Cloud Computing
Operational Burden
Definition
Operational burden refers to the time, effort, and resources required to manage and maintain a system. This includes tasks like patching, monitoring, backups, troubleshooting, and scaling.
Why It Matters
A high operational burden can slow down development and innovation, as teams spend more time "keeping the lights on" than building new features. A key goal of moving to the cloud and using managed services is to reduce this burden.
Contextual Example
Running a database on a virtual server (IaaS) carries a high operational burden, as you are responsible for everything. Using a managed database service like Amazon RDS (PaaS) significantly reduces the operational burden, as the cloud provider handles most of the management tasks.
Common Misunderstandings
- Minimizing operational burden is a key principle of DevOps and SRE.
- Serverless computing offers the lowest possible operational burden.