Benefits of having MID servers on AWS vs On-Prem.

Avro Guha · ‎04-15-2020

Benefits of having MID servers on AWS vs On-Prem. Which will be better and why ?

Right now we have MID servers on both AWS Cloud and On-Prem but I want to understand the benefits of having MID server on a cloud infrastructure compared to On-Prem. Cloud is good for applications but is it good for MID servers ?

David Sorf · ‎04-17-2020

Hi Avro,

I was expecting that you are having probably mixed environment and because of that you asked this question. From my perspective I would stick to main idea which is similar to this:

MID server is extension of ServiceNow to connect to local resources where you are not able to connect directly from cloud where ServiceNow SaaS is hosted. Even not mentioning VPN which is another option but used in very specific situations.

Therefore my suggestion would be to place MID server close to devices which you are connecting to and not move them far away and have VPN between your MID server cloud and your intrnal network, unless you have many MID servers hosted in public cloud and specific usage of that.

Advantage of scaling and bursting performance you would probably use in case you are running performance extensive tasks on MID server and then answer is YES = use cloud and flexible scaling and elasticity.

On other side when you using it for integrations (eg. LDAP, ODBC, REST or SOAP) then it is not so crucial for CPU performance as it mostly forward messages which retrieves via ECC queue. In that case I would go more for easier and safer networking solution and if you are still interested in elasticity and scaling on premise I would suggest you to use MID server running in docker container which gives you much more flexibility even onsite.

Did I answer your question? Was it helpful or you need more help. If you ask generic question I can answer also in generic mode. Please let me know if interested in MID server running on premise in Linux Docker container. Can share that as well.

Kind regards,

David

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Gaurav Shirsat · ‎04-15-2020

Hi Avro Guha

as per my knowledge it is good to go for On-Prem

https://www.fingent.com/blog/why-prefer-aws-over-on-premise-hosting

https://www.faronics.com/news/blog/4-key-differences-between-on-premises-and-cloud-solutions

Benifits of AWS

https://aws.amazon.com/application-hosting/benefits/

Please Mark Correct and Helpful

Thanks and Regards

Gaurav Shirsat

Daniel Draes · ‎04-15-2020

Well, I would say this strongly depends on what the MID should be doing 🙂

If it needs to interact with other deviced in your AWS Cloud it is better to place the MID there as well. If the intention is to interact with devices in your local network (aka on-premise), better place it there.

A MID should always be as close as possible to the devices it needs to talk to.

David Sorf · ‎04-15-2020

Hello Avro,

this depends on what you are using MID server for. Mostly it is used for integration via SOAP or REST to internal network or performing Discovery in particular network segment.

If those networks / segments are in your local network or datacenter (on-premise) then you will place your MID server to that network as you don't want to have VPN or tunnel from MID server to your network segment (however it is also possibility but question is what you would gain by doing so).

Sometimes there are other use cases for MID server where you just need to perform some batch operation or external application without any connection to your local network then it can be anywhere and you probably utilize more cloud resources (eg. AWS) where you have elasticity and better capacity and performance according to your needs.

Last option could be place MID server to yout AWS infrastructure in cloud for accesing those AWS machines from ServiceNow via internal netwrok (private AWS network) without exposing open ports to public.

If you would be more descriptive what is your objective then we could elaborate more on pros and cons.

Hope this help you.

Kind regards,

David

Avro Guha · ‎04-16-2020

Hi David,

The scenarios you have mentioned all are valid for our use case. We have assets to be discovered both on cloud and on prem and we will place MID servers accordingly considering the closest network path.

But what I mainly wanted to understand is if a MID server is placed on Cloud will it be able to take advantage of any of the cloud benefits like auto vertical scaling or using CPU Credits and Burstable Performance or something else (other cloud benefits ) which is not there on a stand alone on-prem server. And if yes will a trade off for longer network path with better performance is a good idea ?

Thanks

Avro