On-Premise Infrastructure: Pros & Cons
Deciding between cloud and on-premise infrastructure? This post compares both, considering a multi-cloud strategy's popularity, and explores market options for background job processing. Whether you're exploring on-premise or cloud deployment options, this article will help you choose the solution that best meets your specific needs and requirements.
Bonus: Learn how to set up IronWorker in a hybrid environment.
4 Critical Takeaways on On-Premise Deployment:
- On-premise deployment remains a viable option for many organizations, despite the popularity of cloud deployment.
- Maintaining on-premise infrastructure can be beneficial for organizations with strict security and compliance requirements, as well as those with legacy systems that are not easily migrated to the cloud.
- Top market options for background job processing include Sidekiq, Celery, Hangfire, and IronWorker.
- IronWorker stands out as a scalable and easy-to-use platform, supporting multiple languages and different deployment options (cloud-based, on-premise, and hybrid).
Table of Content:
- What is On-Premise Infrastructure?
- When organizations may choose to maintain on-premise infrastructure?
- Comparing Market Options for Background Job Processing
- Set up IronWorker in a hybrid environment
- Conclusion
What Is On-Premise Infrastructure?
On-premises refers to the traditional way of managing computing resources, networking, storage, and software, where everything is housed on a company’s own physical site, such as a data center.
However, an on-premises IT or data environment means that an enterprise must manage all resources on an ongoing basis. As a result, capital expenditure (CapEx) may be higher upfront, and there’s a periodic need to refresh, upgrade, and patch hardware and software systems. It’s also necessary to manage licenses, handle integration between and among systems, and address performance issues or component failures as they arise. If something breaks — such as a server — it’s up to the organization to fix or replace it.
In some cases, the choice between cloud and on-premises frameworks may be a moot point. This includes situations where there’s a need for specific hardware components, networking capabilities, or software. However, the vast majority of providers now offer their platforms, services, and software in the cloud — and many also support hybrid environments. This provides the flexibility that some organizations require.
When organizations may choose to maintain on-premise infrastructure?
- Data Security: Some organizations may have strict security and compliance requirements that necessitate keeping sensitive data and applications within their own premises to have full control over data security and access.
- Performance and Latency: Certain applications or workloads may require low-latency access to data or need to process large amounts of data locally, making on-premise infrastructure more suitable to meet those requirements.
- Regulatory Compliance: In some industries or regions, regulations may mandate that certain data or applications be hosted on-premises to comply with industry-specific or government regulations.
- Customization and Control: Having on-prem infrastructure allows organizations to have greater customization and control over their computing resources, software configurations, and system management, tailored to their specific needs.
- Legacy Systems: Organizations with legacy applications or systems that are not easily migrated to the cloud may continue to maintain on-premise infrastructure to support those legacy systems.
Comparing Market Options for Background Job Processing
Several background job processing solutions are available, including:
- Sidekiq: An open-source Ruby library that leverages Redis for efficient background job processing.
- Celery: A popular distributed task queue for Python applications, using message brokers like RabbitMQ or Redis as the backend.
- Hangfire: A .NET library for background job processing, which supports SQL Server, Redis, or PostgreSQL as storage backends.
- IronWorker: A commercial solution that supports multiple languages, offering a scalable and easy-to-use platform for background job processing.
To help you make an informed decision, we have created a comparison table for these solutions:
| Feature | Sidekiq | Celery | Hangfire | IronWorker |
| Language Support | Ruby | Python | .NET | Multiple |
| Backend Storage | Redis | RabbitMQ, Redis | SQL Server, Redis, PostgreSQL | Cloud-based, On-Premise, Hybrid |
| Open Source | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Scalability | High | High | High | High |
| Ease of Use | Moderate | Moderate | Moderate | High |
| Pricing | Free | Free | Free | Paid |
| Monitoring & Logging | Limited | Limited | Limited | Comprehensive |
| Dashboard Interface | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Error Handling | Basic | Basic | Basic | Advanced |
| Job Prioritization | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Job Retries | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Concurrency Control | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Scheduler | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Community & Support | Large | Large | Large | Professional Support |
By examining the features in the comparison table, you can better understand which solution is the most suitable for your organization's specific needs and requirements.
Set up IronWorker in a hybrid environment
It's very easy to get started using Hybrid IronWorker. Just follow the steps below to get started.
- Create a cluster. Login to HUD, click IronWorker, then click your name in the top right and then click “My Clusters”. You'll see a list of existing clusters if any and a link to Create a new one. Click the Create Cluster link. Fill out the form and submit it. You'll get a
CLUSTER_IDandCLUSTER_TOKENthat you'll need in the next steps.
- Launch the iron/runner image. On any machine that has Docker installed, just run our iron/runner image with the following flags:
docker run --privileged -d -e "CLUSTER_ID={CLUSTER_ID}" -e "CLUSTER_TOKEN={CLUSTER_TOKEN}" iron/runner
Replace {CLUSTER_ID} and {CLUSTER_TOKEN} with the id and token you obtained in step 1 above. That's it! Launch as many of runners as you want/need.
Using your new cluster
Everything is the same as using IronWorker on the public cloud, except when queuing jobs, simply pass in the CLUSTER_ID in the "cluster" param (API docs). Here is a quick example you can use with Iron command line tool (ironCLI). First register your worker Docker image with Iron. You can use the example worker image as is with the commands below:
iron register iron/hello
Queue your task:
iron worker queue --cluster CLUSTER_ID --wait iron/hello
Here you can find “HelloWorld” examples for different programming languages that explain how to build your own docker image, test it locally, etc.
Conclusion
Choosing between on-premise and cloud deployment depends on an organization's needs. On-premise infrastructure offers customization but requires maintenance, while cloud provides scalability and flexibility but may lack in security.
IronWorker provides a solution that offers the best of both worlds: the scalability and ease of use of cloud deployment, with the added flexibility of on-premise and hybrid deployment options. By using IronWorker, organizations can take advantage of a comprehensive background job processing solution that offers advanced error handling, job prioritization, and concurrency control, as well as a dashboard interface and comprehensive monitoring and logging capabilities.
Talk to the Iron.io team to get started with IronWorker.