The document provides an extensive evaluation of cloud database management systems (DBMS) including various offerings, pricing models, and architectural distinctions between on-premises, IaaS, and PaaS. It outlines the implications of adopting cloud solutions on organizational support, change management, security, and compliance requirements. Furthermore, it emphasizes the criticality of selecting the right vendor and designing a comprehensive cloud strategy, alongside the assessment of current systems and the training needs for staff.

1. Evaluating Cloud Database Offerings?
INSIGHTS Presentation Series
RDX Insights Series Presentation
04/20/2017
Chris Foot, VP Technology Strategies
Remote DBA Experts
www.rdx.com
Consider Your
Options Wisely!
A video of this presentation can be
found on RDX’s YouTube Channel:
https://youtu.be/6BkkJgM72Ioz

2. There are Many Different Cloud DBMS Offerings and
Pricing Models

3. Cloud DBs are Architectures - Not Products
Offerings Range from Simple to Rocket Science
Cloud DBs Impact on Support > What Most Think
Not all DB Apps are “Cloud Friendly”

4. Auditing and Compliance
OSConfiguration
DiskConfiguration
CPU
Pricing Models
Monitoring
Memory
Administration
Access Mechanisms
ArchitectureDesign
Policies&Procedures
Tools
Training Security
EdgeTechnologies
Backup/Recovery
StaffRoles
Redundancy
ProvisioningTuning
Cloud DB Systems
are Architectures,
Not Products

5. Policies and Procedures
Become More Reliant on 3rd Parties
Impact on Existing Tools and Technologies
Training and Education
New Staffing Roles and Responsibilities
Change Management
Security
Cloud DBs Will Change the
Way Your Organization
Provides Support
Costing Models

6. Different Types of
Cloud Platforms
On-premises vs
IaaS and PaaS
On-Premises
• Server is onsite at your physical
plant
• You buy it and provide server
room, power, air, connectivity…
• YOU support all hardware
• YOU support all software from
OS up, including database
IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service
• Server is hosted by a provider
• You rent their hardware
• They provide server room, power,
air, connectivity….
• PROVIDER supports hardware
• YOU provide and support all software
from OS up, including database
PaaS – Platform as a Service
• Server is hosted by a provider
• You rent their hardware
• They provide server room, air,
connectivity….
• PROVIDER supports hardware
• YOU RENT the OS and database
• PROVIDER supports OS and
database software
Cloud

7. Infrastrucure as a Service vs
Database Platform as a Service
The buzzword for PaaS
offerings for databases is….
DBPaaS
Which is PaaS for databases!
IaaS DBPaaS
• Have to purchase DB and OS licenses
• Able to install any software you choose – databases,
applications, third-party tools
• Easy to integrate your on-premises toolsets – monitoring,
security, application development…
• Allows you to maintain tight control of OS and DB
configuration
• Tight control over database utility execution – backups, index
maintenance
• Able to leverage cloud benefits that include elasticity,
scalability and flexiblity
• Able to leverage features to reduce administrative time
(varies according to vendor and particular offering selected)
• Database products are limited by vendor offering
• Option of renting the DB and OS licenses from the provider
• Provider assumes greater administrative control over your
environment (software installation, DB and OS configuration,
patching, DB uprades)
• WATCH VENDOR SCHEDULING WINDOWS
• Complex systems (HA, DR) are more easily configured
• Data geo-redundancy is often inherent to offering
• Provides backup and maintenance utility interfaces
• Pricing can be complex and is configured by selecting tiers
based on CPU, Memory, Disk utilization and performance
• If you are renting the software, when relationship is over, you
don’t own anything

8. Cloud Provider
• Offers DB and OS licenses as part of rental
• Robust compute and storage environment
• Operating system and database installed and
ready for use
• Configures DB (to an extent)
• Patches and upgrades OS and DB software
• Provides database maintenance utilities
(depending on cloud vendor and DB product)
• Includes administrative interfaces and monitoring
tools
• Provides problem analysis information
• Provides backups and backup configuration
interfaces
DBA
• Uses cloud DBMS to create databases
• Monitors resource usage (costs)
• Creates users
• Grants database security
• Creates data objects – tables, indexes,
views (there’s a bunch...)
• Loads data
• Works with developers
• Monitors database
• Tunes database parameters
• Troubleshoots database (with provider help
at times)
• Tunes SQL Statements
• Debugs performance problems (with
provider help at times)
• Configures backups, performs recoveries
• Configures HA systems
• Schedules maintenance, patches, upgrades
using vendor utilities
• And the list goes on……
The level of vendor support and self service
options available vary depending on the
cloud provider.
Everything the cloud provider doesn’t do...
So what do DBAs do on DBPaaS if the cloud
provider takes care of database software?

9. YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO ADJUST YOUR CHANGE
MANAGEMENT PROCESSES AND DOCUMENTATION
Cloud Databases Are Administered Differently
than On-Premises Systems
Greater Impact DBPaaS – Less Impact IaaS

10. Policies and Procedures Will Change
Security, disaster recovery, change management, monitoring,
problem resolution, job scheduling, administrative best practices,
repeatable processes, internal, industry specific, governmental
regulatory compliance, naming conventions – add required
documentation here…
Greater Impact DBPaaS – Less Impact IaaS

11. YOU WILL NEED TO IDENTIFY WHICH OF YOUR EXISTING
TOOLSETS WORK – AND WHICH ONES DON'T
Greater Impact DBPaaS – Less Impact IaaS
Cloud Development, DB Admin and Monitoring
Mechanisms Are Different than On-Premises

12. Coding, Administration and Testing
100% App Code
Transportability
Database
Features
Cloud DBMS Product
Features and Functionality
Don’t Always Match
On-Premises Counterparts
Greater Impact DBPaaS – Less Impact IaaS

13. Azure
Hybrid Cloud
Oracle Hybrid
Cloud

14. Oracle
Hybrid Cloud
Administration
Azure
Hybrid Cloud
Administration

15. Questions to Create Your Cloud Architecture Strategy
1. What is your cloud strategy?
• Testing the waters
• Choose between cloud and on-premises for best fit
• Intend to have a strong cloud presence
• Cloud first
2. What cloud benefits do you want to leverage?
• Reduce hardware/software costs
• Reduce human support costs
• Focus on business not system support
• Improve performance and availability
• Increase flexibility and agility
• Leverage complex architectures
3. What is your experience level with cloud systems?
4. How big of an impact (change management, training,
polices/procedures, roles/responsibilites) on your IT shop are
you willing to incur?
5. What application development platforms do you use?
6. How much control do you want to relinquish and how much
responsibility for your systems are you comfortable sharing?
7. What on-premises software tools do you use?
8. Is your data controlled by internal, industry-specific or
governmental regulatory requirements?
9. What auditing requirements are you required to meet?
10. Do you standardize on one DB or support multiple?
11. One provider or are you comfortable with multiple?
12. Do you intend to migrate DB, Apps or both?
13. What amount of DB and App changes are you willing to make
to migrate the system to the cloud?
14. What are your DR requirements?
15. What is your budget?
• Retrain staff, organizational role and unit changes
• Changes to process and documentation
• Changes for application rewrites, cloud data transfers, on-
premesis/cloud DB feature mismatch

16. Selecting Databases For Migration
1. Database importance
2. Database usage (customer facing, LOB, back office)
3. Frequency of application development activity
4. Frequency of database schema changes
5. Dependency and interaction with other systems
• Flat file loads
• Sends data to/receives data from other systems
• Data used to refresh other systems
• DB links used to access other databases
6. What level of modifications are you comfortable with?
• Limited changes
• Changes to APIs, connection mechanisms
• Total application rewrite to leverage new technologies
7. What on-premesis software tools interact with DB?
• Monitoring, application development, security
8. Performance requirements
• Stable workloads or spikes/seasonal peaks?
9. Monitoring requirements
10. Is data controlled by internal, industry-specific or
governmental regulatory requirements?
11. What auditing requirements are you required to meet?
12. What is the database footprint and workloads?
• Disk storage
• Concurrent users
• CPU and memory consumption
• I/O
13. High availability requirements
14. Backup requirements (frequency, # historical copies)
15. Disaster recovery requirements

