Good day Spiceheads.
I am after a little advice regarding MPLS, good practices and the cloud (we have a support company we use for advice, but given that they provide such services, I can't help but feel the advice could be a little biased...)
Essentially, I am in the throws of putting out to tender a new WAN solution, as our current solution is both nearing contract end and no longer fits the requirements (we have a 2MB copper leased line to the Internet and a 2MB VPN between our main site and our other site not too far away)
It is highly likely that the site configuration will change over time, so the thoughts (and suggestions by suppliers) is not to try and replicate what we have with quicker lines, but to go down the MPLS route and have the flexibility to alter site configuration (addition/removal) with a little more ease. The suggestion is also to have an Internet breakout via a datacentre rather than at one of our sites. These would be fibre to the MPLS network, likely backed up with ADSL.
This sounds like a good solution, as it would also allow QoS (we have VoIP tagged onto the current setup, and it usually works pretty badly), as well as flexibility. So the first real question is, would MPLS be the best technology available without going down site to site VPN's and such? (I think I know what the answer will be here, but I figured it is worth asking the question anyway)
The other, and more pertinent, question is regarding not just datacentre Internet breakout, but cloud hosting. With our relatively compact IT department, it is likely we are going to look towards cloud services - be it fully hosted or just rented space to run servers as we do now, albeit in the cloud. It is here that my understanding is lesser (I know the technical side of MPLS but not necessarily how it fits into connections with other suppliers).
Without going out of an Internet connection (regardless where it would be) would the only option be to use our ISP datacentre(s) for cloud hosting, or can other suppliers' datacentres (or part thereof) be tagged onto the MPLS network so the cloud servers "act" as if they were in our office, rather than our over the Internet, also benefitting from the additional performance of not going out over the Internet? It is guaranteed we are going to be acquiring a new ERP system in the coming months and this will be cloud hosted - the query has stemmed as much from whether if we host with the ERP supplier, if they can become part of our network, as much as wishing to keep options open (i.e. I'd prefer to have the option to cloud host anywhere, not necessarily being stuck with our MPLS provider)
Thanks in advance :)