How Do Cloud Providers Do Capacity Planning?
A company has access to limitless resources while running workloads on the cloud. That’s great, but only if the IT team uses effective capacity management techniques.
Operation using cloud software has several advantages over doing so with on-premises software.
To understand the topic further, you need to know what cloud services or cloud storages are and how they function while planning capacity.
What Are Cloud Services?
Cloud computing is service providers offer over the internet that allows clients to access their systems, resources, storage, databases, networking, and so on.
The service depends entirely on software, making it easier for businesses to purchase and use; no hardware gets used.
Most employees use these services, such as sending an email or collaborating on a document, without realizing it.
Cloud computing suppliers and service providers host these resources on their servers, which saves the company time and money.
Users can access cloud services through a PC with an internet connection or a virtual private network. They are usually pay-per-use plans on a monthly or annual basis.
Let’s examine the roles and operations of cloud providers in more detail.
What Are Cloud Services Providers?
A cloud service provider is a third-party planner who offers a cloud-based platform to help you run your business.
They offer components of cloud computing such as
- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
- Software as a service (SaaS)
- Platform as a service (PaaS)
Like a homeowner who would pay for services such as electricity, water, and gas for survival, it is essential for businesses to buy such a utility.
You can employ a cloud service provider to cut costs or compensate if you have a soft-skilled IT team on board.
There are many certified cloud providers such as Alibaba Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and much more.
Features of Cloud Services
1. Merging Resources
Cloud services use a multi-tenant model to serve their customers. The assignment of physical and virtual resources depends on customer needs.
The multi-tenant model ensures privacy is maintained even when multiple customers use the same application or infrastructure.
Providers use resourcing pooling to offer various services to clients through the same physical resources. For this to be possible, the provider must have a large and flexible resource pool.
2. Large Network Access
You can transfer or access data to and from your cloud services anywhere. All you need is a device and a stable internet connection.
Cloud service providers monitor and ensure factors like latency, access time, data throughput, and how users access these resources to make this possible.
3. Automation
Automation is known as installing, configuring, and maintaining a cloud service without any manual effort.
Additionally, it supports a metering feature and automatically aids in data analysis. Automation in cloud services thus offers both the host and the client transparency.
4. Minimum Maintenance
As the host must purchase the storage, a small portion can be shared with other businesses, saving them tons of money on monthly or annual expenses.
The sole expense paid by the host and clients is the maintenance of these servers, which is essentially inexpensive.
It is expensive because these servers have minimal downtime or, in some cases, none. And the best part about cloud hosting services is that they constantly improve through each upgrade.
Businesses must plan their capacity and ensure their capability to deliver a good cloud service that sticks to these features.
Let’s explore how they do this.
What Is Capacity Planning?
In general terms, capacity planning tests whether you have the capabilities and resources to meet a customer’s demand.
It runs opposite to resource planning, which focuses on making the best out of existing resources under your control.
The main advantages of capacity planning include helping you forecast what can be accomplished in a specific time and avoiding going over budget.
How Do Cloud Providers Do Capacity Planning?
Capacity planning through AWS Aurora is helpful, as it automatically distributes resources based on the workload.
A cloud provider strategically does capacity planning by doing the following things:
1. Examine baseline capacity requirements
The basic foundations of cloud services include application instances, cloud servers, databases, and so on.
Your team must estimate the average number of CPU, memory, and storage resources you will need to maintain good performance. With observability, you can monitor key metrics such as resource utilization, network traffic, and application performance in real-time so that cloud providers can do capacity planning by giving them visibility into the performance and behavior of their infrastructure and applications.
These are your baseline requirements, and it’s crucial to maintain them separate from resource allocations, mainly if your clients’ needs are liable to change.
2. Knowing What To Put in the Cloud
Even though you might be required to put everything on the cloud, starting small and avoiding clustering is vital.
You must pick which applications, servers, and systems to upload to the cloud and consider certain factors.
