{"id":108,"date":"2013-05-22T10:30:03","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T00:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coffeescroll.com\/?p=108"},"modified":"2013-05-22T06:57:30","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T20:57:30","slug":"11-problems-with-aws-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coffeescroll.com\/index.php\/11-problems-with-aws-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"11 problems with AWS \u2013 Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

The topic of part 3 in this blog series<\/a> is vendor lock-in.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Roosevelt Elk, Redwood National Park (stevedunleavy via Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the promises of cloud computing is the ability to move computing in and out of the cloud as business demand requires.<\/p>\n

That is, when you need some computing power you dial up some cycles and use it, and when you are finished you return those cycles.<\/p>\n

Cloud computing should make it easy to mix and match between AWS and on-premises infrastructure and to let data flow between as needed. That is, when you move to AWS, you should be increasing your choices, not decreasing them.<\/p>\n

But if you decided you’d had enough of AWS and it was time to give Rackspace<\/a> a go, would it be easy to move on?<\/p>\n

The migration process would be to build a replica infrastructure at your new provider, install the applications, test it and then migrate your data (In this era of big data this could be a big problem! If you put a ton of data up in the cloud, the time and expense to migrate out itself can be prohibitive.)<\/p>\n

If you use higher-value services such as Amazon\u2019s Simple Workflow Service<\/a> or DynamoDB<\/a> it gets more difficult to migrate as you have to find an equivalent service. The more your organisation uses unique AWS services the harder it is to move on. For example, If you choose to use AWS Elastic Load Balancing<\/a> capability instead of an open load balancing choice such as HAProxy<\/a>, or a commercial offering like F5<\/a> or Citrix Netscaler<\/a>, that part of your application cannot \u201cburst\u201d between clouds without re-architecting or maintaining multiple infrastructure architectures.<\/p>\n

The conundrum is, as it has always been with cool new tech trends, that many high-value services increase your productivity at the same time as they increase your lock-in.<\/p>\n

Some points you should consider regarding vendor lock-in for cloud providers in general are:<\/p>\n