Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. Today. We're undertaking a strategic
Speaker 1: analysis really of the modern IT engine. Yeah, if you're building, managing,
Speaker 1: or maybe migrating business applications, it's highly likely that Linux
Speaker 1: virtual machines, maybe containers are running the show somewhere.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And the move to the cloud, well, it's a strategic
Speaker 1: bandate now for almost every organization, isn't it. But mastering
Speaker 1: that environment, making it efficient, resilient, secure, that takes more
Speaker 1: than just spinning up a few.
Speaker 2: Servers, It absolutely does. Running your workloads in the public
Speaker 2: cloud is a fundamentally different paradigm than running a physical
Speaker 2: data center.
Speaker 1: It just is a different way of thinking completely.
Speaker 2: The promise is massive, of course, agility, true elasticity, pay
Speaker 2: for use, economics, all the good stuff. But without a
Speaker 2: strategic playbook, you can end up just throwing good money
Speaker 2: after bad maybe creating these complex architectures that just fail
Speaker 2: under load.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've all seen that happen. We've been diving into
Speaker 1: a pretty comprehensive guide that outlines five essential principles for
Speaker 1: well deploying and managing Linux in the cloud. Our mission
Speaker 1: today is to distill those five strategic pillars for you
Speaker 1: think of this as your shortcut to understanding the planning,
Speaker 1: the architecture, monitoring, and the governance you need to succeed
Speaker 1: in these really complex, dynamic cloud environments.
Speaker 2: Okay, so before we even hit principle one, we really
Speaker 2: have to establish the foundational architecture because your choice here
Speaker 2: it dictates pretty much everything that follows. Cloud services are
Speaker 2: generally broken down into let's say three main categories based
Speaker 2: on who's responsible for.
Speaker 1: What, which dictates how much strategic headache you keep. Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: so walk us through that spectrum.
Speaker 2: Okay, on one end, you've got ISS. That's infrastructure as
Speaker 2: a service. This is probably the most common starting point
Speaker 2: for many folks. Right, the provider gives you the bare infrastructure, servers, storage, networking,
Speaker 2: but you, the customer, you're responsible for managing the operating system,
Speaker 2: the patch, the applications, basically everything above the hypervisor.
Speaker 1: So I gives you that freedom, you know, run whatever
Speaker 1: Linux distro you want, but you keep the strategic headache
Speaker 1: of managing potentially hundreds of different OS layers.
Speaker 2: Precisely, then we move along to palats Platform as a service. Now,
Speaker 2: this is often strategically superior, especially for new application development.
Speaker 2: Oh so, well, here the provider handles the OS, the networking,
Speaker 2: the databases, all that plumbing. You the developer, you just
Speaker 2: focus purely on your code. It's essentially a ready to
Speaker 2: use delivery environment.
Speaker 1: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: And finally there's sauce Software as a service. This is
Speaker 2: where you outsource well pretty much everything infrastructure software updates.
Speaker 2: The consumer has pretty limited control. Think of using something
Speaker 2: like a CRM service or you know, Adobe Creative Cloud
Speaker 2: running on Azure.
Speaker 1: Okay, so knowing where you sit on that iss packs
Speaker 1: Sauce spectrum is crucial, and that brings us neatly to
Speaker 1: our first principle. I think it does.
Speaker 2: Principle one understand which Linux vms are adaptable to the cloud,
Speaker 2: and the source material really stresses this. The very first
Speaker 2: step must be a cloud readiness assessment. Okay, you can't
Speaker 2: just assume everything you're currently running on premise will work
Speaker 2: efficiently or even cost effectively in a virtualized cloud environment.
Speaker 1: But you know, is an is often seen as the
Speaker 1: path of least resistance, just lift and shift. Why is
Speaker 1: a formal assessment so critical.
Speaker 2: Because failing to assess properly often leads to massive overspending
Speaker 2: Later on, It just does the assessment forces you to
Speaker 2: really analyze your existing workload patterns, your database requirements, and
Speaker 2: that's the data that must guide your is versus past decision.
