IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service, offers many benefits for businesses. It provides greater flexibility, increased scalability and more freedom in how the company manages its IT. But IaaS also involves challenges. For example, regarding security, resource utilisation and cost control. Here you can learn more about the most common issues that can arise when choosing IaaS and how to handle them so that you get IT that is as simple and smooth as possible.
Advantages and challenges of IaaS
IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service, is an excellent option for companies that need cost-effective and flexible IT to enable uninterrupted growth. By renting access to virtual computers along with memory, storage and networking, companies can get exactly the capacity they need without having to make any major IT investments. It is easier to get started and much simpler to grow your business with IaaS.
While IaaS offers many benefits, it can also present certain challenges. For example with resource management, cost control and security. Here you will learn how to overcome these challenges and create a strategy that helps your company avoid pitfalls while benefiting from all the advantages of IaaS.
Security, data integrity and compliance with IaaS
The flexibility of IaaS comes from you as a customer renting space on the provider's infrastructure and choosing the capacity that suits you best. But this also means you share space with several other customers of the provider. This can lead to security risks such as lack of data control or insufficient separation of different customers' data. Regulations such as GDPR also require strict handling of personal data, and shared data space can jeopardise this security requirement if not implemented correctly.
Strategies for these security challenges:
- Choose an IaaS provider with strong security measures in place and who complies with applicable regulations and industry standards such as GDPR and ISO 27001. Review the provider’s security practices.
- Use strong encryption of your data that protects against unauthorised access, both at rest and in transit.
- Use IAM (Identity and Access Management) to control who has access to which resources and to what extent. User roles, authorisation and authentication minimise the risk of data leaks and unauthorised access.
Control over costs
IaaS is a cost-effective solution because it provides your company with the IT it needs without requiring heavy local IT investments. However, renting the infrastructure as a service can become unnecessarily expensive if you don’t keep track of what you actually use or fail to shut down resources you are not using.
Strategies for this challenge:
- Use tools that monitor both your usage and your costs so you have a clear overview of the resources you actually use.
- Set automatic shutdown for resources you are not using.
- Review which contract model suits you best to optimise your costs. For example, Pay-as-you-go (PAYG), where you only pay for the resources you use; a subscription where you pay a fixed monthly fee for a certain amount of resources; or a hybrid model with certain resources at a fixed cost with PAYG option if needed.
Shared infrastructure with IaaS can lead to performance issues
Because IaaS is based on sharing infrastructure with others, performance issues can sometimes occur. For example, if other customers consume a lot of resources, this intensive usage can affect speeds or latency. This can especially happen if the provider does not have sufficiently dimensioned resources.
Strategies for these performance challenges:
- Choose a provider with a strong network, good resources and high availability.
- Create a service level agreement (SLA) with the provider that guarantees a certain agreed level of performance at all times.
- Conduct performance testing when you start using IaaS services and monitor performance continuously so you can scale resources as needed.
- Optimise your applications for efficient resource use that reduces load.
Vendor lock-in
Infrastructure as a Service is intended to give you more flexibility and freedom compared to having your own equipment. However, this can backfire because there are IaaS providers that offer specific solutions and tools that may seem practical at first but make it difficult to switch to another provider in the long run.
Strategies for this challenge:
- Choose a provider with an open platform and assess how locked in you are to the offered services.
- Build an agnostic infrastructure that is not heavily dependent on vendor-specific technology.
- Use standardised and open interfaces, tools, APIs and others that can be used across multiple platforms.
- Design a container-based architecture that can be easily migrated to other platforms. Also create a data migration plan that makes the transfer less complex and time-consuming. Use automated migration tools if possible.
User complexity
IaaS offers great flexibility, but it can become complex when your existing systems and processes need to be integrated with the IaaS solution. This is especially true if you have an organisation with many different workloads.
How to reduce complexity:
- Standardise and document your processes. This ensures smoother use and integration between your existing systems and IaaS services. As a bonus, you lay the foundation for more efficient management in the long term.
- Train your IT staff in cloud management, which contributes to better understanding and easier management.
- Use automation tools that help you manage your infrastructure and minimise manual processes and repetitive tasks. You can also simplify usage with configuration management tools.
- Choose a provider that offers managed services. This means they can take care of tasks such as your virtual computers, storage, networking and security. It gives you less to worry about and enables focus on core business.
Tips for easier handling of challenges with IaaS
- Train your staff so they have the skills to fully utilise the possibilities of IaaS with as little hassle and complexity as possible.
- Consider how you want to use IaaS before choosing a provider. Create a strategy for your usage and how to integrate IaaS with your existing architecture. Then choose a provider that fits your strategy and needs.
- Review the provider’s service level agreement (SLA) so you are well informed about what the provider offers. Ask questions as soon as anything is unclear.
- Request references from other customers so you can gain insight into how operations work in daily life. For example, how uptime, availability, security and support function.
- Use monitoring tools that let you keep track of and optimise your resource use and identify any problems.
How Binero works with Infrastructure as a Service
Binero offers high-performance Swedish cloud services for bæredygtig digitalisation and smoother IT for companies seeking greater flexibility. Our modern infrastructure service is based on the market-leading OpenStack platform. Our tested, EU-compliant and modern cloud solutions are easy to scale and further develop. This provides you with the flexibility you need to tailor services to your specific needs. Our IaaS is also GDPR-compliant, so your data is always protected by Swedish law and GDPR.
Our services have no vendor lock-in. You get a high-capacity network (10 Gbps) and low latency. We offer instance types for all needs, enabling you to provide the instances you need to meet your requirements so you always get the capacity and performance you need. You can also choose the type of storage that suits your application, for example if you want to use NVMe, SSD, mechanical disks etc. We also offer backup services for instance storage. With a complete stack of networking services, you can create your own data centre network in just a few minutes and scale it as you wish. At the same time, you get a secure network solution without having to worry about firewalls or routing. We also offer other value-added services such as load balancing, Client VPN and DNS.
Please contact us if you want to learn more about Infrastructure as a Service!
