Easy move to the cloud
Updated December 03, 2019
Easy move to the cloud
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
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Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud Foundry
IBM Cloud Foundry is the main repository of APIs for our organization. We are migrating some we have internally already developed in loopback and developing from scratch, and some others in other frameworks. For those already in loopback, we just check that we are taking advantage of all the new features in the cloud. For the rest, we started with a new basic ground API and start reusing most of it.
With this approach, we are increasing the API response time and availability and getting rid of local hardware.
With this approach, we are increasing the API response time and availability and getting rid of local hardware.
- Easy move from local to the cloud for web apps and APIs.
- You can run IBM Cloud Foundry locally for testing.
- There is a free allowance every 30 days.
- Of course, you can take your apps back or move them to other kinds of hosting.
- Something like a scripting way to automate start/stop your cells so you can control or divide APIs you just need for a limited time.
- The pricing calculator is not considering the cost for the whole month.
- The IBM SDK is now deprecated so that means your actual SDK can be supported. More clarification is required on this.
- Be careful. There is a cost even if you don't use the capacity. So you have to consider always, high volume apps to be moved first, especially those that are required 24x7.
- Be honest. That app installed on a beast of 32 GB of RAM may just need 8 GB or 16.
- Be tidy. The best approach is to group apps and maybe merge them so you can use less Diego cells (or App units). Remember that there is a cost for unused capacity.
- Be cheap. Check from time to time if you don't need an app or service and turn it off. Remember you are paying for it and you have an allowance of 375 GB/hour per month.
- Monitor all the time. Not just availability, check for utilization, traffic, cost. Your migration to the cloud is not completed by uploading your code, just by being sure that you have the right platform at the right cost.
- The local hardware that you are leaving behind: Consider how old it is, maintenance, power, software licenses, availability, technical support cost and be sure about the real cost to know if your cloud services can be below that limit.
IBM Cloud Foundry (CF) is simpler and there is a service model that fits most of our internal services. We are going to Loopback for API and Node.js and we have an easy path to go with Bluemix. It's a very easy way to start if you are moving to the cloud and mainly if you are going to Node.js.
You can use CF to keep your old Frontends with PHP, Asp or Ruby while moving your APIs to other services inside Bluemix. API Connect is particularly good and of course, you can run them locally during development. Also, it's particularly good for us because we are kind of leaving relational database for front ends, keeping our biggest relational databases still inside. For this, CF is more than ok because there are several NOSQL with good implementations inside Bluemix like Cloudant and Redis.
You can use CF to keep your old Frontends with PHP, Asp or Ruby while moving your APIs to other services inside Bluemix. API Connect is particularly good and of course, you can run them locally during development. Also, it's particularly good for us because we are kind of leaving relational database for front ends, keeping our biggest relational databases still inside. For this, CF is more than ok because there are several NOSQL with good implementations inside Bluemix like Cloudant and Redis.