One of the most frequently asked questions our sales team receives is about the implementation times for our solutions. Estimating an exact timeline without assessing the specific conditions and configurations of the client making the inquiry is complex, as these can vary widely and lead to different timeframes.
In this guide, we’ll clarify some of the factors that influence the implementation and migration times of an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platform, helping you estimate how these processes might impact your service availability.
What is IaaS?
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud computing service model that provides essential infrastructure resources on demand—meaning it’s pay-as-you-go. These resources include storage, computing, networking, and virtualization, and they are available to both businesses and individuals.
Factors Influencing IaaS Deployment Times
Let’s start with the bottom line: Adam can provide an IaaS environment to a client in as little as 24 to 48 hours. From there, the client’s specific characteristics, requirements, and configurations can extend the time to production for the environment to several months. What are these determining factors?
- The level of customization of the environment: Depending on whether the client has a simple web server to which we can apply basic security measures already available in OpenStack (the open-source technology platform we use for IaaS), or if they request a firewall or a set of network policies, the IaaS environment will need more or less detailed configuration. In the first case, Adam can provision the environment within 24 to 48 hours. However, in the second case, this will depend on coordination between Adam and the client to gather all the necessary information about these customizations. Moreover, this second scenario will likely involve more meetings between Adam and the client, both to transfer knowledge about the different configurations and to conduct testing.
2. The type of external network: A client may choose a simple network with public addressing and Internet access via a server, or a network with a connection to their company’s network through any provider, which might involve their technical departments in the process. In this second scenario, Adam requires the client to perform certain configurations, which means we cannot precisely estimate the time. If the network is simple, the environment can be provisioned, as mentioned in the previous section, within 24 to 48 hours.
3. Security objects: If the client has their own firewall and requires us to configure it, the implementation time may be extended. Otherwise, it can be deployed again within 24 to 48 hours. In the configuration of the external zone of the firewall, the design may be simple or more complex. For a simple network, we configure basic redirection to the Internet. If the network involves a provider that connects to our data center, the client must coordinate with the provider to establish the connection. Additionally, if the client needs to configure a VPN tunnel from their infrastructure’s firewall to the cloud firewall, the implementation time also increases, as their technical department will handle certain configurations while Adam takes care of others. Coordination between the client and Adam will be essential.
4. The client’s doubts: Throughout the process of contracting an IaaS environment with Adam, the client may have questions and require several sessions and personalized training for configurations. Most commonly, the client already has cloud training and knows what an IaaS panel is. However, their level of knowledge will not add more time to the deployment of the environment, as questions are usually resolved before the project is signed. The work plan is defined with all necessary details, and modifications or improvisations are rarely made.
How much time does an IaaS migration require?
If a client wants to migrate their systems to our IaaS platform, we must consider several additional factors that are not typically involved in a deployment from scratch. Here are some of them:
- Type of migration: Certain company servers, such as email or accounting servers, cannot be unavailable during weekdays since operations cannot stop Monday through Friday. Therefore, the type of servers to be migrated will largely determine the time available to carry out the migration. Additionally, a migration can be done manually, meaning the client copies a volume to Adam’s cloud, and our technical team ensures it is available on the platform. Alternatively, it can be done using software (we use Carbonite), which enables large data migrations in minutes. If the client needs to expedite this process and is willing to incur the additional cost of the license, migration times can be significantly reduced. A client might also opt to deploy their own machines within the IaaS platform and copy data at the network level between machines, although this is less common.
- Quality of data transfer from the original server location: The quality of the client’s communications infrastructure—whether high or low—will determine the speed of data transfer, which translates to more or less time required for the migration.
- The client’s RTO: The RTO, or Recovery Time Objective, defines how long a client can afford to have a machine or service down. Some clients have very limited downtime, which complicates the migration process. However, if sufficient time is available, we can perform manual tests to estimate how long the data transfer takes. If the test is successful, we consider the time it took and, based on that, can recommend using software to speed up the migration (for instance, if the test took longer than the client’s available downtime). The RTO also determines the type of backup required for a server to ensure data is safeguarded in case of an incident.
- Production downtime window: The amount of time a client can allow a server to be offline also impacts the migration duration, as it determines the available windows to perform the process. For example, if a client allows a server to be offline for 4 hours, Adam can use that time to complete the migration and have the server operational on our platform within that window, no more.
Discover a flexible infrastructure that grows with your business
At Adam, our goal is to ensure that both the implementation process and migration to our IaaS platform are as seamless as possible for our clients and align with the timelines of their business. That’s why we support you throughout the entire process—from the initial steps and questions to configurations and project execution. Additionally, once everything is in production, we offer 24/7 technical support to address any service issues.
If you need more information about our IaaS platform, you can:
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This article has been written by
Emilio Moreno
Arquitecto Soluciones Cloud - IaaS