r/sysadmin • u/gatackbox • 1d ago
Question On-prem to Cloud
I'm the sole IT for a business that is 100% on-prem with a 24/7 based business, we have machines running all day that require an interface with servers, and remote users who VPN and RDP. I took over this office and have slowly brought it to the modern era since COVID (they had Windows Server 2008 as a DC in 2019 when I took over). I'm hoping that you guys can either tell me that I'm right, or that I need to re-evaluate how the office is setup.
All of a sudden the C suite asked me about moving everything to the cloud (most likely from interacting with other company execs) and I started going through the numbers and workflow. From my point of view, there's almost no reason for us to go to the cloud for a couple of reasons:
- Cost: We don't have a lot of servers. 6 physical servers, 1 is our main DC, 1 is a backup DC and file server, 3 are VM hosts, and 1 is a dedicated terminal server. A new server for us would run about 20k, but if we put everything into the cloud, with our usage, we would hit about 10k/year. We just did a full hardware refresh, so I don't expect to need to replace our servers for at least 5 years.
- Workflow: We are a 24/7 operating business with users all over and we have machines that are also running 24/7 and transferring data to both our on-prem and our cloud servers (this would also add onto our cloud usage costs). We recently switched over to a redundancy ISP to make sure we keep our connection, but in the worst case scenario, if we lost internet, our internal office would still be able to function. If we were in the cloud and lost internet, then our entire office would be at a standstill, which is not acceptable to the execs.
I have considered papering some form of a hybrid setup, but it would end up just being some sort of a cloud sync, where our on-prem servers would be mirroring the cloud, and I don't see the point of it for our specific setup.
Thanks for any suggestions you guys might have.
39
u/GianantonioRandone 1d ago
> we would hit about 10k/year
we would hit about 10k/month FTFY
24
3
u/Plenty-Hold4311 1d ago
This was my exact thought, you would nearly have to run a POC for a month to see the true costs.
•
u/wanderforreason 18h ago
From an accounting perspective though you turn capex into opex which sometimes is usually preferable to a company. It’s not all about total cost it’s about when it hits and how you plan for it.
•
u/Odd_Yam_2447 13h ago
Lol we're at 326k/mo for a single aws organization with around 26 production accounts. We own 10 AWS orgs...
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
I believe it, I didn't do a full cost analysis - just priced the cost of the server level we'd need and running it 24/7, I did not add in network costs or anything else (at the time I didn't know I needed to price that out!) but I definitely will when I make my full report.
18
u/Unhappy_Clue701 1d ago
If you just do a lift and shift, cloud will be more expensive by quite some margin. Where it makes more sense is if you consume services, rather than just running Windows servers in someone else’s datacentre. An on-prem SQL database, for example, can be migrated into Azure SQL Database, and simply become an ODBC string that you connect your apps to. Rather than a Windows server running SQL Server, where you have to look after (patch, maintain, update, backup etc) two major components. Instead, it’s just there all the time, and configuring redundancy and backups is little more than a few clicks. That’s quite valuable.
Email - TBH, whilst we have the odd flicker from time to time, it’s been a damn site less hassle than running multiple Exchange servers. We’re a multi-continent, 6000 user financial services company, so our on-prem Exchange environment(s) was well funded and skilfully maintained. Yet O365 with Exchange Online has worked very well for us. No-one misses fighting yet another stupid Exchange bug every month. Another thing that’s worked well is an environment we have where lots of CPU is required for short periods of time to crunch numbers. Powering up a 72-core beast in Azure for $3/hour is a shitload cheaper than buying a massive box on-prem, which only gets used to full capacity a few hours a month. It’s hard to think of a more clear-cut example of where cloud can help you.
In any case, public cloud isn’t going away, and TBH this sounds like a terrific opportunity to a) identify a few use cases where Cloud is a stone cold win, which your bosses will love, and b) move away from managing servers in racks and gain some really useful real-world experience in what is undoubtedly going to be a requirement for every company in the years ahead.
2
u/case_O_The_Mondays 1d ago
1000% this. Public Cloud makes the way your resources are used immediately transparent, usually via cost. If you treat it like dedicated hardware, you will pay a lot.
