Knowing how to resolve cloud performance issues is crucial to keeping end-users satisfied. Users often complain of application performance issues and network problems. Since the underlying cloud network remains invisible, it makes traditional troubleshooting solutions largely ineffective.
The cloud contains many moving parts, regardless of whether it is public or hybrid. All these different parts need to move together seamlessly but that is hard to ensure. Performance issues will crop up from time to time and adversely affect the cloud, just like an on-site environment. Cloud performance issues typically include application processing delays and network latency. Here are some ways to keep such issues at bay:
- Use performance monitoring tools: When you move applications to a public cloud, monitoring is hard but cloud monitoring tools help you get visibility. Cloud providers typically oversee data centers in a public cloud, not enterprises themselves. So, much of the trouble arises when these enterprises must integrate their own systems with the provider’s. IT companies like IBM provide cloud monitoring tools; however, these are usually costly and designed for big companies. Some new companies are providing tools as service and these can alleviate some of the tech issues, but the public cloud continue to be less visible than private cloud.
- The hybrid cloud throws many challenges to owners because data is located both in the public and private clouds. Network issues and security restrictions can make it hard to access this data. So, IT teams will need to use data management solutions for resolving performance issues. In a hybrid cloud, data synchronization can be a difficult task which is possible to resolve through sharding. To move a lot of data into the public cloud, it may help to use outdated disks and tapes to eliminate performance issues.
- Multi-cloud applications are usually designed to contain different components. This ensures a work-flow via multiple providers. You must build a performance benchmark for identifying issues related to the quality of experience. Cloud management logs will tell you the cause of the problem. You may find that the trouble is not with one specific provider. Data loss or latency is an important factor leading to poor cloud performance. You need to find out if resources are traveling between providers through a VPN or the Internet. Each needs a distinct action plan.
- A poor-designed API can trigger cloud performance issues. To avoid this, you should use APIs running through objects and not operations. This means fewer API calls and less traffic. Consistent schema will make is simper and faster for developers but majority of schemas are not uniform. To ensure better performances it is advisable to use APIs having consistent designs.
- The IT teams are expected to guarantee a smooth and positive user experience and this depends on accessibility and performance. So, enterprises must monitor the application work-flow to make sure the cloud works optimally. Any app’s response time or resources will help you spot what impedes its performance.
- You must verify that your provider is not facing any issues on its end. Depending on whether you use an IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS model, your verification process will vary. Also check for dependent services which can affect accessibility or performance; for example, internal-external DNS and DHCP are dependencies which trigger issues.
- Finally, it is advisable to review all recent configuration changes. For example, you must review a new firewall in a corporate LAN to detect issues like triggering an outage for some users. Traffic-shaping changes may accidentally affect performances between remote cloud services and a corporate LAN.