Remote cloud system administration services
IT Svit has 14+ years of experience in providing remote system administration services. In addition to that, we provide DevOps services for 5+ years now, so we have ample understanding of cloud management and infrastructure optimization, too. We receive multiple requests for such kind of services and we have stockpiled lots of experience and solutions for removing the performance bottlenecks and utilizing your cloud systems to their full potential.
One of the most popular cloud service providers is Amazon Web Services, and IT Svit deals with a wide range of remote server administration tasks on that platform:
- Configuration of AWS VPC peering to combine the resources of several AWS accounts on request
- Building CI/CD workflows using AWS Pipeline
- Configuring Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon S3 storage for customer’s needs
- Setting up AWS Pipeline to enable CI/CD workflows for your product development
- Setup of AWS Fargate to run your containerized apps on AWS ECS without having to configure Kubernetes clusters
- Performing database migrations and upgrades for AWS RDS: MySQL, Maria DB, PostgreSQL, etc.
- Implementing auto-scaling capabilities using AWS Elastic Beanstalk, etc.
Many businesses choose AWS as their cloud destination due to the wide variety of services they can receive there. However, Amazon Web Services is a really complex platform, with a huge variety of interconnected and interdependent services. This is why configuring and running your cloud infrastructure correctly from the first attempt is nearly impossible, despite the in-depth knowledge base available. Besides, exploring the AWS knowledge base in-depth requires investing quite a lot of time, which is a luxury not many startups can afford.
This is why the companies usually opt for one of three approaches for their cloud system administration:
- hiring the required expertise in-house
- subscribing for AWS support
- outsourcing to a Managed Service Provider
Each of these approaches is viable, but all of them have their benefits and drawbacks.
Hiring cloud system administrators in-house
This process is just the same as any other recruitment your company faces. It will take time, cost money and is not guaranteed to bring any positive results, as the demand for skilled cloud system administrators (so-called DevOps engineers) on the job market is much higher than the number of specialists available. In addition, skilled DevOps engineers are mostly satisfactory employed either by the cloud vendors, by Managed Services Providers or by successful companies, who pay them 6-digit-salaries annually and enable them to grow and self-develop professionally.
There also are many other issues with building an in-house team of DevOps engineers. It takes lots of time and managerial effort before a group of individuals becomes a cohesive and productive team, and it requires lots of resources to properly provide them with office space, PCs or laptops and lots of other office appliances to allow them to function normally, not to mention the HR and team building expenses. In addition, you must remember the “bus accident” issue. In case any of the team members fall ill, go on vacation or leave your company, their part of the project will be set on pause until you find a replacement.
Subscribing for AWS support
This is why many companies prefer to delegate their cloud system administration tasks to their cloud vendor support engineers. The benefits of this approach are that you gain access to highly-skilled DevOps specialists with in-depth knowledge of the specifics of AWS services, who are able to configure the most performant infrastructure for your needs, so you don’t have to invest in building your in-house team.
The downsides to this approach exist too, unfortunately. First of all, your tasks will be served in a common queue along with the tickets from the rest of AWS customers. This means they will be served under SLA, but closer to 4 hours than to 15 minutes. In addition, AWS engineers will use AWS services by default, when building your cloud infrastructure, as they are best acquainted with these tools. However, there are open-source free-to-use alternatives to most of AWS products and services, but you must know about them and what tool does what in order to implement them correctly. As this is quite hard due to the reasons described in the first paragraph, there is a huge risk of vendor lock-in.
Outsourcing to a Managed Services Provider
We now come to the third approach, where a company outsources its cloud system administration tasks to an IT services company, a so-called Managed Services Provider. These teams have a thorough understanding of the best practices and tools for cloud infrastructure management, huge experience with designing and implementing such infrastructures, as well as ready solutions for the majority of standard challenges and situations.
The reason for this is simple — working for an MSP is a win-win situation for aspiring DevOps engineers. MSPs mostly work with startups who want the things done fast, reliably and under budget and give their teams carte blanche to implement their projects. This way, the DevOps engineers do not have their hands tied with outdated technology and are able to master and utilize the latest technology to build and run the CI/CD processes and infrastructure for their customers.
Thus said, cloud system administrators employed by Managed Services Providers can take on a huge variety of projects and utilize the latest stable versions of popular DevOps tools to reach the project goals. This way, DevOps engineers gain valuable experience in dealing with a huge range of challenges using a multitude of tools. The customers, in their turn, receive reliable, cost-efficient, modular infrastructures composed of only the most essential vendor-specific components with a wide addition of open-source free-to-use instruments.
Final thoughts on the remote cloud system administration
The only issue with the approach described above is finding a trustworthy contractor, as many IT service providers tend to sugar-coat their experience and abilities, which can sometimes lead to failure of the project and loss of time and funds invested into it. The only reliable way to avoid this situation is by doing some homework and looking for customer reviews, independent ratings and accolades a company has gained over the course of its operations.
IT Svit is such a Managed Services Provider, as we are rated as one of the leaders of the IT outsourcing market in Ukraine and one of the top 10 MSPs worldwide, according to an international business rating agency Clutch from Washington, DC. We were also named amongst the top 250 IT service providers worldwide in 2017 and 2018 by Clutch, and we are sure to make it to the list in 2019 too. Over 14+ years of our experience we have accomplished more than 800 projects of various scope and scale, and we have gathered 60+ DevOps engineers, Big Data architects, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence specialists.
We are ready to assist any business reach its cloud system administration project goals, implement CI/CD pipelines and optimize the cloud infrastructure management. Should you need such IT services — contact us, we are always glad to help!
