There are two companies where the experience is 180 degrees in the other direction: USAA and LaCie.

To call USAA’s customer service exceptional is to not do them justice. They are superb. I am not sure how the reps are trained, but I am yet to talk to a rep on the phone and not gotten the help I needed. What impresses me is that when a rep does not know the information, they freely admit it and they are not exactly apologetic. However, they know where to go get the information and who to hand you over to.  The hand over from one rep to another is also fantastic. The first rep introduces you to the second. The second greets you and the first one asks the second if he/she has you. If the answer is positive, the first bids you good bye and now you are talking to the second rep, who had been fully briefed before you started talking, thus, not having to repeat yourself. Of the few times I had to call USAA - they have a great track record - and in those few times the experience has been consistent: Great customer service every time I call.

The experience with LaCie was completely different. I called to complain about an order I had placed where one of the items was back-ordered. My complaint was that I had been charged for the back-ordered item even though it had not been delivered, or so it seemed. The customer service rep, although I was very short, was nice, cordial, composed and quickly turned the situation around by being understanding of how I viewed the situation. He very quickly changed the mood and tone of the call and resulted on a happy customer. I am not sure if that is the experience I will get next time. Regardless, it was a pleasant one. The most important part of this experience was that even though I was in “the wrong”, I was never made to feel that I was wrong.

Few other experiences rival LaCie’s. So few that I can count them with one hand and have change. By at large, my experiences are really crappy and frustrating. The worst experiences are the in-store experiences. Two companies are notorious in my book: CompUSA and Fry’s Electronics. I will not go into details of these experiences because there is nothing to learn from them and in all honesty, I would waste your time describing them. But let’s just say that the reps where less than intelligent; their knowledge of what the products they carry is near nil; their interest in taking care of you is non-existent; their personal hygiene and presentation also lacking. And their vocabulary … well … let’s just say that my children have a better vocabulary than the people I encountered have.

I completely understand that the opportunities for education these people have had are not, to any degree, comparable to mine or my children’s. And I do not blame them for their lacks. I will, on the other hand, make them responsible for it. Who I really blame is the store managers (who probably also do not know any better) or regional managers. I blame people all the way to the top. They are the ones that lack customer focused service and since they lack it, they can not expect their chain of subordinates to react any different than they currently do.

A while back I was recommended I read a book called “Raving Fans” by Blanchard and Bowles. This book is a good example of why USAA and the CS Rep at LaCie are so effective in providing exemplary customer service. I recommend you read it. To think of it, the person that recommended it should read it again. His organization’s customer service is beyond lacking to the point that Fry’s and CompUSA’s in comparison are not too bad.

The customer service landscape today is, based on my experiences, a minefield with a few safe havens. But it needs not to be such a disaster. Traditionally customer service had information issues. In other words, a customer service rep lacked complete and accurate information. And when the data was available, it was hardly ever integrated and presented in such a way that helped the rep. Once upon a time I used to work for Prudential Group Insurance, West Coast Operations. My main responsibilities were to provide technical assistance to customer service reps (CSRs) and help them navigate a series of disconnected mainframe based systems. This was in 1994, ages ago in internet times.

Fast forward to today. CSRs’ operations are no longer, for the most part, mainframe based, and most system have been integrated in such a way that the information is presented in a series of screens that make life much easier to find. To make matters better for CSRs, many of the system offer key-word search to assist finding information more efficiently. A clear example of some of these advances is banking. When you call your bank, in many cases (BofA Credit Card Services for example), you are connected to CSR in India, The Philippines, and other. The rep has access to a great deal more of information regarding your account and transaction history.

Putting the cultural and language elements aside, the first issue starts with security. Some person in some country half across the world has access to some of your most important financial information. But that would not change if the CSR was located here in the US, or for Europe in Europe or however local. What would change is the ability to do background checks. Secondly, what level of encryption in maintained for the connection between the outfit in India, for example, and the data repository in Colorado, again for example? If it was local, then there are regulations that need to be observed and regulatory bodies that conduct audits. Although these regulatory bodies extend their scrutiny to vendors and providers, I am not sure of the level of efficiency and transparency rendered in the above mentioned audits.