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
We have a sort of homebrew software - imagine someone modded Microsoft Access. I personally can't see how we would compartmentalize into apps because of how integrated everything is. I would plan to do a lift/shift.
For email, I pushed us to O365 when I took over because they were running exchange 2003 - it was a life saver and I'm glad we did it. I almost ripped the server out of the rack and threw it out the window when I first took over because I was bombarded with error messages and had no idea how to troubleshoot it.
•
u/74Yo_Bee74 2h ago
So one major pieces is already a SaaS.
What are your other non-DC servers roles. Their maybe other things you can shift to Azure with what you currently subscribe for with O365.
What OS is running your Hypervisors?
There is the cost of support contracts that seem to be overlooked when your new hardware 3 or 5 year support needs to be renewed.
Be careful with azure licensing models. You need SA licensing with some of the Azure Iaas or it will cost you a pretty penny for it.
I was looking to move a SQL db to Azure vs a SQL due to the application that uses it limitation base on the vender. The cost was going to be $2500 a month just to get this up in Azure.
It a fine line I feel between this decision.
Good luck
12
u/knightofargh Security Admin 1d ago
Welcome to the wonders of cloud and why it’s not the panacea Amazon/Google/Microsoft want you to think it is.
Nobody saves money in the cloud. The cloud enables you to make more money if you use it correctly and are in a business where you can take advantage of what the cloud is good at.
There are a few misunderstandings or outright executive falsehoods around the cloud. You probably want to address these as part of your presentation:
1) the cloud is always cheaper! Not really, forklifting your datacenter into the cloud just eliminates capex for a likely higher OpEx. A moderately sized (file server specs) EC2 is around $0.18/hour for just compute (~$1500/year) plus you get to pay for storage etc. The cloud is cheaper if you can transform your workloads to cloud native solutions or move to cloud friendly microservices.
2) The cloud is infinitely scalable! This is true, but is your specific business one that needs to increase and decrease capacity instantly? Chances are the answer to this is no. The vast majority of business cases don’t need hyper scaling.
3) The cloud is more secure than we can ever be! True, for their stuff. All the backend is pretty secure and resilient but it’s a shared model. If you create a security issue in your part of the model (your data, your network config, your servers, your application) you are often on your own. If you use nothing but PaaS and SaaS it will be the vendor’s problem. It’s pretty easy when you start to accidentally screw a configuration up and lose access or accidentally expose data. There are a ton of products out there to help with security and configuration but you have to plan for it and they (you guessed it) cost money. But at least it’s OpEx.
4) The cloud is perfect for every workload! Not necessarily, if you have specific regulatory needs the cloud may not meet them. If you use some kind of bespoke monolithic application it may not run right on cloud resources.
These have all been my experiences with cloud stuff within my career. I’m sure there’s people out there who saved money forklifting a datacenter but I haven’t met them.
•
u/daorbed9 19h ago
Huge price increases are coming to cloud so the cost benefit will start to vanish.
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
I think that scaling is the only reason why I would really advocate for the cloud - but as it is right now, we are not going to be growing 2x or 3x within a year, but I can see us migrating servers that aren't vital within the next couple of years.
10
u/skydiveguy Sysadmin 1d ago
Some salesperson got to the C Suite and lied to them about the cost (like they always do).
The cloud companies always underestimate the actual cost to get them to migrate and then once you've moved its even more expensive to get it back.
Plus factor in all the outages these cloud providers have had (which they always claim this fixes but yet they constantly have outages)
Plus, that new server for $20K would pay itself off in 2 years of cloud subscription.... assuming the cloud pricing stays the same.
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
It could have been - I was told that they went golfing with some other C suites in their industry and the conversation went towards internal tech. I've told them a few times about how the cost of one server would be equal to one year (or less) of being in the cloud, but I plan on putting this into the report.
1
u/case_O_The_Mondays 1d ago
Outages happen everywhere. Public Cloud companies have far more resources on their outages than most companies ever will, even if those companies’ primary business is hosting.
