Question

VideoDev Ltd is a video and production development company which works for clients across Australia and New Zealand. The company is considering moving some of its computer infrastructure into the Cloud. The VideoDev Board is contemplating this move as a way to increase the company’s flexibility and responsiveness, as well as to achieve some savings on the cost of maintaining their ICT infrastructure.

VideoDev has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud Computing in their daily operations. They have some 100 video production, engineering and support staff that work on different projects for clients in Australia and New Zealand. They have been advised that a move to using a Cloud based infrastructure would be an advantage to them.

VideoDev have a number of application servers in their Sydney and Melbourne datacentres that provide video processing capabilities for their staff. These servers are quite heavily customised and run reasonably heavy workloads while doing video processing. There is often a considerable queue of jobs waiting to be processed, which causes backlogs in getting jobs completed on time. The Board hopes that a move to a cloud based operation may help to relieve these backlogs.   

Another of VideoDev’s initial projects is to provide all their staff with a Standard Desktop Operating Environment (SDOE) on their desktop. This would include providing a standard desktop to any device that their staff may be using, as well as access to office automation, such as email, word processing, spreadsheet capabilities, as well as online storage for their files. The Board want the SDOE to be available on any device that their staff use, whether they are in the office, at home, or deployed at a customer’s office in the field.

VideoDev is considering the use of either Amazon WorkSpaces (https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/) or Windows Virtual Desktop (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/services/virtual-desktop/) as a replacement for their existing desktop environment.

Your task is to:

What other types of architectural patterns could be used in this deployment?

How that move would assist in removing backlogs?

Answer 1

Ans 1 : The other type of architectural pattern that can be used in this deployment is

1) Autoscaling pattern - In this pattern the system requirements are autoscaled to required CPU/Memory

to cater to high workloads.

2) Throttling pattern - If autoscaling is not available we can use throttling pattern where , when the workload increases

beyond control, processes crossing a certain threshold of CPU/Memory requirement are throttled to let the remaining processes

complete. Throttled process is rerun later.

Ans 2 : This would assist in removing the backlog in the following ways:

1) In case of auto-scaling , by increasing CPU/Memory available to the system backlogs are not created.

2) In case of throttling , when some process gets throttled it is rerun as soon as there is enough CPU/Memory available

for its running, thus removing backlog.