F5F Stay Refreshed Power Users Networks Consider shifting systems from Azure to OVH Baremetal Cloud. Seek guidance on VPN and network configuration.

Consider shifting systems from Azure to OVH Baremetal Cloud. Seek guidance on VPN and network configuration.

Consider shifting systems from Azure to OVH Baremetal Cloud. Seek guidance on VPN and network configuration.

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Pacttw
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07-24-2016, 11:45 PM
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Hey folks, I hope you are all doing well. As the title states, I am looking to move our infrastructure over to OVH bare metal cloud from Azure but not 100% sure on things yet & thought i'd ask for a little help. Business overview: Small company, between 10-20 people I'm the only IT tech Work with data in MS SQL Databases Team works remotely We do not have any on-prem infrastructure MS SQL Server is used for compatability & it's what staff know & all procedures are written for MS SQL Current infrastructure overview: Entirely Azure based Network is behind Azure VPN Gateway (Route-based) Ubuntu based Linux VM for MS SQL Server (No public IP address) Backups are all done through Azure (VM backups/snapshots for restore purposes & data) Monthly Cloud Budget: £2000/m Current Azure Spend: £2000/m Estimated OVH Spend: £1000/m My predecessor moved us from on-prem to Azure a few years ago, it's been working well but honestly it's not cost effective at all, and we are always seeing a cost creep & I try to keep under control. Originally, all staff had an individual Windows VM with it's own instance of MS SQL Server running, but as a small company with a low budget it really didn't run well (2C/16GB per server which needed to be accessed via remote desktop). Since moving to a singular linux based VM, things are certainly running a lot better but again, it doesn't feel as cost effective as what OVH Bare metal cloud could be. Requirements for OVH Higher spec servers Consistant pricing with minimal fluctuation Private & Secure Network Secure VPN/Gateway access (I guess that links to the above point) Why OVH Bare Metal? I'm looking at bare metal cloud because it seems cost effective compared to Azure & OVH public cloud, storage pricing feel very reasonable compared to Azure & the general specs of the servers seem more cost effective compared to Azure. Granted, I know we'd be giving up the flexability of Azure but on paper, it seems that it would be worth doing. Additionally, on Azure I feel our throughput is limited because we don't have the budget to have higher spec drives (Running standard HDDs mainly with some Standard SSD). I was considering Public/Private but i feel we'd have a similar issue with cost creep/throughput limitation. I've some extremely basic benchmarking, using python to generate a table with 20 fields and 6 million records and have the following: (SQL Cache was cleared after each run) Select * from table - How many records after 2 minutes runtime Update a field with isnull(first_name,'') + ' ' + isnull(last_name,'') Server Select Statement | Update Statement Azure E4as v5 - Standard SSD - 4 Core - 32GB RAM - 650Mbps 4.29 mill recoreds | 2 mins 23 seconds OVH KS-B - Sata SSD - 4 Core - 32GB RAM - 100Mbps 4.13 mill records | 2 mins 22 seconds OVH SYS-1 - NVME - 6 Core - 64GB RAM - 500Mbps 4.35 mill records | 33 seconds My current thought is to have a single Advance-4 / Advance-5 server / Advance-STOR or have 2 Advance-1 for HA redundancy? I was then thinking about using Backblaze B2 for backups - I'm currently unsure how i'd want to snapshot the servers for easy restoration in the event of an outage or if I mess the config up (again... we don't talk about that) As for connectivity to the server, I don't really like that they have Public IPs & want some form of gateway to access them, I was originally considering tailscale & block all inbound/outbound ports for the Public IP however I wasn't sure whether this alone was good enough or if I should have an exit node (but then do i really want to have the responsbility of keeping the exit node secure) or would it just be better to use a SaaS Gateway? Honestly (If you can't tell already), I'm no expert when it comes to networking & infrastucture, since we're a small company i've just been picking it up as we go and hoping for the best. I think I know enough to do what we need, but since i've only ever managed the private azure network, I'm not 100% confident that i'm on the right tracks for the potential move to OVH. Any/all constructive feedback is greatly appreciated and I genuinely appreciate you for taking the time to read through the post and putting thought into this for me. Edit: Having priced up approximately what we would need on OVH, I estimate the monthly costings at the high end at £1000/m for a system that will continue to meet our needs as we grow. For the networking side, I've looked into Tailscale, GoodAccess and Perimeter81 which seem to cost less than what we are currently paying for our Azure gateway but this is where my knowledge lacks when it comes to cloud gateways.
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P
Pacttw
07-24-2016, 11:45 PM #1

