Hybrid Cloud Solutions: Amazon Web Service (AWS) and Microsoft Office 365

Can Microsoft Office 365 and Amazon Web Services (AWS) work together?  The answer to this cloud riddle is YES.  

There seems to be an overall confusion between what these Cloud venders provide as services.  To be clear, Amazon Web Services is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider and Microsoft Office 365 is a Software as a Service (SaaS).  

In enterprise deployments of Office 365, many organizations have requirements to manage and synchronize user profiles to Office 365, restrict user access, provide secure mobile access, and advanced Exchange/Lync/SharePoint management (Remote PowerShell and management consoles).  

In order to satisfy these requirements, organizations will need to deploy the following components within their controlled environment:

• Mobile Management Solution (Blackberry Enterprise Server 10)
• Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) internal and proxy
• Exchange and Lync Management Console
• Remote PowerShell for SharePoint, Exchange, Lync, and other Office 365 components

Some of our clients have elected to move these components into their own Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) within Amazon Web Services (AWS) so that they can take advantage of the power of AWS (Elastic, Pay as you go model, network, high availability, etc…) and remove their dependencies on managing their own data centers. Once these components have been deployed they can be configured to integrate/communicate with Office 365 Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and other Office 365 components.

JHC Technology has also designed and implemented virtual application and desktop technology to run on Amazon Web Services.  We are able to deploy the Microsoft Outlook virtual application as well as other office products on AWS and connect them to Office 365.  In this scenario, users are able to connect to an AWS region and access Outlook either via virtual desktop or virtual application from any device and pull down their Office 365 exchange mail securely.

Organizations should not be tied down to use only one cloud model (IaaS vs SaaS). They should look at their overall requirements and choose an architecture that is flexible enough to expand for future requirements.

James Hirmas is the CEO for JHC Technology.  He can be reached at jhirmas(at)jhctechnology.com,@JHC_JamesHirmas, or connect with him on LinkedIn.

DIY, Cloud Style

Unless you’re actively working in the cloud technology space, you’re probably relying on those that are to provide you the cloud services you’ve come to depend on.  One of the biggest pieces of the move to cloud is the use of the cloud for backing up your data.  I know many people that either utilize their own external storage drives or pay a yearly/monthly subscription to backup info to an online vendor.

While an external drive is good, it’s not always there when you need it, and while an online vendor is an easy choice, what do you really know about them?  Can you trust the storage?  Can you trust that they’ll be in business?  Can you trust that they won’t make a mistake and delete your files?

For me, I decided that I wasn’t going to pay for an external drive, and there’s no reason for me to utilize an online vendor.  With Amazon Web Services and the free tier, I pay next to nothing for my small backup account.  This post will walk through the ease of using AWS’s Simple Storage Service (S3) to back up your own information and cut out the expensive hardware and expensive middle man.

If you haven’t done so already, create an AWS account by going to http://aws.amazon.com and clicking “Sign Up”.

1. Once you have your account created, go to the AWS Management Console.  Select S3.  
    
2. From the S3 Dashboard, select Create Bucket.  (Note:  an S3 Bucket is simply a container for your files.  Within Buckets you can have Folders to help organize information.)  
    
3. Once you’ve created the bucket, you will be prompted to enter a name.  Keep in mind that this name is not simply unique to your account, which means you won’t be able to go generic.  You may have to enter a couple of names to find one that works.  I ended up with “demo-test-1” as my bucket name, as an FYI.  As you can note, you also get to select the region in which to store your data.  
   
    
4. Once you’ve named your Bucket, click Create (You can also set up logging for the bucket, if you’d like).
5. You will now have your bucket listed on the S3 dashboard.  
   
     
6. Access the bucket by clicking the Bucket name.
7. You can create folders by clicking on the Actions dropdown and selecting Create Folder.  Simply type the folder name in the line that appears.
8. To upload a file or files, click Actions, then select Upload.  
   
     
9. You will then be prompted to select your files.  Click Start Upload when finished selecting your files.  
   
     

By default, the S3 bucket is accessible only to the user account that created the bucket.  In order to make the bucket available to others, permissions will have to be assigned via AWS Identity and Access Management users or through other permissions that open availability to the public.

Matt Jordan is the Cloud Services Manager for JHC Technology.  He can be reached at mjordan@jhctechology.com, @matt_jhc, or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Storage Issues….

Helpdesk:  Hello, this is the helpdesk may I help you?
Caller:  Yes, I deleted all of my files.  Can you restore      them for me immediately?
Helpdesk:  Possibly.  Do you know when the files were deleted?
Caller:  Yes, about a month ago.
Helpdesk:  The storage tapes containing those files are offsite. It will take at least a day to bring them back. 
Caller:  But I need the files today.  I have presentation to do in an hour.  Is there any way around this process?
Helpdesk:  Unfortunately no, but we will work as quickly as possible to retrieve your data.
Caller:  Well, how long do you think this process will take?
Helpdesk:  At the least a day or two.  At the most maybe one week.  It all depends on how fast we can have the media containing the data returned to us and placed inside the storage device that needs to retrieve the data.
Caller:  Gosh, I may as well just recreate them.  Still, do what you can.  That’s an awful lot of data to attempt to recreate in a day.
Helpdesk:  Alright.  I will open a ticket to have the process to restore your files started.

As an IT professional, it pains my heart when I am unable to assist a customer in a timely fashion due to restraints. 

In this scenario, a user had deleted files sometime ago and only recently noticed that the files were gone.  Due to policies and procedures, the media containing the information was stored offsite, thus hindering the ability to assist the customer immediately.

Well, these days will soon be a thing of the past.  Amazon Web Services (AWS) now offers a plethora of storage options that can provide on-demand access at a minimal cost to almost any type of data that you can think of.  AWS storage services include:

1.     Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) Volumes which provide block level storage for Amazon Instances from 1GB to 1TB.  This means that you will have access to physical hard drives containing your data ready to use after a simple attachment to a running EC2 instance.

2.     Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) which is an object store service that stores mission-critical and primary data with an easy to use web interface.  It is highly scalable, highly durable and the number of objects that can be stored in an Amazon S3 bucket is unlimited (whoa!). 

3.     Relational Database Service (RDS) which is a fully functional MySQL relational database.  It automatically backups your database and maintains your database software.  It is ideal for any application that relies on MySQL and its repository information.  It provides a highly scalable, durable, low maintenance database that does not require the need for very much code change.

With AWS storage options, the list goes on.  AWS has found a way to take the physical aspects out of network backups and storage options.  The cost to run any of the above mentioned storage options is pennies on the dollar compared to what it would cost to maintain a physical library and its peripherals, warranties along with other items  such as space issues and support for faulty equipment.  One of my current administrative tasks is to move current infrastructure backup operations into the cloud environment.  Check in with me next month to see how I will go about accomplishing this task.

Jeronna Freeman  is the Cloud Administrator for JHC Technology.  She can be reached at jfreeman(at)jhctechnology.com or connect with her on LinkedIn.