world. But, in the past few years, Amazon has announced many programs and services from which you can move AWS features beyond its cloud environment, and make them available for hybrid and on-premises use. This has put breaks for getting locked-in for many AWS services. Let’s go through some of the AWS services where it is impossible to get cloud lock-in.
On-Premises Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Originally Amazon’s EC2 was designed to run on Virtual Machines in the AWS cloud environment. But now you can use the EC2 Console to run Virtual Machines on your local network. What’s more? You get all the management features and control features of the EC2 console and supports for both Windows and Linux servers.
By using the same EC2 console, you can manage both local Virtual Machines and AWS. This lets you decide which services of your IT infrastructure you manage locally from on-premises and which you will manage on cloud AWS environment.
Local CodeDeploy
Similar to On-premises EC2, you can use CodeDeploy for deploying code both in on-premises and AWS cloud environment. AWS code deployment service, CodeDeploy, allows you to make use of its complete features to deploy updates to your application both locally and in the cloud.
AWS Storage Gateway
Use AWS storage gateway to create a hybrid cloud environment by connecting your on-premises storages with AWS storage. This can be used for backup, or network file storage or as for both. Storage Gateway offers three configurations: Gateway-cached volumes, Gateway stored volumes and Gateway virtual tape library. Since it is used to combine with on-premises and cloud, Storage Gateway takes advantage of the capacity and availability of AWS cloud storage and maintaining the important data locally. If you decide to move to other cloud providers, you can also obtain the data from on-premises.
Snowball, Snowmobile, and Snowball Edge
AWS offers Snowball, Snowmobile, and Snowball Edge – high capacity devices, for physically moving large amounts of data between the on-premises data center and AWS cloud. Snowball is a portable device used to transfer 50 TB to 80 TB data size. While Snowball Edge offers 100 TB disk size, it supports compute capabilities using AWS Lambda. The snowmobile is a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container, pulled by a semi-trailer truck. They are used to transfer an Exabyte-scale data for large corporations.
Direct Connect for Co-Location
You can have a dedicated network connection between AWS Cloud services and the on-premises data center by using AWS Direct Connect. The biggest win is that you can use the cloud services as if they were on-premises. Due to the dedicated network, it offers low latency and high speed for all the data transmission between the AWS cloud and on-premises data center.
With the high throughputs you receive, you can confidently run apps on this infrastructure at extremely low latency. The second win is that you can switch between the cloud and on-premises anytime to manage the workload and data storage. Using Direct Connect you are not locked-in to just one environment since you have the elasticity to architect your infrastructure across a wide range of possibilities.
Since Direct Connect has low latency – high throughputs, you can leverage AWS S3 for data storage.
Additional Hybrid Options
In addition to the above services, AWS offers a wide range of options to incorporate your cloud and on-premises. Using AWS Greengrass, you can run AWS lambda applications locally, even in the absence of a cloud connection.
Conclusion
Using AWS, you will never be cloud locked-in since they offer many alternatives and open doors. AWS provides you all the necessary tools to balance the operations that is right for you, while still leaving you the control of your data. With their wide range of benefits and flexibility they offer, getting locked-in on AWS is not more than a myth.
About InterPole
InterPole was established in 1996 and has been engaged in web hosting, email, and management of IT infrastructure. InterPole pioneered with Virtual Private Servers in 2004 and Cloud Hosting in 2008. Over the years, InterPole has worked with over 6200 mid-sized businesses and startups, and have assisted them in their journey towards the adoption of modern technologies through the Internet. InterPole is a Standard Consulting Partner of Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. With this partnership, provides Managed AWS service and maintains a team of engineers who are trained and certified for the specific cloud platforms. These benefits companies in defining their cloud strategy and making a well-planned journey, reliably and cost-effectively.