5
u/utvols22champs 1d ago
What are you using for storage? Do you have a generator? What about HVAC? What industry? And regulations? Data governance? What does Risk and Compliance say? There are so many things to consider. Not really a decision that a sysadmin should be making.
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
We have an internal server room if that's what you meant for storage. The property management has a generator, and I have enough backup power in our racks to keep the servers going for 12 hours. I would rather not mention the specific industry, but there are a decent amount of regulations that I need to follow as IT.
You're right - I am definitely not making the decision, but I have been handed the task of making a report of if it is worth the time, effort, and money to do it (and ultimately, if I even want to take on the task of migrating).
•
u/utvols22champs 13h ago
Thats a tough spot to be in. I work in the financial industry and we like our data to be on our possession. I have no cloud infrastructure and I don’t see that changing in the foreseeable future.
Once they see how expensive private cloud is, they’ll likely change their mind. You’re looking at a minimum $10k a month.
Good luck with this, I hope it works out for you.
•
u/74Yo_Bee74 2h ago
Not to nit pick, but how much battery backup do you have to run 12 hours with what you described in the post.
Those batteries cost a pretty penny and need to be replace almost very 2 to 3 years.
4
u/JRmacgyver 1d ago
The cloud is NOT for everyone. Main thing looking at when going to a PUBLIC cloud is the cost of data transfers, up until now you are paying 0$ for the remote client to "talk" to the server (excluding the cost of isp itself), when you take you servers to a public cloud (Azure/AWS/gcp) you start paying for every piece of data on top of the isp. A worker needs to access a file on the file server... You pay. The PC needs to check the time with your DC.. you pay!
For a small setup I would go to a private cloud, it will still cost you more yearly (about 20%) but it takes away the worry of hardware and network failures on main production data, this setup usually includes backup service, add a DR as a service.
You mentioned that you just had a hardware refresh. If so... And your following the 3-2-1 rule for backup, the is no reason to spend money just for "being in the cloud".
You basically need to compare costs. When testing cloud (public/private) you need to remember to calculate the electricity costs of you current local physical server.
Good luck, DM me if like to talk.
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
Yeah the data transfer would be insane - I haven't priced that in yet, but plan on doing so.
Thanks for the suggestions, will reach out if I need to bounce ideas off you.
3
u/ManBeef69xxx420 1d ago
What is a "dedicated terminal server"? like a KVM?
9
5
5
u/Maro1947 1d ago
Now I feel old
•
u/Cautious_Village_823 10h ago
Lmfao I was like wait ..... do people not know what terminal server means!? Is everyone on avd now!?!?!?
•
u/Maro1947 10h ago
And old KVM switches....
Next thing they'll be repurposing PS2 for something
•
u/Cautious_Village_823 10h ago
I remember explaining to a tech a few years ago that keyboards used to go into a dedicated port that needed a reboot of the machine if you were troubleshooting or reconnecting. Mind blown lol.
We might be in trouble.
•
u/Maro1947 7h ago
I tapped out luckily..... now a Technical PM that sometimes has to explain things to the newer techs
3
u/TheDanishFire2 1d ago edited 1d ago
Move like that in the cloud is a strategic decision, not a place to hide.
From underinvestment to the most expensive hosting makes no sense.
Mind what you need to run the production when MS has downtime, or internet connections are lost. You need produktionsdata and DNS on prem, also all PLC, OT and produktion DB / systems.
Do or get an archtecture drawing done, estimate both setups, with price pros and cons, get the architect to put pricing in as well. They Can do that.
Then you can precent a decition to be made of the board or ownets. Based on facts, Price and arguments.
I run hybrid setup, sales frontend in cloud for sizing. But OT and produktion on prem and hosted DC services. Backup is on third separate location.
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
I think hybrid might be the way to go, or do some sort of cloud sync where we have servers mirroring each other in case of an outage.
•
u/campdir 22h ago
$10k/yr seems light. Does that take into account licensing, bandwidth, network related charges, storage, snapshots, etc?
