[LINK] Cloud Computing Services in Australia?
Marghanita da Cruz
marghanita at ramin.com.au
Mon Nov 7 12:40:11 AEDT 2011
Careful what you wish for Rachel,
<some uni> might always bid to be the Data Centre to other Unis...The
AARNET model seems to have been a big success.
Marghanita
grove at zeta.org.au wrote:
> What is conncerning me, as someone directly in the cone of influence
> of "The Cloud", and as one that watches restructures end people's careers on a
> seemingly more common basis, is that it is being used as an
> "operational reason" for the reduction of onshore IT jobs and outsourcing of
> systems admins, and so on.
>
> Universities ultimately will be heavily affected by this and at <some uni>
> "The Cloud" is already making an impact in our area. I am seeing more
> and more of my role swallowed up by committees that choose to use external
> vendors for "support" where once my role was responsible for anything
> from a bare metal server build, to compiling a stack for an Apache/Tomcat
> platform, or whatever. But with the wonderful "The Cloud" comes the
> Great Dumbing Down.
>
> The advent of the "Lights Out Datacentre" has made "The Cloud" practical
> and possible. Once you do not require your admins in the DC to service
> equipment, with most "soft" activities now available remotely,
> it is then possible to outsource the servicing or maintenance of hardware
> via vendor contracts or service companies. Then these businesses will
> hire barely trained staff to replace the fan tray, disk unit, etc of a
> hardware device or other piece of equipment.
>
> Where once it was the role of an admin/engineer to take these jobs on,
> they are now replaced by faceless avatars of the vendor, who actually
> end up having more access and knowledge of your DC layout than you do.
>
> Once the admins are comfortable with the Lights Out ideal (and it is
> really a good idea up to a point), it is trivial to argue that you
> can do the same with your whole DataCentre and outsource it as well.
>
> Then you no longer own your DataCentre, or the endpoints in and out of it.
> You are then beholden to the T&C's of the DC vendor. But, it is argued,
> they have to supply the 5 nines you paid so much for.
>
> It is then only a small step, if it has not already been done, to
> Virtualise, so that you do not even have to own the hardware anymore, but just
> the virtual platforms running on it. You just lease the boxen
> from the vendor and pay a support cost. The argument for keeping qualified
> and experienced sysadmins changes at this point - they are not allowed
> into the DC, cannot make changes to the hardware and there's not much
> to do on the Virtual side, if it is a "Buy Not Build" app scenario.
>
> So, the qualified sysadmin is now reduced to a virtual button clicker,
> shifting VMs and zones from point to point, until you install a "virtual
> centre" and then set the load params and so on until you only need
> a network guy to trace bottlenecks and a perhaps a junior to
> check log files etc.
>
> As for hardening the systems, security, general admin - it's all in the
> box now. Outsource your firewall rules so that the network team
> reduces it to a spreadsheet that can be submitted to the vendor weekly
> and you do not need most of your security team any more.
>
> As such, I foresee a shortening of my career as a UNIX sysadm/hardware
> person. I've mitigated this by studying up on Identity Management,
> IOS programming and so on, to see if I can keep going for a few more years.
>
> The mobile devices mean The Cloud has opportunities there, but if you
> are in its tractor beam, as a sysadmin you'd better be looking for another
> job within 3 years until the bubble bursts and it all comes in house again.
> And jobs in "The Cloud" won't be viable. Unless you are a founder
> member of the business, or the nerd that architected everything, you
> will be too expensive to hire.
>
> The Cloud does have silver linings for businesses that think that IT has
> grown beyond a support value and when they consider it not to be
> "core business", but the upshot is that if you work in IT in a full on
> technical role doing hardware/sysadmin, you are not as indispensible as you
> used to be.....
>
>
> rachel
>
--
Marghanita da Cruz
http://ramin.com.au
Tel: 0414-869202
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