Hybrid Clouds

Hybrid Clouds

A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing model that uses a combination of at least one private cloud and at least one public cloud. They work together to provide a flexible mix of cloud computing services. Hybrid cloud computing extends infrastructure and operations consistently to provide a single operating model. This manages application workloads across both environments, allowing for seamless migration of workloads from private to or from public cloud as business needs dictate.

This solution offer a single, seamless pool of resources that support modern application strategies and an organization’s digital transformation efforts. Most organizations have adopted hybrid cloud infrastructure to reduce risk, minimise overall IT and cloud costs. Also support cloud migration without refactoring, data center consolidation, and meet seasonal peaks in demand for compute and storage resources

Hybrid cloud architecture traditionally builds a virtualization layer or hypervisor on top of on-premises resources. This is to create and support virtual machines and increasingly container-based workloads. On top of this, IT teams install a private cloud software layer, such as VMware or OpenStack, which delivers various cloud capabilities: self-service access to services such as compute or database instances, automation and orchestration, resilience and billing. This layer is integrated into services and APIs from public cloud providers.

Hybrid cloud components

Every hybrid cloud environment contains the following three components:

1. Public cloud services delivered and supported via the public internet through a third-party cloud provider. Public cloud access is provided through a subscription model, such as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Examples of prominent public cloud providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure
2. Private cloud services, which serve the same purpose as public clouds but are dedicated to just one customer. They provide a cloud infrastructure for exclusive use by one business, organization or government entity. Because the private cloud is not shared with any other users, this type of network tends to provide far greater control, privacy and security. As long as the user has adopted a comprehensive security strategy specifically designed for the cloud.
3. On-premises infrastructure, or a traditional computing environment, wherein select services are run, managed and maintained using hardware and servers owned and operated by the organization.

Management of Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud platforms are centered around hybrid cloud management tools, which ensure that both public and private cloud elements are working in sync to achieve the desired business goals.

Some popular hybrid orchestration models include:

 Managed by Customer: Private cloud solutions can be deployed in on-premises and edge environments, often as hyperconverged infrastructure. These are like the Software as Service options and it is fully available from the private datacenter.

 Managed by Vendor: Vendors can deploy and manage hybrid solutions in data centers and edge environments. This is a fully hosted hardware and software product which needs to be used. So it is dependent on the set of package they provide.

Managed by Partners: Hybrid cloud solutions are offered by a wide range of cloud providers and hosted infrastructure providers who offer great infrastructure and operations compatible with on-perm private cloud solutions.

Managed by Providers: Hyper scale cloud providers offer a standard cloud service and as well as solutions based on a set of defined infrastructure and operations that are compatible with private cloud solutions.

Benefits

There are various benefits offered by the hybrid cloud platforms which are listed below.

Flexibility

A hybrid cloud computing model allows the organization to run a workload in the optimal environment, as well as shift that workload based on capacity, demand or costs. This will help the consumer in various ways.

Cost Efficiency

In any cloud-based model, capacity can expand (Scale out) and shrink (Scale in) as needed with varying demand. Consumption-based pricing helps companies save money on physical data center space, power allocation and hardware costs when they pay as you go.

Adopting a hybrid model, in particular, helps organizations optimize their costs by selecting the best computing environment for each task.

Elasticity

A hybrid cloud environment is dynamic, meaning that resources can quickly be modified and reallocated based on current demand. Further, in the case of unexpected spikes in demand, the business can manage such spikes through a public cloud service.

Business Agility

A hybrid cloud model can help expand the utilization of Agile and DevOps methodologies, which in turn can help speed up the delivery based on the demand. So this is a valuable way to meet customer supply.

Enhanced Security and Compliance

A hybrid cloud platform helps the organisation take a holistic approach for cybersecurity and regulatory compliance. Since the organisation is operating in a single IT environment, companies can develop a great strategy and deploy tools consistently across the entire environment. So this helps to host and maintain sensitive data and information as dictated by the security laws of the land. This can be utilised for government agencies where data security is key.

Challenges

The challenge for organisations adopting hybrid cloud is to find an operating model that simplifies operations, reduces management complexity and allows interoperability to enhance flexibility. It also needs to addresses the requirements of a wide range of application architectures and digital business objectives.
A hybrid cloud solution works best when a single set of management tools, skills and workflows. It can extend seamlessly across consistent infrastructure that is common to on-site, public cloud, and hosted environments.

A single operating model addresses the challenges related to:

• Migration without refactoring: If applications are migrated from dissimilar environments, then applications need time-consuming and costly refactoring during migration.  Consistent infrastructure allows fast, low-cost migration to the cloud—and easy migration back on-site if needs change.
• VM and container workloads: IT organizations increasingly must support containerized cloud-native application architectures in addition to existing virtual machines. A hybrid cloud management foundation should enable integrated management of both existing and new applications.
• Making security and policies consistent: Many security policies are tied to the underlying infrastructure. With hybrid cloud, it is important to be able to tie security and compliance policies to the workload. So policies can be enforced consistently wherever workloads are deployed.
• Siloed tools and processes: If different tools and processes are used to manage applications and underlying infrastructure in various unique environments then new functional divisions and specialized skills can keep organizations from achieving their cloud goals. A hybrid cloud should extend existing IT tools and processes from data center to cloud to optimize operational efficiency and avoid having to train or hire new capabilities.