However, security, technolgy and data/information even though paramount, the problem remains with my chief complaint: Lack of customer focus on the part of the CSRs. And with the information they have at their disposal and the installed systems providing the information, I am utterly surprised service is still lacking.

I have spent a few weeks now reading definitions. In the original version of this post, I had included a few of them. But then the post became too technical and about definitions rather than discussion and intellectual investigation. Moreover, I encountered contradicting definitions from different sources. I am enclosing a summary of the encountered definitions since they provides a frame of reference for the rest of the post:

• In one set of definitions Ethics was defined as the study of Morality, while Morality as the study of Ethics.

• A second set defined Ethics as the study of Morality and Morality as “the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior”.

• A third definition defines Ethics as the study of “what is good and what is bad and how it applies to behavior” and Morality as the study of Ethics.

Now you see the problem. The first definitions create a circular reference. It defines one in terms of the other and provides no scope as to what the true nature of these words really is. The second and the third are in direct conflict with each other. One defines Ethics in terms of what the other defines Morality.

My concern with these concepts goes beyond definitions, meanings and interpretations. I often argue that humans as a specie has yet to develop intellectually. We lack vision and imagination to truly incorporate time expanses of trillions of years and distances of billions of light years. And along those limitations, we lack the capacity to understand the true nature of the universe. Moreover, we have developed this limitation in the tongues we speak and write.

I try to think outside the box. I try, with some level of success, to think beyond the intellectual limitations inherent to humanity. Not because I am more intelligent, but because at least I recognize the limitations are there and I attempt to break through them. At the risk of sounding conceited and arrogant, if Einstein did it, so can I. In trying to break through the limitations I often try to organize concepts in hierarchies. Proof of my limitation is that I have started to think in trillions of years and billions of light years, while time and space are infinite; and no matter how I reconstruct my hierarchies, I can not visualize and internalize this infinity. But slowly, I am getting there.

Ethics and Morality are part of this thinking outside the box and organization. Just as Mathematics (I will argue the universality of Mathematics in a separate post) and mathematical concepts are true here on Earth, as in the Moon, Alpha-Centauri or 100’s light years away in any direction, other constructs and concepts must be as well. So, if the concept of  1 + 1 = 2 here on Earth or 10 Billion light years away holds, so does the concept of Good and Bad. However, before we can define this concept we need a framework.

Looking back at the summary of definitions above, I subscribe to the second one:

“… defined Ethics as the study of Morality and Morality as ‘the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior’”

This definition provides a workable framework for the way I see Ethics and Morality. Ethics is an abstract concept while Morality deals with specifics. In other words, Ethics is a theory, a collection of ideas and concepts that describe esoterically a state of being, while Morality is the implementation of the theory. There is no weight in Ethics. There is no judgement in Ethics. There is no bias in Ethics, just the description of how to build a system of moral values, whatever these values may be. On the other hand, Morality is all about weight, judgement and bias. Morality is the implementation of an ethical system.

The table below is provided as an example of other conceptual and implementation associations in the hopes that it will clarify the argument above:

From the definition and table above I have established that Ethics is a theoretical construct while Morality is its individual implementations. Thus, what follows is that there is more than one morality, which indeed there are.
If we want to think of Morality as a complete concept, whether or not as an implementation of Ethics, we need to think of it as a collection of individual moralities. These moralities, in the majority of cases, are based on religious or cultural basis. We can consider a Christian Morality, which in itself could be considered a collection of individual moralities following the different Christian splinters (Roman Catholic, Baptist, Episcopalian, Church of England, etc.) Similarly, a Jewish Morality may follow an alike pattern and be a collection or moralities in the same form as Christian Morality. So on and so forth. (But, outside of religious based moralities, what other moralities can we find? We will come back to this later.)