For instance, consider whether future cloud apps depend on existing on-premises applications.
Private and public cloud services are another aspect. A private cloud offers you more freedom and control, while a public cloud may increase your availability.
Consider the advantages of a cloud service as well, and upload data and information in accordance.
It is crucial to employ cloud services to secure your off-premises infrastructure, just as you safeguard your on-premises infrastructure.
3. Autoscaling policies
Many public cloud service providers might help you with autoscaling policies.
These policies enable the cloud service to automatically modify the resources allotted to your workload following your needs via traffic configurations.
Most cloud workload types, including virtual machine instances, databases, containers, and serverless functions, can use autoscaling policies.
However, there are situations when autoscale cannot be used to manage specific specialized types of cloud workloads.
4. Service Level Agreements
Your business must adhere to service level agreements. Most SLAs’ primary objective is to prevent downtime and ensure service delivery.
Assuring availability and developing a backup and recovery strategy in an outage are standard ways to accomplish this.
Applications, systems, and servers – it is crucial to know these elements’ recovery time.
They help estimate the effects and expenses your company would incur in the event of a problem.
5. Scalability Needs
You must know the scalability level needed by the baseline requirements if you are a cloud provider.
Time, day, or season determines the workload requirement. Your cloud workloads will vary in how much scalability is required.
For example, a website serves people in a particular geographic location. This website is likely to have more demand during daytime hours than a website with a user base that gets more evenly distributed worldwide.
Similarly, a food delivery service’s website will likely encounter more traffic at mealtimes than at other times of the day.
6. Expansion
Procurement processes and funding models are essential aspects of cloud computing. Improved project management visibility makes it easier to anticipate resource needs.
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Before they can build the platform, the cloud team must know how long it takes to develop it.
Teams should always resist the urge to increase existing overcommitments in project planning to satisfy a new customer.
7. Analyzing Capacity Data
Even though you might have access to autoscale policies, it is essential to assess how well allocations work and adjust accordingly.
For instance, if your workload do not meet the criteria for autoscaling, your workload is overprovisioned and might need adjustments.
Also, when you see that cloud costs are high, you can try reducing the cost by doing a better job at capacity planning.
An increase in autoscale policies or shifting data into serverless clouds might help in reducing the need for manual changes.
8. Utilization And Workload Analytics
Utilization patterns determine how frequently and heavily your servers, systems, and applications are used.
You’ll be able to determine what to expect while using this method. After all, your usage could change depending on the day of the week or the season.
Monitoring application usage enables you to manage capacity effectively.
Think about this example. You have two gigabytes of on-premises memory and four vCPUs that are 10 percent utilized. However, in the cloud, you might only have 500 mg of memory and one vCPU. You can manage that change with the help of capacity planning.
It would help if you thought about the causes of workload changes and what happens when they occur.
Additionally, you should consider the business’s projections and how they may affect your future responsibilities.
Examples of Cloud Capacity Planning Tools
There are numerous ways to get what you want. Similarly, cloud providers use various techniques to carry out capacity planning.
1. Infrastructure As Code
Thanks to infrastructure-as-code solutions that automate infrastructure setup and resource allocation, it is much simpler and quicker to modify allocations in reaction to capacity changes.
2. Cost calculators
The cost-prediction services that cloud providers deliver help manage the financial side of capacity planning.
They can assist in determining the expenses connected with various resource allotments or task patterns.
3. Data Management
Using the data gathered, you may observe performance trends and get alerts for changing capacity needs.
Logging tools like AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and third-party monitoring platforms are available for this purpose.
Conclusion
Capacity planning is an essential element in cloud services. It is vital to implement these procedures carefully for the success of a cloud service environment.
As mentioned before, there is no single way to approach capacity planning; mixing and forming strategies according to your needs is necessary.
Thus, check out Chisel free forever today and start with us if you’re unfamiliar with cloud services and need a trustworthy cloud provider!