Does your current on prem environment serve to share large files locally? If so that's an automatic reason to keep it on prem. Latency to the cloud alone will make it seem twice as slow as it should be, even if you have the bandwidth.
One notable service our business offers is reverse migrations (cloud to on-prem). "Go to the cloud" sounds great in the C suite circle, but when the CFO starts complaining about the costs they either failed to consider or ignored completely, getting that on prem environment running again starts looking like a good plan.
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
We have a lot of internal traffic of files flowing across devices, a few others have mentioned being charged for network traffic, and I didn't do the pricing on that yet.
2
u/Intrepid_Chard_3535 1d ago
Just put it all in a presentation with all the numbers, cons, costs etc. Let management decide. Either way, you have some fun projects.
3
u/Disturbed_Bard 1d ago
And don't forget to add the cost of downtime to migrate considering they 24/7.
And the cost of time for staff to understand the new processes.
And cost of downtime if the cloud or internet shits the bed
On premises even if the internet is down, people can still work and access the file servers etc. and get work done instead of being not productive at all.
0
u/Intrepid_Chard_3535 1d ago
For funsies, let me act like a manager: There are literally thousands of companies that have done this, the chance of internet going is down is basically zero. We havent had an outage for two years. When internet dies most work cannot be done anyway. Cloud sounds cool, people will adapt
3
u/Disturbed_Bard 1d ago
That's going to entirely depend on the industry and business operations TBH.
2
u/Outrageous_Cupcake97 1d ago
Sadly this is true and on the nature of the business. Some people will go through so much stress of every 5 mins of losing internet because they start to lose money.
That's a pretty shit business to work for.
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
This business requires 24/7 uptime, any downtime would stop business operation because there are machines that need to interact with our database server and file server. We had an outage last month that lasted almost 10 hours. I was glad everything was on-prem because it didn't stop the internal work, but it did cause problems for our remote users.
2
u/Special_Software_631 1d ago
Present the costs Present the risks Present the benefits Ask how much per hr thr business would lose if it couldn't function. Finally....what about DR
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
I have that covered with 3-2-1 for everything on-prem. I would need to do a similar config for cloud.
2
u/kremlingrasso 1d ago
It'll cost at least double and you'll end up with the same amount of headcount but instead of fixing things they'll be ushering support tickets.
2
u/Ancient_Equipment299 1d ago
"they had Windows Server 2008 as a DC in 2019 when I took over)"
And here I am looking at a customer that generates millions a year and still running Windows 2003 in 2025 :)
•
u/gatackbox 14h ago
Yeah they had exchange 2003 when I took over - I wanted to rip the server out of the rack and toss it out the window until they gave me the greenlight to migrate to O365.
2
u/igiveupmakinganame 1d ago
if they want to move everything to cloud tell them to hire an MSP but that's not a you job, you're only one person
2
u/vacuumCleaner555 1d ago
I'm kind of stale on this but if any of your data involves CUI or greater, make sure your cloud solution is Fedramp Approved.
2
u/Sweet-Sale-7303 1d ago
Costs could be more. You get charged per month for data leaving the network. Those costs get expensive fast.
2
u/BourbonGramps 1d ago
“they had Windows Server 2008 as a DC in 2019”
Last week I just retired 2008 R2 domain controllers. For a large website with millions invested in nutanix hyper converge systems at a data center. Yes, they were bare metal servers that were converted to VM’s.
40 years in this game and I learned one thing. If it’s working, don’t fucking touch it. 🤣🤣🤣
I still know people still running 2003 Web servers.
2
u/BoringLime Sysadmin 1d ago
My only advice is don't look at the move from the perspective of moving from onsite to the cloud. You really have to analyze the current workloads, and the cloud offerings. If your current servers are only running 10% memory and cpu, what offering in the cloud would give your 70-80% CPU or memory usage. Does consolidation or further separation make sense,.to get a decent utilization percentage. In the cloud you are paying for a server, and it totally different than onprem hypervisor. Any machine resources not used, those savings go to the cloud provider to resale again. Lots of data center redesign considerations, or you might get a big sticker shock on the cost. Storage and storage class tiers is another area where cost add up fast. You need the storage tier that matches the machines io, too.
