1) Blue Raster was tasked with developing and deploying a web mapping application within 30 days to assist with a $1B health care grant process.
2) They deployed a hybrid cloud solution using ESRI ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2 for the mapping capabilities and Amazon S3/CloudFront for tile caching to allow for high performance, scalability, and availability within tight timelines and budget.
3) Lessons learned included managing unexpected downtime during the launch, using Amazon's import tools to load map tiles faster, and considering caching more operations directly in the cloud to improve performance further.
Geocloud Blue Raster Web Mapping Cloud Deployment - Lessons from the Field 2010-09-21
1. Web Mapping Cloud Deployment- Lessons from the Field Presented by: Michael Lippmann Blue Raster Applications Moving to the Cloud Location Intelligence GeoCloud 2010 September 22, 2010
2. Challenge- Develop/Deploy in 30 days Client Health and Human Services - HRSA Need Health Care Reform 2010 Presidential initiative Double the number of Community Health Centers nationally from 1200 to 2400 90 day window to submit grants for a pool of >$1B
3. Web Mapping Requirement Deploy a web mapping application to assist with grant process Non-negotiable - System must be online when grant period opens Week 1- significant utilization Middle Weeks- use, but not at peak Approaching deadline- last minute use spike
4. Requirements High availability application Downtime not an option-Redundancy High Performance Subsecond performance for maps Capacity Grant applicants will depend on system $1B+ being applied for
29. Hybrid Choices Hosting.com Managed Services- Windows 2008 R2 Servers online is not as immediate as Amazon- but you have a person to call Machines setup and has 24/7/365 team to monitor and assist as needed Both flavors of Cloud are important in the future.
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31. Launch Day- 2 events caused unplanned downtimeAmazon S3 Outage- extremely rare but it happens Datacenter – Cisco switch failure
32. Health Check your Site Setup tools to watch all of your servers Recommend Pingdom- found it when Twitter had an outage SAAS Monitoring service Uses global array of servers to test and notify of issues
36. If we did it again… we might: Use even more Amazon S3/CloudFront to cache repeatable operations Geometry request for boundaries- states/counties/HPSA Gzip/cache speeds load Cache directly in Amazon- avoid transfer CloudFront- now has immediate expiration
First week media hype, administrators, executives, lots of $ on the line, everyone procrastinates, project high use at the end- grant writers using the system. 75days of activity at a trough.
Automanagement is early in maturiry- requires being able to deal with risk of big bill, still requires babysitting , humans