These moralities all deal with specific behaviors. In the case of Judaism, in particular within the orthodox communities, there are 613 Mitzvoth (commandments) that must be followed and observed. A portion of these are regarding good: “You Shall”, and a portion regarding not good:”You Shall Not”. These commandments are the basis for a behavior and the compendium of moral codes. Yes, I am equating commandments to behaviors, but that is exactly what a commandment is: a discrete behavior. A commandment is a quantifiable action and the collection of quantifiable actions represents a behavior(s). I will assume that Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc., follow a similar pattern of commandments and behaviors. Furthermore, while I do equate commandments or compendiums of moral codes to behaviors, I am not equating religion and dogma with morality. This distinction is important.

Does Ethics deal with good and bad? Or Good and Evil? This is an important question. In my opinion no it does not. However, when discussing Ethics we normally fall into discussion of good and bad, Good or Evil. Why is that? Because our inability to maintain a level of abstraction. Based on the above definition: “ … Ethics as the study of Morality …” we can clearly see another reason why we fall into identifying Ethics with good and bad, Good and Evil, it seems implicit in the definition since Morality is defined as the study of good and bad “behaviors”. What seems implicit, it may not be.

Athenians and Spartans shared the same logical bases and by at large the same code of Ethics. But their moralities had points of difference. While Sparta condoned euthanasia, Athens repelled it. The moralities of the two city-states where based on the same set of religious beliefs, the same set of logics, same philosophical backgrounds and bases of governments. However, Spartans, based on their needs supported the systematic disposal of undesirable genetics traits by killing new-borns that did not measure up. Today, we would consider this practice evil. But that would be our morality speaking and not Ethics.

To summarize

• Ethics is the theory of actions and behaviors that can lead to good and bad, Good and Evil. However, it does not label any of the identified actions and good or bad, Good or Evil. It also deals with the concept of good and bad, Good and Evil but does not create an association between actions and these concepts.

• Morality creates associations between actions and behaviors and good and bad, Good and Evil. These associations are normally built in the context of religious dogma and culture.

• Ethics is universal. Since it does not deal with associations, the concepts can be transposed to any part of the Universe without loosing validity.

The exceptions that prove the rule

There are two questions that I will not answer, but are pertinent to the topic in this post:

1. When we talk about business and the concepts of good and bad, we discuss them in the context of Business Ethics. However, isn’t this the case of a mislabeled morality?
2. Is “truth” (not THE TRUTH) part of Ethics or Morality?

Hello all. I hope you have enjoyed the pictures and photo galleries I have posted on this blog. A few weeks ago I decided to separate my blog into two sites:

1. This site (http://www.fabianschonholz.com) where I will keep on hosting my blog posts focusing on phylosophy and business writtings.
2. A photo blog site (http://www.schonphotos.com) where I will not only host my photo galleries, but provide links to those interested in buying copies of my photos.

Part of my decision has come as I am trying to develop my photography business and not wanting to use this site for that. I rather keep things separate as I will be developing an online marketing strategy around the photo site that hopefully will bring the level of revenues I would like.

Part of my decision has come as a means to provide more focus to both sites. On one hand it was easy to have all in one place. On the other, however, if you like my writings why should you deal with my photos? And if you like my photos, why should you deal with my writings? If you like both, well … I am so sorry, but you will have to go to two separate sites.

In the end, I think that the separation is more for me and the way I like to do things.

Again, I hope you enjoyed and continue to enjoy my photos in the new site; and I hope you all keep on reading my posts and comment, specially if you bring a challenge.

Fabian Schonholz.

When I started to study Torah with Josale - he is a good guy, not only smart but VERY intelligent - he tried to explain Torah to me in terms I would understand … business terms. So, God creates and does a marketing study and runs a pilot. If he does not like it, he starts from scratch. And from the ashes and sparks of his “failures” he starts again. I guess God does not believe in reusability and building up from solid foundations. But that is OK; since we are made in his image, many of us do not believe in reusability either - but I do.

