This assignment will have you research cloud services, design a system that uses them, and then weigh that cloud design against hosting the same system yourselves — from a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) perspective.
You need to stand up a full web application for GrubStub (an online food ordering & delivery site)
This means that you need the following capabilities
- Persistent data storage for food orders
- Users can access the platform from both a mobile device and a browser
- And all the pieces that are needed to make a food ordering site work
As a group:
- Sketch a high-level architecture for GrubStub, and analyze the resources it will require (compute platform/size, virtual networks, storage size, SQL/database type, data bandwidth, and anything else you identify)
- Pick one cloud platform — Azure, AWS, or Rackspace — select the cloud components you need, allocate your software components to them, and work out configuration and monthly cost for each component (and the total)
- Now compare that against hosting it yourselves (on-premise): once you've figured out your configuration, get sample prices for servers and software (e.g. from dell.com)
- Normalize both options to Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over 5 years so cloud and on-premise are comparable
- Recommend the option you'd choose. If it isn't the lowest-TCO option, explain why (e.g. "TCO is higher, but...")