You have just received the credentials to log in to your new cloud account. Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of not a single computer, but of an entire data center. You have the capabilities to create any number of server machines, network configurations, firewalls, databases, disks, storage systems, and many more advanced resources. Do you feel overwhelmed by the possibilities? That is only natural! Let’s talk about a few simple guidelines that may help to keep you up and running:

1. Please ask us

The Cloud4Research team is here to help! Please reach out to us at cloud4research@tudelft.nl if you have any questions! We will do our best to get back to you as soon as we can. There are no stupid questions (actually, the silly-sounding questions are often the most difficult, and also the most relevant). There are difficult questions though, and our team does not claim to have the definitive answer to every question. We do have some experience that you may not have, and we have access to support from various external resources that may be able to help you.

2. Keep it simple

As any experienced data center owner will tell you: complexity is not your friend! Try to use and deploy only the things that you need. With the possibilities your cloud environment opens to you, it can be seductive to employ as many of the fancy available options as you can find. This is never a good idea: keep your feet on the ground and start off using only the services that you truly understand and need. This will save you costs and, equally important, many headaches when you later need to alter your setup.

3. Keep it safe

It is certainly possible to use cloud data centers in a safe way. However, as the value or sensitivity of you data increases, more effort needs to be invested in keeping your data away from evil eyes (or hands). Data security is a complex subject, that we are very willing to help you with in your specific case. A few headlines:

• Limit the number of people with access to your cloud-servers. Where possible, do not expose your servers to the internet at all!
• Absolutely limit the number of people with access to your cloud-account! Access to the cloud-account amounts to giving people the keys to your data center! This allows them to access your virtual hardware and bypass security measures that are in place for the ‘rest of the world’. You’d better trust these people in the extreme!

4. Switch off the lights

Cloud computing can be very cost-effective in certain scenarios, but it can also bite you when used in the wrong way. One of the most obvious ways of keeping the costs manageable is simple: switch off stuff. Virtual machines that are running in your environment will cost money, unless they are switched off! There’s ways of scripting the power-management for your machines, and also more sophisticated ways of making sure that costs are only accrued when you are actually calculating. Tell us your scenario so we can help you setting this up!