Remote Server Administration and Cloud Services - MetaSoft

This article discusses the requirements for conducting remote server administration and resource management for cloud services used by MetaSoft. It also provides steps to migrate to AWS cloud services and critical issues that might occur at each step. The article covers topics such as Remote Server Administration Tools, AWS Operational Checklist, SLA Management, and critical issues that might occur during migration.

Running Head: REMOTE SERVER ADMINISTRATION AND CLOUD SERVICES
A brief explanation of Remote server administration tools and the cloud services used by
MetaSoft
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1REMOTE SERVER ADMINISTRATION AND CLOUD SERVICES
Requirements that MetaSoft needs to consider conducting Remote Server
Administration:
Understanding Remote server administration tools:
RSAT is the abbreviation of Remote Server Administration Tools that are used to take
control over other computers that runs the same operating system (Steenstra et al., 2015). RSAT
is defined as Windows server component that can remotely manage other computers.
Requirements to consider while performing remote server administration:
The requirements that needs to be considered while conducting remote server
administration are whether the remote server administration tools allows administrators to
manage features, role services and roles on a remote computer by running snap-ins in them,
whether they perform Hyper-V management and Group Policy Management, whether the tools
have cluster-aware updating and are best practices analyzer.
Further, the main consideration that MetaSoft needs to take in order to conduct remote
server administration is the operating system on which the computers are running (Orduña et al.,
2015). In other words, the computers using operating systems besides Windows Server 2008,
Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows 8 will be unable to
support the remote server administration tools.
Requirements that MetaSoft will consider while conducting Resource
Management:
AWS operational checklist for AWS describes the requirements that an organization
should consider while performing resource management. MetaSoft should check whether the

2REMOTE SERVER ADMINISTRATION AND CLOUD SERVICES
cloud service provides user specific credentials rather than shared credentials for making AWS
infrastructure requests, understand IaaS and PaaS instances and check for Amazon Elastic Block
Store (Amazon EBS)- backed and instance store backed (Tawfik et al., 2014). The company
should choose the most appropriate storage type such that it can understand data persistence,
recovery and backup. MetaSoft should consider using separate Amazon EBS for
application/database data and for operating system. It should use Amazon EBS snapshots or any
other backup tool to regularly backup its Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
(Habiba & Akhter, 2013). To eliminate failure of Amazon EC2 instances or Amazon EBS
volumes through customized “golden” Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), bootstrapping,
Amazon EBS snapshots and backup/recovery tools MetaSoft should consider regularly testing
the process of recovering Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute instances or Amazon Elastic Block
Store volumes. They should also consider regular testing of cloud services, applications and
customized AMIs for securing, updating and patching them. Before sharing customized AMIs
with others, all sensitive and confidential data that includes embedded private and public
instance key pairs and review all SSH authorized keys files (Finley, 2018). MetaSoft should
consider implementing secure nested Security Group rules and Security Group rules such that a
hierarchical network topology can be created where appropriate.
Requirements to consider for conducting SLA management:
For performing Service Level Agreement management of IaaS and PaaS instances,
MetaSoft should approach for billing and account management, identifying and tracking
provisioned resources of Amazon Web Services, develop strategy for managing the operating
systems, data access, network, AWS API and console, check if the application of cloud service
meets or exceeds the applications resilience and high availability (HA) requirements. MetaSoft

3REMOTE SERVER ADMINISTRATION AND CLOUD SERVICES
should also consider checking the disaster recovery and backup requirements as a part of SLA
management. Instrumentation of appropriate monitoring tools and integration of AWS resources
with incident management processes should be considered while service-level agreement
management. The AWS resources used in MetaSoft should have change and configuration
management strategy. The company should also consider integration of deployments and
application releases with change and configuration management strategy.
Steps that will help to migrate to AWS cloud services:
MetaSoft should include the following steps to move SQL server 2012 database servers
and SharePoint instance to AWS cloud are given below:
 Firstly, MetaSoft should plan to use several AWS tools and services to move their
databases into cloud (Newcombe et al., 2015). The choice of AWS migration tool should
be made according to the type of database migration being performed. Examples of AWS
migration tools are AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) are AWS Schema
Conversion Tool (AWS SCT) (Alqahtani & Gamble, 2017). These two tools are different
and based on the type of migration it is performing MetaSoft should plan to choose the
right one among them.
 Second step is planning launch of the SharePoint instance and SQL server 2012 database
in the cloud (Kadam & Thool, 2017). For launching, the company has to create an
account on any one of the tools mentioned above.
 Third, MetaSoft should consider locating the replication instance on the same VPC and
Availability Zone as that of the database, in this case SQL server 2012 database.