Speaker 2: If your application can be refactored, maybe modernized a bit,
Speaker 2: you could save huge amounts of money and operational effort
Speaker 2: by moving it to pass instead.
Speaker 1: And this changes the team structure too, doesn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you mentioned needing fewer traditional sissedmends focused on physical kit exactly,
Speaker 1: and more DevOps architects focused on automation and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing exactly.
Speaker 2: And this leads to that fundamental migration fork in the road.
Speaker 2: You can lift and shift, just move your existing stack
Speaker 2: without fundamental changes.
Speaker 1: Couick and dirty.
Speaker 2: Quick maybe saves you three months of planning upfront, but
Speaker 2: you likely pay I don't know, maybe forty percent more
Speaker 2: in the long run because those traditional vms don't really
Speaker 2: utilize cloud native features like auto scaling very well.
Speaker 1: So the strategic path, maybe a bit riskier upfront, is
Speaker 1: architect before migration.
Speaker 2: That's the path to long term benefit. Yes, you modernize
Speaker 2: the application, you upgrade it to use cloud APIs for
Speaker 2: things like scaling, resilience, and to execute this effectively, you
Speaker 2: need modern operations what we often call immutable infrastructure. We're
Speaker 2: talking continuous integration, continuous deployment CICD, pipeline.
Speaker 1: WULL DevOps toolchain right.
Speaker 2: Enabled by tools like Jenkins Terraform. Maybe running on Azure
Speaker 2: Virtual Machines scale sets vmss's or the equivalent in other.
Speaker 1: Clouds, and VMSS is key there, isn't it, because that's
Speaker 1: the mechanism alie allowing those Linux vms to just instantly
Speaker 1: multiply when demand spikes, giving you that true cloud elasticity
Speaker 1: you talked about exactly. Okay, So once we've done the
Speaker 1: strategic planning, decided how we're building it, the next logical
Speaker 1: SAP is ensuring that build is well rock solid, which
Speaker 1: leads us directly to principle two availability.
Speaker 2: Principle two define your workloads required availability, and this is
Speaker 2: really where the cloud offers built in resilience that traditional
Speaker 2: data centers often struggle to match cost effectively. Well providers
Speaker 2: offer this through geographically isolated regions and within those regions
Speaker 2: availability zones or azs. Think of azs as physically separate
Speaker 2: data centers within a region.
Speaker 1: Okay, and within those zones, we need to talk about
Speaker 1: logical constructs like availability sets, particularly in Azure, they're designed
Speaker 1: to spread risk across the physical hardware. Right, But this
Speaker 1: is where it gets a little abstract for some Yeah,
Speaker 1: how should we think about fault domains and update domains?
Speaker 2: Okay, let's use a simple analogy. Think of availability sets
Speaker 2: as a promise from the provider that your critical vms
Speaker 2: aren't all sitting on the same power strip or the
Speaker 2: same network switch.
Speaker 1: Essentially, right, not all eggs in one basket exactly.
Speaker 2: Fault domains are groups of resources that share a common
Speaker 2: power source and network switch, So if that physical rack
Speaker 2: goes down, everything in that fault domain potentially fails together.
Speaker 1: So it's like having your application vms distributed across say
Speaker 1: two entirely separate server acs in the same data center
Speaker 1: building precisely.
Speaker 2: And then, update domains are groups of resources that the
Speaker 2: cloud provider patches and updates together during planned maintenance. You
Speaker 2: want your critical application components distributed across multiple update domains
Speaker 2: so a single routine maintenance event doesn't take down your
Speaker 2: entire service. It's basically your insurance policy against both unexpected
Speaker 2: physical failure and planned maintenance.