17. The more interaction the DB has with on-premises
systems, the more complicated support becomes
Flat File Loads
Input from
other DB Apps
Large Output Files Sent
to Other Systems
Output to Other
DB Apps
Data Clones and
Refreshes
NO DATABASE IS AN ISLAND
New Data Transfer
Mechanisms
New Data Transfer
Procedures

18. Most of the IT community is still concerned about
Cloud Security
As a database services provider, we can secure database on the
cloud just as effectively as on-premises
We work customers to ensure they also secure input and output
files related to database operation

19. YOU MUST UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE BEING
CHARGED FOR
Your Costing Models Will Change and May
Become More Complex
Storage
Compute
# Instances
Dedicated Hosts
Elastic Ips
Data Transfers - IOPs
Elastic Load Balancing
Amazon
Oracle
Microsoft

20. Amazon
Calculator
Azure
Calculator
Oracle Calculator

21. UNDERSTAND the cloud vendor’s pricing
models – they can be complex
MEASURE your current/estimate future
workloads
TAKE YOUR TIME during configuration
MONITOR consumption daily
BE PREPARED to quickly adjust your
configuration
SET UP billing alerts
Cloud DBMS Charges - Don’t Get Surprised!

22. The 3 BIG Players for
IaaS and DBPaaS

23. IaaS Offering is called
Amazon EC2
Provides BOTH
IaaS and
DBPaaS
DBPaaS Offering is called
Amazon RDS
You can run any software you want on IaaS.
You install your OS and DB of choice – just
like on-premises
Amazon not only provides the server, it has a
very robust offering which allows you to
build your entire application on Amazon. It
is viewed to be more friendly with
Unix/Linux and non Msoft DBs than Azure
Amazon has no on-premises offerings
This is a true DBPaaS offering. You rent the
hardware, OS and your database of choice
Amazon RDS offers following DBs: SQL
Server, Oracle, MySQL, MariaDB and
PostgreSQL
They also have their own DBPaaS databases:
Aurora (MySQL), DynamoDB (NoSQL),
Redshift (Data Warehouse) and Redis (In-
Memory).
Provides more DB choices than Oracle and
Msoft

24. Strengths Weaknesses
• Most mature provider of cloud services
• HUGE customer base – several times larger than
other vendors combined
• Large investment in infrastructure and innovation
• Robust provisioning and administration tools
• Lots of third-party tools, applications, service
providers
• Able to build entire application
• Breadth of architectures and environments
• Breadth of database products
• RDS – Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL…
• Aurora, Redshift, DynamoDB
• CLOUD ONLY
• Customer support gets mixed reviews
• Confusing array of options, features and
settings
• Amazon databases (Aurora, DyanamoDB)
features and functionality limited when
compared to Microsoft and Oracle
• Complex pricing

25. IaaS Offering is called
Microsoft AZURE
Provides BOTH
IaaS and
DBPaaS
Primary DBPaaS Offering is
called Microsoft SQL AZURE
You can run any software you want on IaaS,
including Azure IaaS. You can run any database
- PostgreSQL, MySQL, DB2, Oracle and SQL
Server. You install the databases on Azure like
you would on-premises
Azure allows you to build your entire
application. Traditional Ford vs Chevy as some
think it is geared towards Msoft products. Not
as friendly with Unix/Linux and non Msoft
databases (Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL
This is a true DBPaaS offering. You rent the
hardware, OS and SQL Server Database.
Microsoft also offers SQL Data Warehouse,
DocumentDB (competes with MongoDB),
Table Storage (key-value NoSQL) and Redis
(in-memory)

26. Strengths Weaknesses
• HYBRID CLOUDS
• Customer loyalty
• Huge customer base
• Large investment in infrastructure and innovation
• Environment rivals Amazon in features and functionality
• Database features and functionality
• Large number of security certifications
• Able to build entire application
• Pricing is simpler – when compared to Amazon
• Multi-product support
• Later to market than Amazon
• Focused on the Microsoft tech stack
• Running non-Microsoft DBs in Azure cloud services
can be challenging
• Limited product offerings available
• Support has received mixed reviews