My questions is: Why doesn’t God reveal himself more clearly to us? What’s the mystery? Why such cryptic signs? Religious people would argue … indeed they would … that God reveals himself VERY clearly. There is no mystery. That mystery is created by people in order to deny God. What does denying really mean?

Let me state my position clearly:

1 - I have a hard time believing in God. At the same time, I have a hard time not believing in God.

2 - I do not have to believe or agree or even share other people’s view points, ideas and believes. But I do have to accept them for what they are, view points, ideas and believes. Moreover, I have to accept the peoples whose believes, ideas and view points I do not subscribe to.

Believing in God - or not - has many levels. Let’s assume, for the sake of this part of the post, that not only I believe there is a God, but I believe that the Torah, Gospels, Koran and other holy books represent the word of God as His own word. So, somebody transcribed for God. Moses, Mohammed, Buddha and many others were God’s prophets and they put down God’s words. Good for God, it had secretaries!! But … do I believe in those words as the truth? How about the ultimate truth? These books, to some extent or another, are full of laws and regulations that were pertinent 5000 years ago. Some of them are still VERY valid today, but many are not. Obviously some religious people will argue with me that those laws and regulations are valid today as they were valid 5000 years ago. It may be so, however, I just do not see it that way. God’s words would have a level of permanency and validity beyond time. And some of the laws and regulations are obsolete. On the other hand because they are obsolete, as long as they can be applied, I see no problem on people keeping with them.

The Torah describes in extreme details the different offerings for the different times of the years, situations, festivities, etc. Most of them are not kept anymore because they have become impractical. But those offerings are not written as optional. They are written as laws and regulations. Rules that people MUST follow no matter what or else, the wrath of God would descend upon the people. Those laws and rules have been adapted to coexist in today’s world. But if you really want to take the WORD of God seriously, then the adaptation is outside of the words themselves.

The word of God maybe is not really the word of God. Maybe it is the word of a few people that had the foresight to see the problems with society at the time and decided to help. Did they have contact with God? Maybe their foresight came from God. Maybe they were en-tuned with humanity because many of these rules’ validity lasted for a long time.

So … I am not so sure about the words!! And if they are the words of God, I am not sure I believe in those words. It leads then to question God’s existence itself. If God is omnipresent and omnipowerful, then the words should carry more weight. Clearly in my case they do not.

Does this mean that I do not believe in God? No, it does not. What it does mean, at least on a first approach, is two things:

A - I do not necessarily believe in God in the same way I may not believe in what somebody tells me. It has to do with authority. Just like I assign very little authority to a police officer I assign, potentially, very little authority to God since its authority comes, initially, from those written words.

B - In the assignment of some authority to God implies that God may exist after all. You can not assign authority to a non-existant entity.

As I wrote above, I have a hard time believing or not believing. But I do accept the possibilities, wether intellectually I agree with them or not. This leads to Acceptance and Tolerance ..

From the New Oxford American Dictionary (I finally figured out what dictionary I had in my computer):

acceptance |akˈseptəns|
noun
1 the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered : charges involving the acceptance of bribes | [as adj. ] an acceptance speech | he had an acceptance from the magazine.
• agreement to meet a draft or bill of exchange, effected by signing it.
• a draft or bill so accepted.
2 the action or process of being received as adequate or suitable, typically to be admitted into a group : you must wait for acceptance into the club.
3 agreement with or belief in an idea, opinion, or explanation : acceptance of the teaching of the church.
• approval or favorable regard : the options proposed by the report gained acceptance.
willingness to tolerate a difficult or unpleasant situation : a mood of resigned acceptance.

ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from Old French, from accepter (see accept ).

tolerance |ˈtäl(ə)rəns|
noun
1 the ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with : the tolerance of corruption | an advocate of religious tolerance.
• the capacity to endure continued subjection to something, esp. a drug, transplant, antigen, or environmental conditions, without adverse reaction : the desert camel shows the greatest tolerance to dehydration | species were grouped according to pollution tolerance | various species of diatoms display different tolerances to acid.
• diminution in the body’s response to a drug after continued use.
2 an allowable amount of variation of a specified quantity, esp. in the dimensions of a machine or part : 250 parts in his cars were made to tolerances of one thousandth of an inch.
ORIGIN late Middle English (denoting the action of bearing hardship, or the ability to bear pain and hardship): via Old French from Latin tolerantia, from tolerare (see tolerate ).

These definitions not withstanding, I see Acceptance and Tolerance as natural antonyms. Acceptance is about openness and understanding. It is about transparency and education. While Tolerance is about closedness and separation; about being opaque and selfish.

Let’s expound on Tolerance first. Tolerance is about degrees. It is about the breaking point of not being tolerant. For example you can tolerate a baby crying for so long. If the crying persists, and your “tolerance” is low, then you will get annoyed and request to be remove from the annoyance. In the extreme, you will take matters into your own hands and make sure the baby stops crying. Tolerance is used often enough within the context of Religious Tolerance. The message is loud and clear, tolerate the baby while you can, and when you can not, take matters into your own hands. The Museum of Tolerance is adeptly named. It is all about the breaking point of tolerance and what happens when certain people take matters into their own hands.

Acceptance is not about degrees. It is about black and white. It is about realizing that we do not like something but learning to live with it. It is about coexisting in a community (neighborhood, city, country, world) where differences exist. It is about understanding (or not) those differences and making room for the differences to mature into a common language of understanding. I do not have to agree with the baby crying, but the baby will cry nonetheless. I have two viable choices: either I learn to live with the crying baby or I have to move on. Taking matters into my own hands is never a choice.

Back to God …

When I was much younger I engaged in the quest of answering whether there is a God or not. At some point I decided that the question did not make any sense and that nothing changed one way or the other however the question was answered. A few years ago, through my children and friends, I was brought back to the quest. This time around I benefit from experience and knowledge. I have lived not only longer, but in many places and have interacted with many more people. Those interactions have provided different perspectives on the subject and many inputs into my thinking.

One of the elements that I have been able to factor out is the difference between Tolerance and Acceptance and how it pertains to God. I have no idea still if there is a God or not. I am not a man of faith (read The Faithful And The Intelectual) and will never be. Faith is not my game so to speak. The only way I would get to God, for better or worse, is through the intellectual process. And in this pursuit I have learn that Acceptance is key and Tolerance is destructive. Acceptance has opened my mind to possibilities while tolerance does not. The world is full of possibilities. Whether coincidence or design, whether Nature or God, the truth is clear but our vision is clouded.

Enter cloud computing and Amazon’s EC2. For those not familiar, EC2 is a cloud environment that provides virtualized hosting services. They provide the hardware infrastructure, the pipes, storage and other services. You provide the application. The promise is that you can scale the hardware need horizontally without having to deal with the hardware itself and its management and upkeep.

The first question is whether I believe it is 100% ready for prime time. You can argue that loads of companies are using it successfully, thus, it is ready. I have talked to some of them to mixed reviews. You can argue that some of the unconfirmed rumors are to be believed because there are indications of truths, thus it is not ready.  Also, I have talked to some people that were not all that happy with EC2. So on and so forth.

The second question is whether it matters or not if it is 100% ready for prime time. And  on the hills of this question, can it be used as a business continuity tool. I will answer both below.

The obvious third is regarding cost. Through all my calculations (and other people’s), EC2 can be more expensive than running your own systems - of course at some external data center. But some of the advantages come around quick adaptability, separation of concerns, system automation and self healing procedures. I will go into more details on this later as well.

