I've been Linux server admin for 10 years now... The 'google as you go' type...so yea..i'm not licensed in anything special.

Generally speaking, I can hold the fort down....but not always in an elite manner.

anyway, i've been thinking of switching to cloud for awhile. But I know NOTHING about Cloud. What are our options Admin / Root wise...Can we still access root files...? And customly change php / httpd stuff when needed ? add new mysql databases and such ?

Just wondering the core basics Cloud wise...from an Admin / Root perspective.

I appreciate it.

Clouds appear to their administrators as virtual machines.

https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/tutorials/lamp/
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/la...tall-LAMP.html

It's exactly like shared hosting on any webhost, really.

Are you asking if you can have full control of the machine and setup the things the way you want in cloud. If that is the question then the answer is yes.

You can go with PaaS and you can do whatever you want to do with your machine. There are different options which will be available to you at the time of setup like distribution you want to us, hardware configuration that you want for your system etc. Once you have made up your mind you can fire the request and they will get your system setup. Once the system is ready full control will be given to you and you can do whatever you want to do.

This normally happens if you have opted for managing it yourself. If you have opted for cloud provider to manage (basically you will pay more because you want them to manage it for you) then you can ask them to setup things on your behalf as you have paid them for that. You give them the specification on how you want particular service to be running on the system and they will set it up for you.

If you can give us better idea on what exactly you want to do over cloud we will be able to assist better.

One bit of personal experience I can offer: I signed up for an Azure trial, and after the trial was over Microsoft kept bombarding me with Azure-related emails. These emails offered me no way of unsubscribing. Where the "unsubscribe" link would be expected, there would instead be text saying "You are receiving these emails because they are related to a service that you use." Eventually I had to find the right request tracker and enter a support ticket to get myself removed.

@ mike2010

https://www.digitalocean.com/

You can build a droplet in less than a minute. Prices start at $5.00/month and you can scale up as you needs requires.

Generally sounds like I have to throw things on top of the cloud to get it to work like a Linux / Centos ? Sounds like a little more baggage.



Good description , thanks. But still seems baggage like. Sticking straight with linux might be better option.

My very-sober advice to you is that . . . "if, at any time, you do not know exactly where your data is, and exactly who has access to it, you are . . . scro-o-ood."

You are, IMHO, already "scro-o-ood" if you have swallowed the kool-aid which says, "what you really need is more Foreign Rented-for-Six-Months Contractors," because you actually have no idea who these people are, where they came from, what of yours they take with them when they go back to wherever they came from, or what they might do with their now most-intimate knowledge of your business once they arrive. (Aye, I think that fate the Federal Court will find that you were much too trusting. Even though those "citizens of a foreign state" are now out of reach of The Long Arm Of The Law, "y-o-u" (heh, heh...) are not.) "But . . . I digress."

"The Cloud" (over-)confidently assures you that "you have nothing to fear." Just let us have your data, and copies of all the software that you use to manage that data, and let us automagically move it all to <<someplace on the planet>> (where, exactly??) where electrical power is a few cents cheaper, and where "labor" costs a few rupees dinars less."

Yes, it would be "a very nice planet, indeed" if all of us could actually make our business decisions in terms of "life is beautiful, all the time." But, we can't.

• The ideal: "Investing in New York real estate."
• The reality: "Your properties are WTC 1, 2, and 8, and today's date is September 10, 2001." You "merely outsourced" all the building-maintenance tasks. You really paid no attention to what was going on.

If we actually lived in a world where "worst less-than-the-best case scenarios" could be happily ignored, because they carried with them no legal liabilities nor business risk, then ... "that would be a very happy world, indeed." But, we don't. And we never, ever will.

There are lots of "happy world-wide-web world-wide-fantasies" bouncing around the world(-wide) these days, eager to be assumed to be "accepted, tested, jurisprudence." However, I think that anyone who seriously believes these notions, and "bets their business on it," will be dashed to the ground.

That's a very optimistic scenario. It's more likely that your properties are 1, 2 and 7.

