If Your Cloud Is Performing Poorly, Here Is What You Should Be Looking Out For

Poor cloud performance causes many problems. Is it from poorly performing apps to under-optimized workloads and insecure databases? They’re numerous. And if you run a platform where customers actively engage, that's a potential doom at your doorstep.

No person other than Laura Nolan and the other engineers at Slack would’ve explained this doom better after having experienced what I call the "one-day Slack doom." Slack's 2021 major outage was the worst time Slack has ever slacked. Customers could not log in, messages took forever to send, and integrations would not load. Despite the team's effort to fix their infrastructure problem, the outage lasted several hours.

Slack's outage proves that an underperforming cloud infrastructure can cost your business thousands of dollars if you're lucky and a significant percentage of your customer base if you're not. That's why, in this article, I've broken down how you can measure cloud performance, ways to improve it, and specific tools that help the process.

Key Metrics For Monitoring Cloud Performance

Over 90% of organizations, including small, medium, and enterprise businesses, use the cloud. Yet, a whopping 70% cannot account for most of their cloud spend, which inevitably affects cloud performance. So, how do you monitor cloud performance to see where exactly you're missing it? Here are a few useful metrics:

1. CPU Utilization

   CPU utilization measures how often the CPU processes operations within a specific timeframe. If CPU utilization is low, it may mean that the compute resources are higher than what's needed for the workload, and vice versa. Monitoring this metric will help you decide how much to spend on cloud computing for your applications.

2. Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS)

   IOPS deals with storage and allows you to quantify the speed of your storage device. It measures the number of input and output operations your storage can take per second. A high IOPS means your storage is fast and can handle large operations in a short time. A low IOPS, on the other hand, will reduce your overall system performance.

3. Memory

   Measuring memory will show you if your system is over-provisioned or not. It measures the total memory the system currently uses to run applications and store data. That way, you know where to cut down on cloud RAM expenses while maximizing performance.

4. Latency

   Latency is simply the time it takes for data to move from its source to its destination. Unlike other metrics, the lower the latency, the faster the data transfer, which signifies swift network communication. This is a very important metric you should keep tabs on, as having a high latency value can negatively affect customer interaction with your business.

5. Bandwidth

   Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred across an internet connection in a specific timeframe. The time frame is usually measured in seconds and can be kilobytes per second (Kbps) or megabytes per second (Mbps).

5 Ways to Improve Cloud Performance

There are several ways to optimize your cloud performance without breaking the bank. Some of them include:

1. Provisioning Services Accurately

   Most people think increasing cloud spend is the solution to many of their cloud issues. However, an effective way to optimize your cloud performance is to make sure your services are right-sized.

   
   

   In other words, you're using metrics like CPU utilization, IOPS, memory, etc. to ensure that you're not spending more than you should on those services. Instead, you're allocating the optimal resources to each service.

   
   

2. Have A Multi-Cloud Support Strategy

   Having a Multi-Cloud Support Strategy allows you to tap into the best features of different cloud providers and easy integration. This means you can customize your cloud infrastructure with services tailored to your applications' needs.

   
   

   Another benefit of a multi-cloud strategy is that even if one of your providers experiences an outage, your applications will not go down. However, this strategy is only efficient for enterprises that have dedicated cloud teams, as it can be quite demanding.

   
   

3. Use Cloud-Native Architectures

   Cloud-native architecture is great for speeding up application development. The principle is that since your application will live on the cloud, it's best to build it using microservices.

   
   

   Microservices are small services handling a particular operation and can be coupled together to form an extensive application. Using cloud-native architecture is effective and will make your applications more reliable.

   
   

4. Infrastructure as Code

   This is configuring your cloud infrastructure to act automatedly. You program a set of codes to automate the processes in your cloud environment.

   
   

   Infrastructure as code reduces the need for human intervention and, consequently, errors. It also helps you to scale your infrastructure effectively.

   
   

5. Auto-Scale Compute Resources

   Many cloud providers offer auto-scaling as a pricing feature. This is more like a pay-as-you-go system, where you only pay for the services you use.

   
   

   When the demand for a particular resource increases, the provider scales up its capacity. And when it reduces, they scale it down.

7 Top Cloud Monitoring Tools

As you take measures to improve your cloud performance, you want to have a vault of tools that help you monitor their effectiveness. Below are some cloud monitoring tools that I've used:

1. Dynatrace

   Dynatrace is a cloud infrastructure monitoring tool that provides end-to-end infrastructure monitoring. It is an all-arounder that can show you, through metrics and logs, how your cloud infrastructure affects your applications.

2. DataDog

   DataDog monitors your server's health through metrics, events, traces, and logs. One of the features I love most is its service maps, which give you an overview of server issues, their effects, and how to fix them.

3. Redgate

   Redgate lets you monitor your database performance and security. It works both on-premise and in the cloud, which makes it perfect for organizations just migrating to the cloud.

4. Nagios

   Nagios helps you monitor and analyze network traffic across your infrastructure. It gives you an overview of traffic sources, threats, and even bandwidth usage.

5. Grafana

   Grafana is an open-source monitoring tool. It monitors your cloud environment, has data visualization features, and displays metrics such as memory usage, disk usage, CPU load, etc.

6. ELK

   ELK, which stands for  Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, and now Beats, is a four-in-one open-source monitoring tool. You'll use Elasticsearch for searching and analysis, Logstash for data ingestion, Kibana for data visualization and analysis, and Beats for collection.

7. NewRelic

   NewRelic is an application performance monitoring tool. In addition to cloud monitoring, it can be used to troubleshoot mobile, web, and on-premises environments. It also integrates with Grafana dashboards so you can visualize the insights it provides.

Final Thoughts

According to Flexera, the most pressing cloud challenges organizations face are lack of resources, governance, security, managing software licenses, and cloud spending. All these affect cloud effectiveness and reduce the overall performance of their applications.

To improve your cloud performance, you must be willing to find and create a strategy that works for you. You should also continually assess your strategy using the metrics I mentioned earlier.

Lastly, make sure the right tools are within reach, and your cloud infrastructure will thank you.