27. IaaS Offering is called
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as a Service
Provides BOTH
IaaS and
DBPaaS
DBPaaS Offering is called
Oracle Database Cloud Service
You can run any software you want on IaaS
environments. You install your OS and DB of
choice – just like on-premises
BUT, since Oracle’s “claim to fame” and
primary focus is databases (Oracle, MySQL) it
isn’t as popular with customers running non
Oracle products
This is a true DBPaaS offering. You rent the
hardware, OS and database
Oracle provides DBPaaS for Oracle, MySQL,
and Oracle NoSQL
Oracle offers a lot of flexibility on “who does
what” for its DBPaaS offerings. You can
choose to administer more of the
environment

28. Strengths Weaknesses
• HYBRID CLOUDS
• Service fees are very competitive
• Oracle Ravello (Lift and Shift VMWare and KVM)
• Customer loyalty
• Huge customer base
• Database features and functionality
• Customers have own Virtual Private Networks
• Firmly committed to cloud - Oracle pretty much “declared war”
against Amazon
• Same vendor that eclipsed the entrenched leader – IBM
DB2
• Deep pockets for building and acquisitions (Logfire,
Netsuite, Opower, Crosswise, AddThis)
• Strong focus on cloud migration services
• Entered later than both Amazon and Microsoft
• Architecture and offering still maturing
• Limited product offerings available
• Predatory licensing practices
• Cloud licensing is confusing (no change here)

29. Oracle Corporation Value Proposition
Oracle Bare Metal Cloud Services combine the elasticity and utility of public cloud with
the granular control, security, and predictability of on-premises infrastructure to deliver
high-performance, high availability and cost-effective infrastructure services
• Dedicated hardware, single-tenant cloud service
• Your hardware to use as you wish
• Just like on-premises
• Pay as you go with elastic capabilities
• NO vendor software installed
• Offers traditional multi-tenant and Bare Metal
• Architecture and offering still maturing
Bare
MetalCloud
Hypervisor Hypervisor

30. RDX Recommends
Amazon’s Breadth and Depth of Offerings
Microsoft and Oracle – Hybrid Environments
• Amazon #1
• Microsoft #2
• Oracle #3
• Microsoft #1
• Oracle #2
(late, but strong strategy)
• Amazon #3
Cloud Hybrid

31. CHOOSE THAT
VENDOR WISELY
You Will Share Responsibility with a Third Party Provider for
the Security, Availability, Performance and Recoverability of
Your DBMS

32. THE HARDER IT IS TO
SWITCH VENDORS
The More You Have to Tailor Your Database and Application
to Work With Your Chosen Cloud Architecture

33. You Will Need to Thoroughly Evaluate The
Competing Vendor Offerings
Fully
Investigate
Cloud Platform
Pricing Models
Read Fine Print!
Vendor Lock In
DB Features
Elasticity
Level of Change
Site Locations
Track Record
Storage
Compute
Provisioning
Monitoring Tools
Admin Tools
Backup
Security
Data Access

34. Select the Appropriate
Database Driven
Applications for the Cloud
Have a Cloud Strategy:
Migration/Testing/Ongoing
Support Plans
Thoroughly Understand
and Evaluate Competing
Offerings
Recognize That They Are
Supported Differently than On-
Premises Counterparts
RDX Cloud DBMS Recommendations

35. The Right Cloud DBMS Vendor and Strategy
Done Incorrectly and
Your Mileage May Vary
Reduces DB TCO
App Will Perform as Expected
Have the Desired Functionality
Easily Monitored and Administered

36. Support best practices
Security procedures
Best architecture implementations
Product selection, implementation and usage
What products work together
Software combinations (best Tech Stack)
Recurring issues
Problem prevention
RDX’s Goal is to Become the Advisor Our
Customers Can’t Do Without
You may not want to do that…
Benefits All Customers
What We Learn From our Customers

37. Next Month’s Presentation – Business Intelligence Overview and
Demo
The RDX Report
What is NoSQL Video Presentation, Azure Advisor Demo, Oracle Licensing Best
Practices, PostgresQL vs Oracle, Working with Cyber Crime Investigators
LinkedIn
Will You Be Replaced by a Robot?, Selecting Cloud DBMS, NoSQL Architectures,
Database Security Series, Improving Customer Service
20YEARS OF
SERVICE DELIVERY
EXPERIENCE
cfoot@rdx.com