Hey folks, I hope you are all doing well. As the title states, I am looking to move our infrastructure over to OVH bare metal cloud from Azure but not 100% sure on things yet & thought i'd ask for a little help. Business overview: Small company, between 10-20 people I'm the only IT tech Work with data in MS SQL Databases Team works remotely We do not have any on-prem infrastructure MS SQL Server is used for compatability & it's what staff know & all procedures are written for MS SQL Current infrastructure overview: Entirely Azure based Network is behind Azure VPN Gateway (Route-based) Ubuntu based Linux VM for MS SQL Server (No public IP address) Backups are all done through Azure (VM backups/snapshots for restore purposes & data) Monthly Cloud Budget: £2000/m Current Azure Spend: £2000/m Estimated OVH Spend: £1000/m My predecessor moved us from on-prem to Azure a few years ago, it's been working well but honestly it's not cost effective at all, and we are always seeing a cost creep & I try to keep under control. Originally, all staff had an individual Windows VM with it's own instance of MS SQL Server running, but as a small company with a low budget it really didn't run well (2C/16GB per server which needed to be accessed via remote desktop). Since moving to a singular linux based VM, things are certainly running a lot better but again, it doesn't feel as cost effective as what OVH Bare metal cloud could be. Requirements for OVH Higher spec servers Consistant pricing with minimal fluctuation Private & Secure Network Secure VPN/Gateway access (I guess that links to the above point) Why OVH Bare Metal? I'm looking at bare metal cloud because it seems cost effective compared to Azure & OVH public cloud, storage pricing feel very reasonable compared to Azure & the general specs of the servers seem more cost effective compared to Azure. Granted, I know we'd be giving up the flexability of Azure but on paper, it seems that it would be worth doing. Additionally, on Azure I feel our throughput is limited because we don't have the budget to have higher spec drives (Running standard HDDs mainly with some Standard SSD). I was considering Public/Private but i feel we'd have a similar issue with cost creep/throughput limitation. I've some extremely basic benchmarking, using python to generate a table with 20 fields and 6 million records and have the following: (SQL Cache was cleared after each run) Select * from table - How many records after 2 minutes runtime Update a field with isnull(first_name,'') + ' ' + isnull(last_name,'') Server Select Statement | Update Statement Azure E4as v5 - Standard SSD - 4 Core - 32GB RAM - 650Mbps 4.29 mill recoreds | 2 mins 23 seconds OVH KS-B - Sata SSD - 4 Core - 32GB RAM - 100Mbps 4.13 mill records | 2 mins 22 seconds OVH SYS-1 - NVME - 6 Core - 64GB RAM - 500Mbps 4.35 mill records | 33 seconds My current thought is to have a single Advance-4 / Advance-5 server / Advance-STOR or have 2 Advance-1 for HA redundancy? I was then thinking about using Backblaze B2 for backups - I'm currently unsure how i'd want to snapshot the servers for easy restoration in the event of an outage or if I mess the config up (again... we don't talk about that) As for connectivity to the server, I don't really like that they have Public IPs & want some form of gateway to access them, I was originally considering tailscale & block all inbound/outbound ports for the Public IP however I wasn't sure whether this alone was good enough or if I should have an exit node (but then do i really want to have the responsbility of keeping the exit node secure) or would it just be better to use a SaaS Gateway? Honestly (If you can't tell already), I'm no expert when it comes to networking & infrastucture, since we're a small company i've just been picking it up as we go and hoping for the best. I think I know enough to do what we need, but since i've only ever managed the private azure network, I'm not 100% confident that i'm on the right tracks for the potential move to OVH. Any/all constructive feedback is greatly appreciated and I genuinely appreciate you for taking the time to read through the post and putting thought into this for me. Edit: Having priced up approximately what we would need on OVH, I estimate the monthly costings at the high end at £1000/m for a system that will continue to meet our needs as we grow. For the networking side, I've looked into Tailscale, GoodAccess and Perimeter81 which seem to cost less than what we are currently paying for our Azure gateway but this is where my knowledge lacks when it comes to cloud gateways.

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