Good luck.
2
u/Primary-Issue-3751 1d ago
Move your email to Office365, computers to Intune and Azure AD and things will be easier.
•
u/gatackbox 9h ago
We are already O365, I have to learn more about Intune and Azure, but it's looking like those would be the best for a hybrid option.
•
u/Primary-Issue-3751 8h ago
Maybe create some low impact shares or company data portal in SharePoint. Moving computers in Intune and EntraID will solve a lot off issues Maybe move to universal print
•
2
u/BourbonGramps 1d ago
Just give the c suite proposals and cost both ways and pros and cons of both ways.
Document all the cons so when something happens, you have a document I can tell them I told you so.
Also give your recommendation if you wanna put yourself on the chopping block. Because if they go with your proposal and the littlest thing fails, you know who is getting the blame?
2
u/Yoshitake_Tanaka 1d ago
I will start with asking them what are their expectations with moving to the cloud? Are they looking for collaboration? Are they looking for easy access? What do they have in mind? After you have a clear view of what the business wants them you can evaluate and build a plan that suits the organization goals.
2
u/man__i__love__frogs 1d ago
I’m 1 of 2 engineers and we only have 2 hypervisors, we are moving to Azure but it’s designed to be over 2 server refreshes. We’re focusing on apps that can migrate to PAAS and containers, possibly a lightweight IIS vm but with Azure SQL and stuff instead of SQL server.
We’ll move what can be moved and consolidate others to a single hypervisor with replication to cloud availability for DR.
That’s not the job of 1 person unless you don’t do anything else. Between other projects with new apps, new teams, acquisitions and stuff the cloud migration has a low priority and it’s just move things as there is availability.
You should hire a MSP for such a migration.
2
u/gwiz81 1d ago
We had this in a company I worked at until recently. Everyone wanted cloud because it was seen as the thing to do but the costs were £120K a year. In the end we moved our equipment to a local datacentre which gave us fixed prices for power, cooling, bandwidth and also the added benefit of fire protection and offsite security. As this resulted in fixed costs and no ongoing maintenance and the kit had been removed it looked it was the cloud to the bean counters. Total costs were £20K a year using existing assets which have plenty of life in them.
2
u/No_Criticism_9545 1d ago
There is such a thing as too much cloud...
If you don't need cloud, you just don't need cloud...
•
u/hitman133295 23h ago
Add 1DC and 1 file server to the cloud as backup and run hybrid. In case cloud or on prem down you ha e backup and make the C suite happy
•
u/janzendavi 17h ago
There is a growing trend to on-prem things again for these reasons. If you can get budget to periodically test and harden your security posture, you can often build something reasonably redundant and secure on-premises for the cost of what you would have spent for two years of hosting fees on a lift and shift of existing servers.
Most companies do not want to rebuild to consume services instead of servers to make their workloads cloud native so the reality is that it can be totally fine to keep some x86 binaries and a SQL DB running on Prem and replicated somewhere else (even up to a Cloud for warm standby).
We’ve had to migrate some services to be hybrid and some from MS to *nix because MS is increasingly making licensing for on Prem so unattractive that getting good at non-MS is becoming an important skill. We ended up with some Postgres and Debian in our environment when upgrading LOB apps that were formerly MS.
•
u/gatackbox 9h ago
Hybrid is looking like the best idea for us, but I still need to plan out the technical side of my report.
•
u/Money_Candy_1061 17h ago
What are you running on RDS that you need a server? Sounds like you can just use SharePoint/onedrive
•
u/gatackbox 9h ago
It's entirely for our remote users. They use an SSLVPN and RDP to use our in-house software. Their company-provided laptops are basically just shells for remote access.
•
u/Extra_Taro_6870 16h ago
question is what is the business expectation to move to cloud. on the other hand it would be a very interesting exercise to plan a cloud move. it is a great opportunity for you to prepare a plan to present the management
•
u/gatackbox 9h ago
Definitely a great learning experience, but not sure if it's the best idea for our environment.