"Cloud" is nothing more than a sexy marketing term for "somebody else's server."

Yes. Like I said, it's exactly like shared hosting.

I don't work in IT, but I believe companies feel it is way cheaper to deploy cloud servers than doing it themselves i.e buying servers, rent, IT staff,etc.

I don't use cloud services nor do backups to them. I like to keep my stuff where I can see them.

True

Another way you can define cloud as an advanced form of virtualization.

As sundialsvcs said data security will always be a concern when you have it on cloud. Cloud companies do have measures to protect customers data integrity but I personally wouldn't bet on that. At the same time I wouldn't say cloud is not needed, why? Here we go:

Cloud is good for startups, who don't want to spend too much money on infrastructure. When you setup your infra it is not just the hardware cost that you have to take into consideration, there are other stuff as well which you have to think about like:

1. Whether to go with open source or proprietary OS.
2. Subscription cost for updates / support.
3. Backup cost, not only in terms of backup software but how much gigs you will fill.
4. Cooling solution for your servers.
5. Hardware maintenance contract.
6. Monitoring software.
7. Network bandwidth.
8. VPN incase you have offices in different location.

Above are few of the things that I can think of for now. If I have missed something feel free to add.

For a startup company to invest too much in IT infra is an overhead. Think of it like this, I have started my company which is for tours and travels, my main business is to facilitate booking for my customers. If I have to invest a lot in my IT infra then obviously my profit margins will drop, infact will drop drastically because it is not only IT expenses I am talking about, I am talking about other fixed and variable expenses as well.

As they say "there is nothing like free meal" so if I am setting up my own infra obviously I will end up adding that cost in the services that I provide to my customers. Now here comes the catch, we can have customers who are ready to pay high for the same service and customers who don't want to pay high. Things customers don't realize is why they need to pay high for the same service. Either companies offering the services don't explain them good enough (I have never read license agreement for Windows or any software completely , to be honest never even tried) or the customers not bother to ask. There will be companies who will cheat customer stating their data is safe and charge them high when they know a shit about data security.

It's a vicious circle. In today's connected world the main concern is not data security it is trust. As Linus said "If a security project does not include network of trust then it is not a security project, it is mast**bat*on"

Sorry for pulling topic off the track.

Coming back to cloud, in a nutshell cloud is good if you don't have money to setup infrastructure of your own. Cloud to you should mean that I don't want to take headache instead you should take (obviously cloud hosting providers). When going for cloud read the terms and conditions carefully, just don't skip like you use to do with Windows license agreement

If you have money then go for private cloud. Private cloud: you can set it up using openstack (openstack is still evolving and you will have glitches), if you have huge money go with VMware Virtualization Suite with Cloud Redirector. There are other ways to setup your own private cloud just mentioned two for example.

As an administrator you're thinking of switching to the cloud? Administration is not what I'd think of as related to the cloud, excepting having to deal with it. The cloud as I've experienced it is that data is stored and accessible via any location because it's considered to be in the cloud. Hence, intentional information such as product specs, documentation, marketing information, privatized data for companies is stored in the cloud.

I'd reject this because of a couple of reasons (1) private, proprietary data is being stored somewhere on the internet!!! (2) what if the cloud provider goes under?

However I've had experiences with quite a few fortune 500 companies or maybe even fortune 100 companies where they use secure cloud storage.

The most helpful thing of it is for when you have data of very large size, like greater than 20 MB, and really of any size, such as 2 GB or more in one file. As a result, you can use the cloud storage and transfer mechanisms to transfer files .... groan even to China. That's not meant to be some warning. Subsidiaries of very large companies reside in China. Fully legitimate, they do manufacturing. If you need to send them large design files, you use the secure cloud that the company employs for storage and transfer. But also between like Boston, MA and San Diego, CA. Same difference, a large file or more is being transferred through the internet, but also through a secure portal.

To me the relevance of all this to IT/Admin would be management and administration of the use of that and for IT/Admin I'd be more concerned that I could remotely ssh or VPN into given systems to access root files.

Thanks, just as suspected.

Cloud is for noobs.