Sushan Cloud

Quick Containers introduction..!! Before starting with Containers, let’s quickly discuss about Virtualization. What is Virtualization? As the name suggests, Virtualization is something which is not real. Virtualization is a technology extensively used in Computing. For example, we have three different teams, like HR, Finance and Customer operations. In earlier days, to keep the three…

What is Presales role ???

Hello Friends… Hope you all are doing good. Today we will discuss about Presales, where it fits in the IT space. Presales as the name suggests, activity done before a Sale is made. As per Wiki, Definition of Presales is, “Presales is a process or a set of activities/sales normally carried out before a customer is acquired, though sometimes presales also extends into the period the product or…

Most of us working in IT Companies have heard of the term, “Digital Transformation”. As the name suggests, “Digital Transformation (DT)” is all about using new Tools & Technologies to modify/create existing processes, products, Customer deliverables and improve operational efficiency. Time has become more valuable than ever, everyone is looking for instantaneous results and because of the recent…

Most of us working in IT Companies have heard of the term, “Digital Transformation”. As the name suggests, “Digital Transformation (DT)” is all about using new Tools & Technologies to modify/create existing process, products ,Customer deliverables and improve operational efficiency. Time has become more valuable than ever, everyone is looking for instantaneous results and because of recent…

Hello Friends… Hope you all are doing good.

Today we will discuss about Presales, where it fits in the IT space.

Presales as the name suggests, activity done before a Sale is made.

As per Wiki, Definition of Presales is, “Presales is a process or a set of activities/sales normally carried out before a customer is acquired, though sometimes presales also extends into the period the product or service is delivered to the customer.”

Generic Presales flow: – Opportunity Analysis –> Tender Evaluation –> Proposal development –> Submit and negotiate.

Usually the Job titles related to Presales are: – Systems Engineer, Solution Architect, Presales Consultant, Solution Engineer, Presales Solution Architect to name a few.

Since, every organization has various Service offerings or product offerings. Obviously to do Business.

And To sell them, Organization need the help of Sales team (Job titles as AE – Account Executives / Sales Executive /Business Development etc.).

Once they hunt a prospect deal / also called as an Opportunity, then comes the Presales team in Picture. Sales need the help of Presales team to design and present the technical solution as per the customer needs.

Customer shares the RFP (Request for Proposal): Customer needs the Solution to be submitted.

If there are any questions / doubts /or more information is needed, Presales/Sales team reply to RFP with RFI (Request for Information). And once all details are captured, final solution is presented to client with RFQ (Request for Quote) and BOM (Bill of material) is submitted by the Sales team.

Major Responsibilities of Presales Team are: –

Internal Meeting with Sales team, to understand well in advance customer requirements

Solution Design and preparation as per customer needs.

Explaining the Design document to Customer.

POC, Proof of Concepts demonstration.

Solution design also include the Total Cost of the solution, in local currency where business is made. (Sales team/Pricing team, then reviews the cost and increase/decrease as per fluctuating rates) ……

……… to be contd…..

Hello Friends , Hope you all doing great.. As part of Azure Cloud training from scratch .This is Lecture 2 of AZ-900 course.

Today we will discuss about Consumption based pricing models and Type of Cloud models :-

Consumption based pricing models :-

CapEx :- Capital Expenditure : This is spending by Corporate/Organization on Physical infrastructure, office space etc .It refers to upfront cost that reduces over time , because assets value depreciates. To summarize , it is the business expenditure done for future, corporate buy them once and take benefits for long duration.

OpEx :- Operational Expenditure : This is not an upfront cost . This is spending on services or products . Usually billing is done per month / yearly .To better explain it ,it is the cost incurred to run day to day operations e.g Electricity charges , domain registrations , stationary etc .These are important , but not considered as long term investments .

Cloud Models :-

Public Cloud :- As the name suggests , this is owned by Public cloud provider .For example , in Multi tenant applications , resources are used by sharing model.This is the cheapest cloud deployment models available .                                                            Ownership :- With Cloud provider.                                                                      Availability :- Most common.                                                                                Connectivity :- Connected over internet.                                                                            Example of Public cloud :- Deploying a web application.                                                    Major advantages of public cloud are :- No capital expenses , Agility ,  Consumption   based model , Maintenance by vendor , no niche cloud skills needed.  Major disadvantages of public cloud are :- Security , Compliance ,Ownership and sometimes can not add legacy applications.

Private Cloud :- This model is fully restricted . Here the ownership is with the organization rather than the Cloud provider . Usually when organization do not want data to be shared this model is used . To give an example like Medical data , Government data etc .                                                                                                          Major advantages of Private cloud are :- Compliance control over whole infrastructure, Highly secure and legacy applications can be managed in Private cloud.                                                                                                                                      Major disadvantages of Private cloud are :- CapEx is high , Not very agile (Agility means ability to react quickly, e.g to deploy resources) like Public cloud and Skills needed to manage Private cloud are highly technical.

Hybrid Cloud :- This is a combination of both Public and Private cloud .Here resources are located as per the need , like web-server will reside in Public cloud and DB servers will reside in Private cloud .Also this model is Cost effective , it leverages both Public and Private cloud models .

So friends , this is all for Lecture 2 , in Next lecture we will study about Different delivery models in Cloud like PAAS , IAAS etc .