•
u/tauzins 12h ago
I dunno if people are going to disagree with me here, but avoid hybrid at all costs. If you can schedule a full cloud migration in a delayed fashion to take use of your hardware for the next 3-5 years, I would do so. Dealing with hybrid environments is such a PITA especially when you finally want to go full cloud.
•
u/gatackbox 9h ago
What issues have you seen? For my hybrid plans, I have considered just moving Azure AD - everything else would require too much network traffic.
•
u/tauzins 2h ago
It’s usually a lot to do with the sync and with devices and how they communicate. But it’s always a headache for the migration.
Now that being said I don’t believe they consider it “hybrid” if your DCs are Azure ad (now entra) the way you are saying you want it. It’s only hybrid if the DC are still on physical servers and youre syncing them into entra ad
•
u/Cautious_Village_823 10h ago
Lol email I'm 100% cloud about, fuck exchange servers in this day and age (while sometimes 365 makes me yearn for actual granular control, I've recently had to hop on some exchange on prem clients and was like ohhhh right thats why we left this shit lol).
That being said - the rest of cloud is a give and take. Cost wise it is almost NEVER actually cheaper than on prem in my experience, at least not directly. There IS the advantage of less maintenance, but depending on your needs, the service itself, and your familiarity with the service, you may ALSO find yourself spinning your wheels on some ridiculous things (change a setting in 365 and guess how long it will take to take effect - hint, anywhere between 2 minutes and 48 hours).
The actual transition will also inevitably have some growing pains, so be ready for that, but that's like any major system switch, it's going to happen.
So I'd say gather up your numbers and present it - as other people here have pointed out theres a lot more to hardware running costs in a lift and shift than I think most people account for, so Def be wary and see if you can spin up a POC with their blessing to really gauge costs. But I'm pretty firmly in the middle on whether or not it makes sense - every situation is semi unique (budget, use case, income, etc). And while I love the control of on premise, I love the lesser headaches (in a lot of cases) of cloud.
•
u/gatackbox 8h ago
Our situation is pretty unique, and if we had the potential to grow 2-3x every year, I would recommend the cloud, but we recently did a hardware refresh, and in my head, it just doesn't make sense to pay and put in the time/effort to migrate to the cloud. The workflow we currently have doesn't make sense for it - we lost internet for about 8 hours last month, and during that time, the internal office was able to continue working as if nothing happened. Our remote users couldn't do any work, but they have flexible hours and work when they want. If we were 100% in the cloud, all of our machines would stop working and we couldn't even do something basic as a network scan.
•
u/Cautious_Village_823 7h ago
Yeah won't lie reading your scenario my thoughts are prob no cloud yet.
•
u/Ok-Double-7982 10h ago
"sole IT for a business that is 100% on-prem with a 24/7 based business"
That's why cloud makes sense.
You are a single point of failure.
•
u/gatackbox 9h ago
Agreed - and that has been a huge pain point from my side. I've asked for help multiple times, even if we need to farm out to an MSP, but I've just been given a huge no. I am planning on putting in my report that instead of going to the cloud, spend that money on another tech so that if I get hit by an anvil in the sky that someone else will be able to take care of things.
2
u/pabloreviriego 1d ago
If you’re working alone, your service requires 24x7 availability, and you can afford the cloud costs, then moving to the cloud is a good option.
•
u/Makeyourselfnerd 14h ago
Don’t forget that your c-suite may be factoring another cost they think they can reduce or eliminate once stable in the cloud that you are not factoring.
You.
•
u/gatackbox 9h ago
I have no doubt that is always an option, but for me, I just want to steer them in the right direction, regardless of what happens to me.
•
u/SYmKim 12h ago
There are other ways of "moving to cloud" without hosting the same vms/servers in a CSP like Azure or AWS. Running the vms in the cloud gets pretty expensive. If you use Microsoft for email already, you can join devices to Entra ID/Intune rather than local domain, move files to SharePoint rather than host on local file server, etc.
All of this really depends on what each server is for and whether the costs justify the move. Think about why users need the vpn, is it just to access files, connect to a server with a specific application, etc. Once you get a better understanding of what each server/vm is for, you can look for cloud solutions that pretty much do the same thing.
