Performance Optimizations in a Cloud-Centric World

Chapter 1. Losing Control

So, here we are in the world of the cloud, with ever-expanding elements of our websites being placed in the hands of others.

Advantages to Giving Up Control

There are many positive aspects to making this move (after all, why else would so many people be doing it?), so before going into the negatives, let’s remind ourselves of some of the advantages of cloud-based systems:

Quick and easy access to enterprise-level solutions

For example, building your own geographically available SQL server cluster with real-time failover would take lots of hardware, high-quality connectivity between data centers, a high degree of expertise in databases and networking, and a reasonable amount of time and ongoing maintenance. Services such as Amazon RDS make this achievable within an hour, and at a reasonable hourly rate.

Flexibility and the ability to experiment and evolve systems easily

The ability to create and throw away systems means that you can make mistakes and learn from experience what’s the best setup for your system. Rather than spending time and effort doing capacity estimates to determine the hardware needed, you can just try different sizes, find the best size, and then change the setup if you reach capacity, or even at different times of day.

Access to data you could never create yourself

Third-party data sources do create risks, but they also enhance the attractiveness of your system by providing data that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to provide but ...