4REMOTE SERVER ADMINISTRATION AND CLOUD SERVICES
 Next source endpoint should be created by MetaSoft. The source endpoint will define all
the information that the database needs to connect to AWS cloud.
 Similarly, the next plan would be creating a target endpoint (Varia & Mathew, 2014).
The target endpoint will help AWS DMS and AWS SCT to connect to the databases in
this case SharePoint instance and SQL server 2012 database.
 Lastly, the plan should include creating and running a migration task. Migration task will
give an idea to the migrating tools where to migrate thee existing data (Mathew & Varia,
2014). To perform a migration task several parameters are required to be considered.
They are endpoints and replication servers, migration type, Line of Business parameters
logging should be enabled to facilitate debugging and mapping tables.
Critical issues that might occur at each step of migration to AWS cloud:
The issues in each step that needs to be considered by MetaSoft are discussed as follows:
 Choosing the right migrating tool for migrating databases to the AWS cloud. This issue is
considered as critical because if the wrong tool is chosen then the transfer of databases to
the cloud will be a failure. To eliminate failure of Amazon EC2 instances or Amazon
EBS volumes through customized “golden” Amazon Machine Images (AMIs),
bootstrapping, Amazon EBS snapshots and backup/recovery tools MetaSoft should
consider regularly testing the process of recovering Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute
instances or Amazon Elastic Block Store volumes.
 The issue that MetaSoft might face while creating account in AWS DMS or AWS SCT
tool is providing the right information. This issue is considered critical because without
creating account in any one of the tool transfer of database to the cloud will not be done.

5REMOTE SERVER ADMINISTRATION AND CLOUD SERVICES
 The issue that they face while implementing the third step is locating the replication
instance. Application of cloud service should be such that it meets or exceeds the
applications resilience and high availability (HA) requirements. MetaSoft should also
consider checking the disaster recovery and backup requirements as a part of SLA
management. Instrumentation of appropriate monitoring tools and integration of AWS
resources with incident management processes should be considered while service-level
agreement management.
 The critical issue faced while creating source endpoint and target endpoint is that the
computers using operating systems besides Windows Server 2008, Windows Server
2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows 8 will be unable to support
the remote server administration tools. Isolated and private section of the AWS cloud can
be provisioned by MetaSoft with the help of Virtual Private Cloud. It will facilitate in
launching AWS services and other resources in a virtual network. Therefore, all the
computers in the company should be using the same VPC and the same operating system.
 AWS cloud offers machine learning that invites security issues to cloud.

6REMOTE SERVER ADMINISTRATION AND CLOUD SERVICES
References:
Alqahtani, S., & Gamble, R. (2017). Verifying the Detection Results of Impersonation Attacks in
Service Clouds. Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal, 2,
449-459.
Finley, N. (2018). Understanding and Mitigating the Dynamic Behavior of RICWS and DMS
under Wind Loading.
Habiba, M., & Akhter, S. (2013, May). A cloud based natural disaster management system. In
International Conference on Grid and Pervasive Computing (pp. 152-161). Springer,
Berlin, Heidelberg.
Kadam, A., & Thool, V. (2017). Scheduling Tasks in Grid Computing Environments.
ICCASP/ICMMD-2016. Advances in Intelligent Systems Research, 137, 342-348.
Mathew, S., & Varia, J. (2014). Overview of amazon web services. Amazon Whitepapers.
Newcombe, C., Rath, T., Zhang, F., Munteanu, B., Brooker, M., & Deardeuff, M. (2015). How
Amazon web services uses formal methods. Communications of the ACM, 58(4), 66-73.
Orduña, P., Zutin, D. G., Govaerts, S., Zorrozua, I. L., Bailey, P. H., Sancristobal, E., ... &
Castro, M. (2015). An extensible architecture for the integration of remote and virtual
laboratories in public learning tools. IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologias del
Aprendizaje, 10(4), 223-233.
Steenstra, J., Taylor, K., Chen, L., Hedtke, P., & Lobovsky, R. J. (2015). U.S. Patent No.
8,942,689. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

7REMOTE SERVER ADMINISTRATION AND CLOUD SERVICES
Tawfik, M., Salzmann, C., Gillet, D., Lowe, D., Saliah-Hassane, H., Sancristobal, E., & Castro,
M. (2014). Laboratory as a service (LaaS): A novel paradigm for developing and
implementing modular remote laboratories. International Journal of Online Engineering
(iJOE), 10(4), 13-21.
Varia, J., & Mathew, S. (2014). Overview of amazon web services. Amazon Web Services.