Speaker 1: Windows makes sense beyond just protecting against failure, though, we
Speaker 1: need to handle incoming demand spread the load. That's where
Speaker 1: load balancing comes in.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely essential for both availability and scaling. And you
Speaker 2: need to distinguish between network load balancers which operate at
Speaker 2: layer four routing traffic based on IP address and port,
Speaker 2: and application load balancers, which work at layer seven looking
Speaker 2: at application headers like HTTP requests. Strategically, you often want
Speaker 2: the layer seven balancers because they can often incorporate a
Speaker 2: Web Application Firewall or WAFH.
Speaker 1: Adding a security layer right there.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It adds a layer of defense right at the
Speaker 2: front door, filtering out known web exploits before they even
Speaker 2: reach your Linux VMS.
Speaker 1: Good point. Now, you mentioned resilience earlier. If durability is
Speaker 1: kind of the default in cloud storage, where do customers
Speaker 1: often slip up with storage redundancy.
Speaker 2: Well, they often fail by relying only on the baseline.
Speaker 2: The default cloud storage usually defaults to incredible durability within
Speaker 2: a single data center. Think eleven nins ninety nine point
Speaker 2: nine nine nine percent durability. That's what's called locally redundant
Speaker 2: storage LRS, which sounds amazing, is for hardware failure within
Speaker 2: that data center. But eleven nines means absolutely nothing. If
Speaker 2: a regional natural disaster like a flood or a major
Speaker 2: power outage, takes out the entire physical site.
Speaker 1: Right, LRIS won't save you from a regional catastrophe. That's
Speaker 1: where you need the geographical separation.
Speaker 2: Yes, precisely for maximum data safety against a major regional event.
Speaker 2: The source strongly recommends using georedundant storage grs or zone
Speaker 2: redundant storage crs. These replicate your data across multiple geographically
Speaker 2: separated zones or even regions. Okay, it's a critical and
Speaker 2: usually relatively cheap insurance policy against that kind of catastrophic
Speaker 2: regional failure. Don't skip it for important data.
Speaker 1: Okay. So we've planned the migration, we've built resilient infrastructure
Speaker 1: using AZS and redundancy. Now we need eyes on the
Speaker 1: whole operation. Right. That brings us to Principle three. Monitor
Speaker 1: your applications running on Linux across the entire stack. You
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, this paradigm shift away from just monitoring server health.
Speaker 1: Why is the cloud provider's involvement so crucial here?
Speaker 2: Because the cloud provider is already monitoring the underlying infrastructure health,
Speaker 2: the physical host machine, the high provisor layer. Your job
Speaker 2: as the customer ships almost entirely towards application performance monitoring
Speaker 2: APM and focusing on the end user experience.
Speaker 1: So less about CPU on the box, more about how
Speaker 1: quickly the web page loads for.
Speaker 2: The user exactly, and think about server list functions like
Speaker 2: Azure functions or AWS Lambda. You don't even have a
Speaker 2: server to monitor in the traditional sense. You're just monitoring
Speaker 2: the execution of these little chunks of code.
Speaker 1: But this must create an incredibly fragmented view, mustn't it,
Speaker 1: Especially if you're in a complex hybrid setup or using
Speaker 1: multiple clouds.
Speaker 2: Oh, it creates enormous challenges. You often lack that unified
Speaker 2: visibility across all your resources. You're dealing with different cloud
Speaker 2: specific tools as your monitor, here, AWS, cloud watch, there,
Speaker 2: maybe something else on prem and everything is dynamically scaling
Speaker 2: up and down. If a VM instance only lives for say,
Speaker 2: thirty minutes during a peak, and then disappears, how do
Speaker 2: you effectively track its performance history or troubleshoot what happened?
Speaker 1: Question? Let's drill down a bit for the Linux administrators listening.
Speaker 1: What specific metrics become even more crucial to watch in
Speaker 1: the cloud context compared to on premise.
Speaker 2: Okay, we need deep insight. So when looking at CPU usage,
Speaker 2: it's vital to distinguish between user time that's your application running,
Speaker 2: and privileged time or system time, which is the kernel
Speaker 2: doing work.
Speaker 1: Why is that distinction so important now?
