Cloud Computing for Startups

#4startups, NSRCEL@IIM Bangalore

Vijay RayapatiCEO at Minjar

What is common among them?

Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing – Simplified IT

Image credit: wikipedia

Why Cloud for Startups?

Start small – no CAPEX and pay as you go

Scale fast – zero users to million in hours

Flexibility – choice of infrastructure and programmability

Think big – go global within minutes

Focus – Do what you do best instead of sys admin tasks

Quick Look : Amazon Web Services

Quick Look : Windows Azure

Quick Look : PaaS

Signal vs Noise

Choosing a Cloud providerFocus on application needs and business use cases

Go for reliability than fancy features

Native support for technology will be useful at times

Better to have a provider with a good community support

Use a service that can give you free tier – AWS, Azure, Google etc

Don’t choose a provider because someone said it’s cool

How do I build a Cloud ready applications?

Best PracticesChoose what you know – technology, frameworks, libraries

Don’t build if you can reuse – lot of good stuff on github

Don’t over engineer your architecture and keep it simple as it evolves

Learn architecture best practices – infoq.com and highscalability.com

Learn about building multi-tenant applications – Data Security, SLA, Reliability, Scaling

Performance tuning - focus on code first and config next

Best PracticesTry to use add-on services provided by platforms like object store, queuing etc

Decouple your application into different components

Cloud doesn’t solve bad architecture problems

Most of the good technical advice is free on web

Use community to filter choices – stackoverflow, quora, hackernews & hackerstreet

There is no silver bullet to all problems in technology

How can I migrate an application to Cloud?

Cloud MigrationStart with your Dev/QA environment on Cloud

Learn basics about related to Compute, Storage, Networking and Databases

Get comfortable and gain knowledge – just few days!

Move your application without major re-architecture – no fixed rules

Setup a good monitoring and backup solution

Automate common tasks and program your infrastructure for provisioning

Start re-architecting your application to take advantage of Cloud

Be smart and leverage Cloud – object stores, NoSQL, caching, queuing etc

How do I leverage Cloud for growth?

Best PracticesCustomer experience is very important – focus on high availability and reliability

Go global with distributed deployments based on use cases

Focus on leveraging CDNs and Caching heavily to scale

Use RDMS level read replicas to handle read traffic growth

Leverage NoSQL stores like DynamoDB or BigTable for high volume data

Use an auto-scaling infrastructure to handle spikes in traffic

Have a stand-by DR setup in another region of Cloud

All you need is bunch of smart engineers – instagram, pinterest, airbnb etc

ResourcesAWS - http://aws.amazon.com/architecture/

Azure - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/architecture/

Config Management – Chef, Puppet

APM – NewRelic, AppDynamics

LogManagement – SplunkStorm, Loggly

Monitoring – Pingdom, OpenSource tools

Backups – Use Cloud provider APIs for snapshots, Zmanda or StoreGrid

Email – SendGrid, PostMark, Sendy

How can I get best out of Cloud as a Startup?

There is no FREE lunch forever!

Startup SmartnessChoose a cloud provider with free tier

Most providers have a startup friendly programs – bizspark

Attend a conference or event hosted by provider to gain knowledge and $$ credits

If you are in an accelerator then most of them have tie-ups with cloud providers

Write an email to their evangelists asking for startup freebies

Talk to friends in ecosystem and architects from Cloud providers for tech advice

And it’s worth paying for a good advice – get some help!

Web is your business so be ready to pay!

Startup SmartnessAutomate deployments & focus on continuous integration

Use right tools to troubleshoot issues i.e newrelic and pingdom

Learn best practices early on – web performance tuning

Leverage StackOverflow or Quora to gain knowledge

Do internal hackathons to fix your technical debt

Learn from tech events in local community

Automation helps you save time – you need every bit of it

Work Hard, Have Fun and Make History

- amazon.com

Thank You - Q & A

Vijay RayapatiCEO at Minjar

Twitter - @amnigosBlog - http://www.amnigos.comGithub – https://github.com/amnigos