AWS announces new region in Canada
aws.amazon.com
aws.amazon.com
I love the idea, and the fact that you actually implemented it. :)
- A session my boss did at re:Invent that touches on some of our cloud management tools, including Hanover [0]
- A blog post I did back when we were putting this together that explains our approach to calculating EC2 prices for live instances (it's not as easy as you would think/hope) [1]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epx_32c3c6s&feature=youtu.be [1] https://forrestbrazeal.com/2016/09/25/adventures-in-aws-unde...
Cold temperatures, Cheap (and renewable) power...
Is there a reason it didn't? (i'm not "in the know")
Also, qix puts their member list online, and Amazon has a 10gbps port: http://www.qix.ca/en/members/membership
From 2013: "deployed over 180 Gbps of capacity into the exchange." https://www.cologix.com/pdf/QIX-Case-Study.pdf
Nobody will invest in good internet lines if the only thing to go around is middle-aged people who think the internet is useless...
Service quality went down, new projects were put on hold, and investments in new technology was basically killed... Prices went up too.
Quebec has nationalized electricity and really missed the boat for newer technology.
And maybe even (somehow) freeze water in the winter and melt it in the summer to provide additional "free" cooling? (Might be a bit of a stretch)
Not sure about that freeze water in the winter and use it in the summer idea at such a low latitude...
But yes, using an artificial lake (or even a real one... given the population does not go bersek about protecting the wildlife) as a heat echanger might be an idea. Lake would most likely come close to freezing in the winter (need to engineer this properly) but in the summer you could get water from the depths to provide extra cooling power. Idea, put a beach there, get cheers from the population.
Other idea: run a river from up north in your datacenter and you've got a nice cooling strategy for basically... free. Better idea yet... Build the datacenter on top of the hydroelectric damn... Last thing to do is to run the lines... Not like Quebec had not mastered running lines over hundreds of kilometers anyways, they've been importing power from the north for decades.
This is exploited in deep water source cooling [1].
Such a thing is implemented in Lake Ontario since 2004.
Very cool imo :)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_water_source_cooling
Other factors include network connectivity, risk of local government wanting to access data, price of electricity (you still have to power machines, even if you get cooling for free), labor cost to build/maintain the center, proximity to an airport, risks of natural disasters, etc.
It's also very close to the American North East for data transfer...
* Pure speculation on my part
There were rumors that it would be in Baie D’Urfe, which is on the southwest tip of the island, fairly far from downtown Montreal. Here's a job posting for "data center security" which seems to be located out there: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/452269
Full disclosure: I work there.
The only mitigation is to make sure you encrypt everything in transit and ensure that the private keys never leave Canada.
Whether or not AWS, Azure, etc. can meet this...I honestly don't know.
I don't believe any provinces have requirements on border crossing, and there's no federal requirement on data sovereignty at all for private corporations.
Same requirement - data must not leave Canada, which ruled out basically all "hosted solutions"
http://www.servercloudcanada.com/2015/09/canadian-privacy-la...
There are only 3 provinces that require storage in Canada: BC, NS and QC. And even then, that is for public sector organizations only.
I can assure you the data we were sending around didn't even leave our territory, let alone the country, seeings we owned every single scrap of networking hardware in a ~10,000km radius.
However, in the last year, almost all major banks have moved to Azure and from what I've heard - a lot of companies don't mind it as much, but employees wanted to use AWS (familiarity I guess).
That said, MS has been on a hiring spree for TSPs and TAMs to expand as much as possible so it'll be fun to see what Amazon does to compete.
We def can't use Dropbox, Google Docs/Drive, anything above Office 2010. Slack is frowned upon even. It is kind of brutal.
Why would FIPPA affect Office versions past 2010? 2013, 2015 and 2016 are available as standalone (non-365 subscription) versions, and regardless of your purchase model (subscription, retail, volume, etc) you can still store documents locally.
I recommend reaching out to other health organizations within Canada as they often collect survey data internally. For example, surveys get used for feedback for presentations/educational sessions all the time. With the exception of Alberta, all provinces have separate health authorities which would mean separate contracts/sales cycles etc, however they are usually of large size so it would be worth it financially.
It feels like it's post-Snowden (but it may be I wasn't paying enough attention before then), but more and more countries have been passing data locality laws and are less willing to have their data residing in the US.
Growing up in Ontario I remember always being told we were in "Eastern Canada".
Quebec actually extends farther east than all other provinces (except Newfoundland). In other words, it's farther east than 3 out 4 so called "Atlantic" or "Eastern" provinces.
This new region is unique in that is does not refer to an actual place, and that the name alone is not descriptive (in the AWS console, it says just "Central" in the header).
In all seriousness I can see AWS eventually having to put multiple regions in some countries because the x province doesn't trust the y province.
As others have commented, I do think it has more to do with legal requirements (health industry etc...).
CBC: Reputed ringleader in $18.7M maple syrup heist found guilty
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/maple-syrup-heist-que...
EDIT: Of course this is dependent on what region you're currently in!
We are so similar to the US, that we're generally considered an afterthought for everything.
'Just give them the us thing' is the US companies Canadian strategy ...
I also assume that this also means Canadian tax is going to start being added onto all the prices?
I actually chose Washington state intentionally over North Dakota since its mild climate made for a more striking comparison. Factually correct, but perhaps a bit misleading.