Speaker 2: Because if you see consistently high privileged time, it often
Speaker 2: indicates poor performance caused by the underlying hypervisor or maybe
Speaker 2: noisy neighbors on the physical host. That's potentially the provider's problem,
Speaker 2: not your application code. Knowing that difference helps you open
Speaker 2: the right kind of support ticket.
Speaker 1: Ah, that's a great example of how monitoring helps navigate
Speaker 1: that shared responsibility model. What else?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, for DISCO, you absolutely must track input output operations
Speaker 2: per second IOPs, especially with Linux file systems. Hitting IOPs
Speaker 2: limits is a common bottleneck. If your IOPs are spiking,
Speaker 2: you probably need to scale up your storage tier, maybe
Speaker 2: get faster, not just make the VM bigger.
Speaker 1: Got it, disc speed not just size right.
Speaker 2: And critically, for memory utilization, you need to track paging
Speaker 2: events or swap activity. Excessive paging where the VM is
Speaker 2: constantly swapping memory out to DISC because it doesn't have
Speaker 2: enough RAM is probably the clearest, most unambiguous sign that
Speaker 2: performance is tanking and you need more memory capacity for
Speaker 2: that workload.
Speaker 1: Okay, clear indicators there. So the native endor tools like
Speaker 1: Azure Monitor or cloud Watch, they give you data on
Speaker 1: individual servers or services, but they don't necessarily give you
Speaker 1: that unified enterprise wide dashboard view, especially if you've got
Speaker 1: that multi cloud or hybrid reality exactly.
Speaker 2: They're great for their own ecosystems, but they don't naturally
Speaker 2: palk to each other or integrate with your on prem
Speaker 2: tools to gain that truly comprehensive uniform view across everything.
Speaker 2: The sources highly recommend integrating third party monitoring tools think
Speaker 2: data Dog, Dina Trace, neuralic tools like that.
Speaker 1: And what do they bring to the table.
Speaker 2: They specialize in collecting and correlate metrics from every layer
Speaker 2: of the architecture, from the database queries up to the
Speaker 2: load balance or response times, maybe even front end user experience,
Speaker 2: regardless of which cloud vendor or which data center things
Speaker 2: are sitting on. That unified visibility is really the difference
Speaker 2: between proactive management and constantly just reacting to outages after
Speaker 2: they happen.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. Let's shift gears now to defensive
Speaker 1: protection with Principle four, ensure your Linux vms are secure
Speaker 1: and backed up. Now, you mentioned shared responsibility earlier, and
Speaker 1: you said, if you take only one concept away from
Speaker 1: this whole deep dive, it should be the shared security
Speaker 1: responsibility model. Let's really nail this.
Speaker 2: Down, we have to. This is probably the single most
Speaker 2: misunderstood concept in cloud and where customers frankly fail all
Speaker 2: the time. Let's clearly define the line in the sand.
Speaker 2: The cloud provider is responsible for security of the cloud.
Speaker 1: Okay, of the cloud meaning the.
Speaker 2: Physical security of the data centers, the security of the
Speaker 2: global network infrastructure, the security of their managed services like
Speaker 2: the hypervisor or the storage fabri They secure the building
Speaker 2: and its core systems.
Speaker 1: Right, And the cloud customer is responsible for security.
Speaker 2: In the cloud exactly. Security in the cloud this means
Speaker 2: your customer data, the security of the operating systems you
Speaker 2: choose to run, like Linux, patching those ocs, configuring firewalls,
Speaker 2: managing your application security, identity and access management IAM, and
Speaker 2: crucially encryption. You secure everything you put inside the building.
Speaker 1: And you specifically called out encryption there.
Speaker 2: Why because customers often forget that last part. Encryption of
Speaker 2: data at rest on your VMS or in your databases
Speaker 2: is almost always the customer's job. By default. The provider
Speaker 2: gives you the tools, but you have to turn them
Speaker 2: on and manage the keys.