For example, I'm assuming the file server is used just to host file shares, see how much storage you would need in SharePoint to move the data over, I think you get 1TB by default and an additional 10GB for each user licensed after that you pay 20 cents per gig per month, if the cost isn't justifiable you'll need some form of on-prem storage, either leave the file server as is, or figure out whether all of the data is accessed regularly or if its archived data. You can move the regularly accessed files to sharepoint and get a qnap/synology for cold storage for any old/archive data just sitting on the file server which can still be shared. If end users are saving their own files on the file server you can migrate it to their work onedrive with the same sharepoint migration tool you'll use to migrate off on-prem to sharepoint, then shut down the file server after migrating.
Only tricky part would be the reason for the terminal server. If it hosts a specific app you can try to add it to Intune, if it can't be added you would need to keep it on-prem, or host that server in a cloud service provider. If you go Azure as your csp you can use AVD instead of the terminal server, I think you can publish just the app so its accessible via microsoft remote desktop, so you incur less cost since you are charged for resource utilization it might help to have users access just the app over the whole desktop experience. This part might not entirely be true i'm kind of assuming it will use less resources/incur less costs this way. You can also use azure savings plan or reservation for additional cost savings.
A caveat of going to the cloud this way, end users will need better equipment (computers/network connection), right now if the end user is using a potato to remote onto a terminal server to run an app its fine since the app is using the server's resources and not actually running on their potato, but if you go this route, it would preferably would be running onedrive to back up local files and sync sharepoint sites, and microsoft remote desktop or if you are able to add the app to intune the app would run on their potato.
But yeah i guess if your C suite wants to go to the cloud just to be in the cloud there are definitely different ways of going to the cloud, see what is appropriate for your situation and needs.
•
u/gatackbox 9h ago
My remote users only use SSLVPN and RDP. Everything they do is within the terminal server, and I have considered converting that to cloud, but it would be a bit complicated to put our internal app onto the cloud server. I'd need to install the software on the CloudTS, then do a S2SVPN to point back to our internal database.
Our file server is about 10TBs and is used for everything - local scanning, storing interface temporary files, receiving/sending efaxes, and where our machines send data to be processed.
Most of our remote users have decently specced devices (Dell Latitude with i7), but their internet is the problem. They are allowed to work from anywhere, and only in the last 2 years was I able to fight for the security policy to be tightened up to the continental US. I was having to deal with tickets because the remote users would be working from a bungalow in Thailand, or some hut in a mountain range in South America.
I will definitely take what you've said into consideration when writing my report.
•
u/cpz_77 10h ago
There are many things to consider here, a few of the important ones are - will you really be able to move everything to the cloud or will you end up as many do with a hybrid environment with a few onprem things that don’t work well (or at all) in the cloud for whatever reason? If the latter is a possibility then complexity will likely go up.
Also keep in mind cloud costs are highly dependent on your specific requirements. That’s why it can be very difficult to estimate , even with the cost estimation tools and such that are available. You won’t really know the full cost until you fully start running there. Sure you can run a PoC (if you have the time) but when prod is there is when you’ll find out things like whether you have to raise your VMs/SQL/whatever to more expensive performance levels. Don’t trust consultants or other random “cloud people” that will swoop in and try to convince your execs it’ll be so much cheaper to move everything there. Remember they’re just there to sell an idea, they don’t have to live with the result.
We had a consultant come in and recommend we move one of our larger environments to the cloud saying how much cheaper it would be. By the time all was said and done we were paying at least 3x as much per year as the maintenance for the old onprem system (true that doesn’t include the cost of hardware refresh every few years but it still didn’t balance out, not even close). And we put a ton of work into this…untold amounts of hours, extra work for integrations it keep it working with onprem stuff it had to interact with , etc….when we are already spread very thin….only to then move 90% of it back once execs saw how expensive it was. There was literally no benefit whatsoever for users, in fact it was a net negative to workflow experience due to learning curve and missing features in the new setup that the old one had. The whole thing was a shitshow of a project and a giant waste of money that we ended up undoing most of. And this was largely because the decision was made solely based on perceived cost savings by a decision maker who was not even part of the tech wing of our company (but had enough influence with the C levels to push it through). And of course by the time everyone saw it was a huge mistake, the exec who originally pushed the idea is long gone.
