Web Mapping Cloud Deployment-

Lessons from the Field

Presented by:Michael LippmannBlue RasterApplications Moving to the Cloud

Location Intelligence GeoCloud 2010September 22, 2010

Challenge- Develop/Deploy in 30 daysClient

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

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

RequirementsHigh availability application

Downtime not an option-Redundancy

High Performance Subsecond performance for maps

Capacity Grant applicants will depend on system $1B+ being applied for

Why we went “Cloud”- Perishable App• Ability to scale to immediately- Day 1• Ability to deploy 5 load balanced map servers for

peak demand• Managed services for scaling based on use• Lower demand = turn servers off

• ESRI Cloud allowed peak use for short period of time

• On Day 90- system may be turned off.

Old Way, Cloud Way

Old• 5x Servers

• order, setup, deploy, maintain

• 5x Licenses• $300k capital• After 90 days not needed!

Cloudy – Web Mapping• 10x Servers

• Deploy – right click, wait 5 minutes

• 168 Hours x $6/hr = ~$1000

• Peak -$1000/week• Non-peak – $250/week• $30k for grant period• Bottom line- allows for

scale up/down with much lower capital outlay

How we did it- Hybrid SolutionESRI

ArcGIS Server -Cloud Infrastructure

Amazon EC2

ESRI ArcGIS Server for web mapping S3/CloudFront

Map tile cache hosting

Hosting.com vCloud hosting (using VMware)

Adobe ColdFusion Microsoft SQL Server

Load Estimation

Registrations

UDSmapper.org

What we Learned-Moving tiles into the cloud-

• Trying to upload 45 Million map tiles = #FAIL• Simply copying that many files takes >1 day• Load with Amazon Import/Export

Use fastest HD you can find- WD 10k SATA Took 20 hours to load files Within 48 hours files are online and ready to use

• Manage with CloudBerry Change permissions/setup CloudFront

Hybrid ChoicesHosting.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.

Launch Day- Plan for Anything• You will have DOWNTIME, need to manage it• Launch Day- 2 events caused unplanned

downtime Amazon S3 Outage- extremely rare but it happens

Datacenter – Cisco switch failure

Health Check your SiteSetup 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

Amazon Health Check http://status.aws.amazon.com/

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

Risks of Cloud• Amazon is great…but many cannot handle

unknown risk of elastic pricing• Need team that can administer• Technical saavy – new paradigm• Changes rapidly – must keep up

Conclusions/Questions• Deployment was successful, next one will be

easier and better• Cloud for web mapping cannot be ignored• Hybrid solutions work very well• Focus on your business requirements, outsource

all of the rest• Simple is always best

For more information:

Michael Lippmannmlippmann@blueraster.com

703-875-0914

www.blueraster.comblog.blueraster.com

@blueraster