Speaker 1: Okay, So to fulfill your side of the bargain, you
Speaker 1: need to leverage the tools the provider gives you, like
Speaker 1: network security groups, cloud firewalls, strong im controls, using things
Speaker 1: like virtual private clouds of vpcs or v nets for
Speaker 1: logical network isolation.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, those are your primary tools for securing things in
Speaker 2: the cloud.
Speaker 1: Now, let's connect security with disaster recovery or dr When
Speaker 1: we're planning for DR we always talk about RTO and RPO.
Speaker 1: Can you quickly define those?
Speaker 2: Sure? RTO that's the recovery time objective. It's the maximum
Speaker 2: acceptable time allowed to restore your service after a disaster hits.
Speaker 2: How fast you need to be back online?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: And RPO the recovery point objective. That's the maximum acceptable
Speaker 2: amount of data loss, usually measured in time like can
Speaker 2: you afford to lose the last hour of data or
Speaker 2: only the last five minutes?
Speaker 1: Right? I remember, you know, ten fifteen years ago, running
Speaker 1: a DR drill was this massive annual event. It cost
Speaker 1: a fortune because you were essentially paying for idle hot
Speaker 1: standby physical infrastructure sitting in a dedicated secondary site just waiting.
Speaker 2: For disaster exactly millions sometimes just for that insurance, and.
Speaker 1: The cloud changes the entire financial stress test of that situation,
Speaker 1: doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It dramatically shifts that rto cost trade off curve. Really,
Speaker 2: because cloud elasticity allows you to quickly provisioned compute resources
Speaker 2: only when the recovery is actually needed, not paying for
Speaker 2: them to sit idle twenty four to seven, you can
Speaker 2: often achieve a much faster recovery time, a shorter RTO
Speaker 2: at a significantly reduced infrastructure costs compared to those traditional
Speaker 2: dedicated DR sites. Basically, you can often afford faster recovery
Speaker 2: metrics because the hardware effectively sits powered off in the
Speaker 2: cloud until you declare disaster and need to spin it up.
Speaker 1: So modernizing backup and DR in the cloud means maybe
Speaker 1: outsourcing the whole backup process via managed services like Azure
Speaker 1: backup or AWS backup, and using built in replication tools
Speaker 1: maybe like Azure Site Recovery or cloud Endure, which can
Speaker 1: effectively eliminate the need for that second expensive physical data
Speaker 1: center altogether for many workloads.
Speaker 2: That's exactly the modern approach.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, that brings us to our final and arguably
Speaker 1: most strategic capstone Principal five. Governance often sounds like boring paperwork,
Speaker 1: but you suggested it's actually one of the most complex
Speaker 1: parts of moving to and operating in the cloud.
Speaker 2: Why is that because the cloud, by its nature, abstracts
Speaker 2: location and control in ways that introduce massive new complexities,
Speaker 2: especially around legal issues, compliance and data disclosure regulations. The
Speaker 2: source specifically highlights things like data sovereignty laws.
Speaker 1: Ah right, the rules that say data belonging to citizens
Speaker 1: of a certain country must physically remain stored within that.
Speaker 2: Country's borders exactly. So if a cloud provider has regions
Speaker 2: all over the world, you as the architect or administrator,
Speaker 2: have the responsibility to ensure that the data for say,
Speaker 2: your German customers, is provision only in an EU region
Speaker 2: like Germany or Frankfurt and isn't accidentally replicated or backed
Speaker 2: up to a US region for instance. That requires careful
Speaker 2: governance policies.
Speaker 1: And beyond just the legal complexity, there's often a customer concern.
Speaker 1: Isn't there about trusting the provider with sensitive data given
Speaker 1: the shared nature of the resources and maybe having less
Speaker 1: direct visibility compared to their old on premise environments.
Speaker 2: That's a huge factor. You're relying on the provider security
Speaker 2: for the underlying layers. You're on shared hardware. It requires
Speaker 2: a different level of trust and verification.
Speaker 1: So how do you, as the customer maintain strategic control
Speaker 1: and ensure compliance and manage that trust.
