What could happen to Cloud computing during the Olympics?
The surge in people going online to watch the London Olympics could break the internet. Or at least severely choke it, the UK government has warned.
The Cabinet Office and the London Games organising committee is advising businesses that “due to an increased number of people accessing the internet” during this summer’s Games that “internet services may be slower” or “in very severe cases there may be drop outs”.
If the warning of internet downtime comes true it poses something of a dilemma for UK businesses, which have been advised by the government to allow staff to work from home during the Games to avoid putting pressure on the country’s transport infrastructure. The Games’ organisers predict that during the busiest day of the Games an additional three million journeys will be made on London’s public transport, on top of the 12 million made on an average workday.
If your business is reliant on Cloud computing have you got a sufficient business continuity plan in place? Does your Cloud provider have a continuty plan? Companies need to have a plan to protect their business critical applications whilst also giving employees the freedom to enjoy the 2012 Olympic Games.
These 5 Tips from Steven Turner, posted in "Enterprise" might be a good starting point to consider helping your Network cope. Dr Steven Turner is VP of IT Optimisation at Intergence, a leading independent IT optimisation consultancy
1. Identify your network traffic load and the causes of poor performance
Through application performance monitoring devices including Visual Networks, SolarWinds and Ipanema, business can not only identify network load but also the causes of the load and if a particular user or application is congesting the network. IT staff can use this equipment to identify how its company’s business critical traffic is performing with a view to knowing how then to protect and prioritise it from non-critical traffic.
2. Protect your business critical traffic from non-critical traffic
Achieving this requires intelligent traffic shaping devices such as those from Ipanema. These can monitor the quality of your applications and via a set of criticality rules and quality of service goals, business can ensure that critical sensitive traffic such as Voice, Citrix and internal web-based applications are given the service quality they require. Non critical traffic such as streaming video can be allowed should there be sufficient network capacity.
3. Use WAN Acceleration devices capable of stream splitting
It is highly likely that more than one user at an office location will be streaming the same live video. This is where WAN acceleration devices such as those from Riverbed and Bluecoat can be used to proxy the video streaming so that only a single stream is requested across the WAN link and relayed to the local requesting hosts. This is in contrast to a non-optimised environment where each host receives the same video stream via the WAN, adding much more traffic to the network.
4. Take advantage of multiple WAN links
If there are multiple links including a private MPLS link and Internet link, consider directing your business critical traffic via the MPLS circuit whilst using the cheaper but less reliable Internet link for browsing and video streaming traffic. That way, business applications do not compete with users attempting to stream HD video content or browse websites.
5. Provide a common room with a large TV screen for employees to gather
This will make the whole event more sociable and by using a freeview box to receive the TV over the air you are eliminating any load on the network. Please note productivity may suffer if this is accessible all day!
What are your plans for business continuity during the Olympics? Are your critical applications in the Cloud or are you considering the move? We would love to hear your thoughts.