Hello Friends.. Hope you are all doing great ..

Aim : Make the learning simple ,interesting and accessible to all…

Today we will start with Microsoft AZURE AZ-900 Course training from scratch . This is for anyone who has decided to learn Cloud computing . We will start with basics .. lets go…..

AZ-900 exam has four main chapters :-

Cloud Computing .

Core Services.

Security , Privacy and compliance.

Pricing and Support models.

So, why we use Cloud Computing ??

Simple Answer :- Delivery of computing services like Server , Storage , Compute , DB , Network etc . And paying only for what we use , helping lower operational cost .

A typical Cloud Infrastructure :-Characteristics of Cloud Computing :-

High Availability : Ability to keep services up & running for long time  , depending                                      on type of service running.

Scaleability : Ability to increase or decrease resource for any given workload. Can be adding resources called as Scaling out or adding additional capabilities called as Scaling up.

Elasticity : Ability to automatically or dynamically increase or decrease resources as needed . e.g Auto scale.

Agility : Ability to react quickly , like on demand service .No manual intervention in provisioning or deprovisioning.

Fault Tolerance :- Ability to run even if there is any component failure .

Disaster Recovery :- Ability to recover from an event which has taken down a cloud service.

Global Reach :- Ability to reach audiences around the globe.

Customer Latency Capabilities :- Ability to deploy resources to react to customer actions, if the service is not local to the customer…

Hello Friends … Lets continue the AppDynamics….

There are three main building blocks of AppDynamics :-

Enterprise Console (Uses Port 9191) – EC

AppDynamics Controller (Uses Port 8090) – CTRL

Events Service

So, what is AppDynamics Enterprise Console ?

For the Controller and Events Service, we need to install the AppDynamics EC. EC is a platform used to deploy the CTRL and Events Service. The EC is not only the installer for the Controller and Events Service; it is used to manage the entire lifecycle of AppDynamics Platforms and components.

AppDynamics CTRL is the central management server where all the data is saved and analyzed. All AppDynamics Agents (There are multiple agents based on application type) are connected to the CTRL to report data, and the CTRL provides a GUI based user interface (UI) for the monitoring and troubleshooting of application and their performance.

To install above components , we need License Copy (.lic) and Installation copy of AppDynamics (.sh)

Hey Friends….Its been more than a Year , my PM came to me and asked me , Are you interested in taking AppDynamics session.?

I waited for some time and said , NO , “asking myself better i should take Cloud sessions than some other tool”

Just six months before , i again got the same ping from my PM , and i said OK , lets explore this tool. And that session only , convinced me to write this blog.

So, what is AppDynamics and what is it used for ?????

Well this is an “APM” tool . APM stands for “Application Performance Management.”

As the name suggests , its used for Application and business monitoring platform , which include Application Infrastructure management and gives the visibility till code level.So how it works ??

App-dynamics agents are deployed in all segments of environment and discovers each individual transactions and by connecting all the transactions a view of Application topology is created . The individual agents installed on segments send detailed performance and business metrics to a centralized location , called as AppDynamics Controller .  For example :- Mobile/Laptop –> User Request –>Validation/Authentication   –> Load the User Profile –> DB table update –> log in.

This is good for now.. Will be sharing the Architecture in next write up.

What is Virtual ? Anything which exists , but not physically present.

Similarly , Virtualization in IT is the creation of virtual version of Something , Like Physical Storage , Server and Network Switches. And where actual resources are utilized among various virtual environments.

Lets get into more depth in the World of IT Infrastructure Virtualization.

Virtualization Implies to different Technical Towers :-

Storage Virtualization

Network Virtualization

Server Virtualization

OS Level Virtualization

Desktop Virtualization

Application Level Virtualization

Major IT Companies active in the field of Virtualization are :-

VMware

Cisco

Microsoft

Citrix

Red Hat…. and many more

Lets take one example . We have five servers with each one dedicated to a particular department like , Finance , HR , marketing etc. And each server is only 20% utilized , making 80% of resources left un-utilized . Also some says , this is good as we have dedicated servers for each department .

Well .. Yes , that good , But what if i say we have a technology , where i can deploy a single server with a virtualization software , which divides the physical resources into multiple segments . And the best part is , Application teams are completely unaware of this , and this comes with strong security policies and excellent load balancing .

So, in nut shell , we can reduce the hardware footprint , reducing power requirements , admin requirements and overall cost savings with excellent Virtualization features.This example is just for Servers , same applies to Storage , Network etc.

Thank you for your time to read this short article , hope it helps .. many more in pipeline..

Being in IT Industry from past 9 Years .. I started my career with IT Infrastructure Monitoring . This opportunity gave me insight to all aspects of IT Infrastructure layers.

There are various Monitoring tools available in the market , few of them are :-

Zenoss

SolarWinds

Nagios

DataDog .. and many more ….

My favorite is Zenoss , reason is simple got the opportunity to work with this fantastic tool.

So what is Infrastructure Monitoring ??

It is the process to capture the metrics of all components of IT Infra. Be it Servers , Network , Data Storage or Application . It capture the metrics to make sure everything is working in healthy state . Alerting is a mechanism , which alerts the specific teams about the event which occurred. That alerting is , what is configured once we implement a Monitoring tool….