Searching the Help
To search for information in the Help, type a word or phrase in the Search box. When you enter a group of words, OR is inferred. You can use Boolean operators to refine your search.
Results returned are case insensitive. However, results ranking takes case into account and assigns higher scores to case matches. Therefore, a search for "cats" followed by a search for "Cats" would return the same number of Help topics, but the order in which the topics are listed would be different.
Words and Phrases
| Search for | Example | Results |
|---|---|---|
| A single word | cat
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Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats". |
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A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase. |
"cat food" (quotation marks) |
Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase. |
Using Boolean Operators
| Search for | Operator | Example |
|---|---|---|
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Two or more words in the same topic |
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| Either word in a topic |
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| Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase |
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| Topics that contain one string and do not contain another | ^ (caret) |
cat ^ mouse
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| A combination of search types | ( ) parentheses |
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Out-of-the-box optimization survey
Service Management provides an out-of-the-box survey that you use to collect basic application information that is used to provide cloud solution recommendations.
Note You cannot change or delete the questions in this survey.
Questions are included in the following areas:
Regulatory
Questions 1 and 2 are used to identify regulatory restrictions that would prevent this application from moving into a public cloud environment.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 |
Is the application subject to regulatory requirements such as FISMA, HIPAA, or other such regulations or required to run on a government certified operating system image? Possible answers are:
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| 2 |
Are there regulatory requirements requiring the data to be restricted to a specific geographic region? Possible answers are:
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Vendor Support
Questions 3 and 4 are used to identify vendor support issues that would prevent this application from moving into a public cloud environment.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 3 |
Is the application fully vendor supported in a virtualized environment? Possible answers are:
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| 4 |
Is the application required to run on a vendor certified operating system image? Possible answers are:
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Geography
Question 5 is used to identify any geographic impediments for moving this application into a public cloud environment.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 5 |
Is the geographic location of the user base a factor in your application hosting? Possible answers are:.
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Service Availability
Questions 6 and 7 are use to identify whether the availability service level required by this application is in alignment with most major public cloud service providers to date.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 6 |
What availability service level is required? Possible answers are:
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| 7 |
In the event of a failure will your application support restarting without human intervention? Possible answers are:
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Workload Variability
The cloud is ideal for enabling scalability by providing "on demand" computing resources that promise a more flexible, dynamic, timely, cost-effective solution, which can be best taken advantage of by applications that experience unpredictable, cyclic, or spiky peaks in demand. Questions 8 and 9 are used to identify technical workload variability issues that would prevent this application from moving into a public cloud.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 8 |
Does the application have workloads with unpredictable peaks in demand? Possible answers are:
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| 9 |
Does the application have spiky or cyclic usage profiles? Possible answers are:
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Security
Questions 10, 11, 12, and 13 are used to identify security constraints for this application. In order to move an application to a public cloud environment, either the issues or constraints would have to be addressed or the organization would have to perform a full risk assessment to determine if the estimate of risk is acceptable to the organization.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 10 |
Does the application use encryption for communication? Possible answers are:
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| 11 |
Is the application's data in storage encrypted? Possible answers are:
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| 12 |
Does your organization have any security policies that would prevent a 3rd-party cloud provider from having admin access to the server, storage, or network infrastructure? Possible answers are:
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| 13 |
Does your existing security model use proprietary authentication and authorization? Possible answers are:
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Infrastructure Compatibility
Applications that are tied to individually-defined servers or legacy operating systems cannot be moved to a shared environment, and until modernized, will require a dedicated environment. This includes licensing that ties an application to a specific server restricting it from virtualization and applications that require special hardware, such as physical security devices, graphics cards, and specific network devices. Questions 14, 15, 16, and 17 are used to identify infrastructure issues that would prevent this application from moving into a public cloud environment.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 14 |
Are there any licensing restrictions that prevent this application from running in a virtualized or cloud environment? Possible answers are:
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| 15 |
Does the application have any physical hardware dependencies? Possible answers are:
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| 16 |
Is the application currently running on a legacy operating system? Possible answers are:
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| 17 |
Are there any existing technical concerns/issues that need to be addressed before transition to a cloud environment? Possible answers are:
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Cloud Operating Model
Questions 18 and 19 are used to identify proprietary restrictions that would prevent this application from being compatible with a public cloud environment, such as operating system customization or proprietary clustering technologies.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 18 |
Does the operating system require any customization to support the application? Possible answers are:
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| 19 |
Does the application use proprietary clustering technologies? Possible answers are:
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Internet Suitability
Questions 20, 21, 22, and 23 are used to identify the standard internet connectivity issues that would prevent this application from being compatible with a public cloud environment.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 20 |
Will the level of performance of standard internet connectivity be sufficient for this application? Possible answers are:
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| 21 |
Does the application use only standard internet protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, or FTP? Possible answers are:
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| 22 |
Will the level of reliability of standard internet connectivity be sufficient for this application? Possible answers are:
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| 23 |
Will the level of security of standard internet connectivity be sufficient for this application, such as HTTPS? Possible answers are:
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Performance
Questions 24 and 25 are used to identify the performance requirements of this application in terms of bandwidth and latency characteristics.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 24 |
What is the required data bandwidth? Possible answers are:
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| 25 |
What is acceptable data latency? Possible answers are:
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Architecture
Questions 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, and 32 are used to identify the architecture issues that would prevent this application from being compatible with a public cloud environment.
| 26 |
Does the application benefit from parallel processing? Possible answers are:
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| 27 |
What is the communication architecture for the application? Possible answers are:
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| 28 |
Does the application scale up (vertically) or out (horizontally)? Possible answers are:
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| 29 |
What is the current architecture? Possible answers are:
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| 30 |
Is the application considered context or core? Possible answers are:
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| 31 |
Does the application rely on any services or components that are written in legacy software technologies or languages? Possible answers are:
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| 32 |
Is the application based on modern software technologies and languages? Possible answers are:
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Interfaces
Question 33, 34, and 35 are used to identify issues with the application interfaces that would prevent this application from moving to a public cloud environment.
| Question | Description |
|---|---|
| 33 |
Are the application's communication, data, and process interfaces well defined and documented? Possible answers are:
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| 34 |
Are the application's user interfaces well defined and documented? Possible answers are:
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| 35 |
Does the application use only standard internet protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, or FTP? Possible answers are:
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