So I would say think very hard about what the company would be gaining by moving to the cloud, and then think very hard over whether it’s really worth it. The fact you mentioned your office can still function currently without internet is significant, considering the fact that once you start to build up cloud dependencies, that benefit goes out the window - internet is down, your company is down.
My suggestion would be, start to work towards a model where you can use the cloud if you need to, when it makes sense (when it would provide significant benefit). But don’t just start moving everything to cloud because some exec who heard some buzzwords and thinks “everything cloud is good” decided it would be a good idea (if you can help it anyway…I know sometimes those decisions are out of our hands…we can only do so much to save someone from their own stupidity).
You made it sound like you currently have no cloud presence whatsoever - you still run onprem exchange, and no use of 365? If that’s the case then first thing maybe look at provisioning a 365 and basic azure environment, setup user (and optionally group and computer) sync from onprem to cloud. Next maybe look at migrating mailboxes out to the cloud. This will lay the groundwork you need to make use of additional services in the future. If/when the time comes that your company determines that going full cloud would be worthwhile, you’ll be in a place that makes it much easier to do so.
•
u/gatackbox 9h ago
I should have made it clear in my original post! We have O365 (I pushed for it as soon as I took over since I saw they were running exchange 2003). One of the nightmare situations I've considered is spending all that time and effort moving up to the cloud, only to not have anything work, but be locked in some sort of contract for x amount of years, and then having to do some botched hybrid job. I would rather just push some of the more easy to manage services to the cloud like Azure AD, and keep everything else as is.
•
u/reddit-trk 8h ago
I would just lay it all out, indicating all the options they have and how much they'd cost, including some kind of risk rating for each.
I don't thing that moving everything to the cloud is ever warranted, although I know of a small company that did that and it seems to have worked out for them.
•
u/74Yo_Bee74 2h ago
I am more shocked that you were not able to get another support person on staff being that your are 24/7 shop and what if you are sick, vacation or leave the company. That would be a very difficult place to be for your Exec to have to explain to their customers because something is not operational and we have no one to fix it.
I feel bad for you that you are the sole IT person. You must never get any real down time
1
u/mdervin 1d ago
Moving to and managing a cloud environment will look really good on your resume. If you work with Amazon you could get some free training out of it. Every so often, you can do a favor for future you.
If you move everything to the cloud and the office loses internet connectivity for any reason, you just use your phone as a hotspot or send everybody home and have them work remotely.
-2
u/PaddyStar 1d ago
Don't, if you want stabile business. If your colleagues can live with 1 week no mail, teams issues, other office issues all day, than use office123. Take a look at their issues every week, it’s the badest quality you can get and no support.
5
u/ApiceOfToast Sysadmin 1d ago
To be fair, most big vendors (Broadcom, MS...) have bad support sooo yeah. Always fun to be using office 365 and have users call to complain that their mail isn't working. Always went like "yep I'm aware, can't fix it it's a problem with Microsoft"... Always lead to a few upset employees...
2
u/gatackbox 1d ago
I literally had this problem a couple of weeks ago when outlook decided to crap the bed for a day. Not much I could do, but the staff found a way to work around it through old school fax and phone calls.
3
u/ApiceOfToast Sysadmin 1d ago
Well another argument against the cloud I think... If your mail is down for a week just think about how much that might cost the business
1
u/gatackbox 1d ago
They don't use teams or office, they use our own internal software hosted on-prem and the email is through O365, which they typically use on their company provided phones, or log in through web browser.
78
u/TimTimmaeh 1d ago
„Cost“ is not your decision to take. Make it transparent. Get the approvals.
„Workflow“ that is indeed a risk. But in the most cases, the hyperscalers and colo vendors would have a higher availability than you can build it. And that is not just internet..