Speaker 2: Through rigorous governance mechanisms provided by the cloud platform. We're
Speaker 2: talking about strict role based access control RBAC, making sure
Speaker 2: people only have the minimum permissions they need. We're talking
Speaker 2: about network security groups and policies, and crucially using hierarchical
Speaker 2: account provisioning.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: Dividing your potentially sprawling cloud resources into logical containers, separate departments,
Speaker 2: different projects, distinct subscriptions or accounts. This allows you to
Speaker 2: ring fence costs, apply specific security policies only where needed,
Speaker 2: and manage access at scale. It's fundamental to staying organized
Speaker 2: and secure.
Speaker 1: Okay, And finally, when it comes to trusting the global
Speaker 1: cloud vendor, you can't exactly send your own auditors to
Speaker 1: physically inspect their massive, highly secured data centers around the world.
Speaker 1: So how is that confidence that trust actually established.
Speaker 2: It's established through what the source calls delegated trust. Since
Speaker 2: direct physical auditing by every customer is completely infeasible and
Speaker 2: frankly a security risk in itself. Trust is established by
Speaker 2: relying on independent, recognize third party audits and certifications, So.
Speaker 1: You look for their badges essentially.
Speaker 2: Kind of yeah, you rely on standardized reports like SC
Speaker 2: one or SEC two, which a test to financial and
Speaker 2: operational controls. You look for industry specific certifications like ISO
Speaker 2: twenty seven, DEERO zero zero six, AR seven zero zero
Speaker 2: two for security management, or maybe HYPOLAA for healthcare data
Speaker 2: or PCIDSS for payment card data. These aren't just acronyms
Speaker 2: on a web page. They represent formal attestations by accredited
Speaker 2: auditors that the cloud provider has implemented the required security standards,
Speaker 2: management controls, and operational procedures at that foundational infrastructure level.
Speaker 2: You delegate the auditing trust to these recognized bodies.
Speaker 1: Okay, So wrapping it up, the five strategic principles for
Speaker 1: mastering Linux in the cloud. Start with cloud readiness and planning,
Speaker 1: build for availability and resilience, Implement unified monitoring across the stack,
Speaker 1: ensure security and disaster recovery through that shared model, and finally,
Speaker 1: overlay rigorous governance. It really does feel like a roadmap
Speaker 1: to avoiding both technical and financial headaches.
Speaker 2: It absolutely is, And notice the underlying theme the shift
Speaker 2: is profound. The cloud vendor takes responsibility for securing the
Speaker 2: cloud infrastructure, but the customer retains full responsibility for securing
Speaker 2: their application, their data, their identities, their access in.
Speaker 1: The cloud, which fundamentally changes the game.
Speaker 2: It fundamentally means the long term role of the traditional
Speaker 2: system administrator is changing dramatically. They have to evolve.
Speaker 1: They need to become strategists right embracing development practices, cloud
Speaker 1: architecture principles, and maybe most importantly, understanding and implementing these
Speaker 1: governance strategies. It's really no longer just about racking and
Speaker 1: stacking physical matas.
Speaker 2: Not at all. It's about strategic automation, compliance, security, posture management,
Speaker 2: cost optimization.
Speaker 1: So here's a final thought to leave of our listeners
Speaker 1: with building on that, if the cissed men's role is
Speaker 1: shifting towards governance, towards managing identity and access, yeah, it
Speaker 1: raises a crucial question for you listening, Are you and
Speaker 1: your organization actually structured to effectively audit your own identity
Speaker 1: and access management, i AM policies within the cloud or
Speaker 1: is that maybe the biggest blind spot you've accidentally created
Speaker 1: or outsourced without realizing it.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's a good one. Definitely something to mull over
Speaker 2: who's watching the watchers.
Speaker 1: Essentially exactly something to think about until our next deep dies.
Speaker 2: Thanks for breaking down these principles today, my pleasure is
Speaker 2: a great discussion