Let’s start with the first question: In my opinion EC2 is not 100% ready for prime time. It is a subjective opinion based on my findings and my level of comfort. Part of the decision is based on cost, but mostly on technical merit:

• Full virtualization is not where it needs to be; although there are ways to set up virtualization in the right configuration to make it not only more stable but also better performing. Not knowing EXACTLY how EC2’s virtualization layer works (and I am assuming virtualization) creates a big question mark on how things will truly stand up to friction. For example, it is hard to optimize a virtual machine to run DB servers  that deals with millions of queries a day. Hardware optimization is important with relational DBs.

• Virtual NICs have sort-comings. They collapse under high traffic. The way to overcome this “limitation” is by attaching each virtual NIC with a physical NIC. However, this defeats the purpose of virtualization and limits, the theoretical unlimited number of VMs you can have running on a single server (only as many as you have physical NICs minus 1; you need one NIC for the host Operating System.)

• Let’s not forget performance.  Even though you can create a limitless amount of VMs, the performance of each VM degrades with the provisioning of each new VM on a single server. What I do not know, however, is if there is an optimal number of VMs. In other words, is there a hard limit where before reaching that limit each VM would not change its  performance characteristics regardless of number of active VMs? Not too long ago I ran a virtualized farm. Unfortunately the application I inherited was so horrible that it superseded all problems we had with the environment. So, I can not even begin to answer the last question. Needless to say that the application and environment were replaced.

• But it is not just the DBs that need “specially” optimized hardware. Application servers as well. Maybe not as specialized but a slow processor creates drag. And adding many VMs to spread the load creates more management and more moving parts adding to the risk management factor and what can go wrong.

Continuing answering questions … YES!!! It does 100% matter that they are not ready for prime time. But really, what we need to ask is the degree of how much it matters. How far is EC2 from being 100% ready? I do not know, but they look darn close. By adding granularity to the question we come up with multiple degrees of “how much it matters”. 100%?, 90%?, etc. In the case of EC2, I think it matters less than 20%. They seem that close to being ready - by my definition.

We can define cloud computing in many ways, however, let define it by a behavior: it needs to work like the electric company. Using Bob’s analogy, we do not really know how many generators the electric company has. We just know that we want/need more juice, we plug to the wall and we get more juice. The more juice we use, the more we pay. In the case of EC2, it seems to work that if you need more capacity, you provision a new “machine” and off you go - well, sort of This creates the idea that if you need more juice, plug to the wall and pay at the end what you consume. Not considering cost, it looks like an attractive proposition. But more importantly, think in terms of what it can do for you. Almost instant scalability when you need it and how you needed it.

A little digression …

I do not worry anymore about scalable systems. I know how to build them; I have come up with a methodology and an architecture philosophy and I have repeated the  implementation of the methodology and architecture philosophy with great success. However, while my architectures scale horizontally without much of a inconvenience, the problem of scalability has become an issue of “need” predictability and time for procurement. Now in English: How much traffic will I get and how long does it take to get the hardware and deploy it - I consider real estate and power procurement as part of deploying the hardware.

Over the course of my experience I found that I need 3 running months to predict needs 3 months ahead. I have reduce the problem of CAPEX planning to getting right the initial installation. This initial installation needs to have “enough” capacity to support 3 months of capacity needs. But … what will be the capacity needs on the first three months? On a web based system, it is somewhat unpredictable. Sure, we could plan marketing campaigns designed to “limit” traffic. However, why would you limit and control traffic - there are a great deal of arguments in this area - if you have the potential of being ultra successful.

There is also the argument of cash flow and spending the right amounts of cash on your infrastructure. Funding is a resource and needs to be maximized. Any hardware that is bought today that is not used and needed - Software as well, but to a lesser extent - depreciates and for less cash you can buy something better in the future when the resource is truly needed. Therefore, the initial deployment of hardware becomes not only critical from a capacity point of view but also from a “capital resource” point of view. This is not to suggest, however, that you should not deploy for capacity needs earlier. In other words, stay ahead of the curve. Deploy 3 to 2 months earlier than  needed. What I am suggesting is that you do not need to deploy hardware beyond 3 months or more.

Back to EC2 …

EC2 not being 100% ready creates a problem compounded by the fact that it seems to work and it seems a short ways away from being the real deal. I resolved the problem by thinking, with Bob’s help, of EC2 as an insurance policy and a business continuity plan: I will build my staging environment on EC2, even multiple staging environments.

Let’s define a staging environment as a facsimile of the production environment but scaled down. The facsimile, if at all possible, must contain ALL components.

How to set up an insurance policy and business continuity plan using “the cloud”.

First, let’s look at process and environments. I advocate and implement total separation of environments as part of my Software Development Methodologies. Developers work on their workstation and QA Engineering occurs in isolated environments that in some way represent as accurate as possible production. Staging is the environment where UAT (User Acceptance Testing) occurs and where the build is certified and readied to release. Once it is certified, it is released to production. Staging must be not as accurate as possible, but precisely a facsimile of production. By hosting the staging environment on EC2 - or any such cloud environment for that matter - you can have that precise facsimile at a small cost.

Let’s consider the case of wild success and the fact that it is hard to predict and the capacity needed to “potentiate” success. In this argument I will equate “success” to a “disaster” and how we not only recover from it but also ensure continuity:

If traffic spikes past available capacity, not only does the user experience degrades but  it disappears altogether. In this case, virtually a “disaster” happened since the service becomes unavailable. In this particular disaster, having the right amount of hardware would have prevented it; as we discussed above, however, this is not always easy to determine. Just like in any disaster, the speed of recovery is vital to the continuation and success of the company.  If staging is indeed 100% a scaled down facsimile of production, then on an environment like EC2 scaling up in order to provide “capacity” should be a matter of minutes to just hours and not days. Basically, enough tolerance for the business not to experience a catastrophic downtime. Temporarily moving the production environment from self managed to EC2 provides the company with the necessary time to build out, and potentially better plan, capacity on its facility. Once the “disaster” passes, production can then be moved back from EC2.

In order for this temporary migration to happen seamlessly and effectively a high degree of automation needs to be incorporated into the overall infrastructure from day one. While the last updated staging environment (there can be multiple) will have the latest code and basic configuration, its data will be not current or accurate. Data migration needs to happen on a regular basis, and all staging environments should have, based on the installed release, the latest data set. Not only the data updates must happen automatically, but the discipline of automation, from a “disaster” detection to recovery must be as automated as possible. Once an issue is detected, a single script needs to be run to get the new production environment ready for operations, including needed changes on DNS, load balancing and firewalls. Furthermore, provisioning and  de-provisioning new VMs should also happen as automaticly as possible based on capacity needs.

The last part of this EC2 consideration is cost. It is more expensive than it looks. Once you start racking up the VMs on a per hour basis, racking up traffic at a premium cost and racking up storage, the $0.10 to $0.40 price ranges start to add up. This is cost that you incur every month and that you can not “lease”. So, does it add up to more than what it would cost you to build it and manage it yourself? No, but the costs are comparable, at least in my calculations. Therefore, running on EC2 for 1 to 3 months, even though duplicates the expense for that timeframe, it does not, in theory, break the bank and provides insurance, albeit, at a premium cost.

I have some strong opinions on how technology should be implemented. I do not care to know the secret sauce, but I do want to know in more detail than just general terms how things work. Especially if I am going to bet my company on a platform. The unknowns, the uncertainties based on lack of SLAs and the assumption around virtualization make me a tensed CTO. The result: Not 100% ready and trustworthy to build an company on it. I admit, however, that it is very impressive what they have accomplished, it makes sense, and of the other commercially viable cloud environments (I am not including Google, Yahoo! and MS), EC2 is the only one that, again in my opinion, is worth considering and ultimately using; whether it is for production, or as in my case, as an insurance policy to support unpredicted growth and create a conscientious business continuity plan. With time and maturity, EC2 is a strong solution.

Enjoy the photographs.

Click on the image to go to the gallery.

Click on the image to go to  the gallery