Hybrid Cloud Architecture: What Is It and Why You Should Care
Let's face it: We've repeatedly heard that a hybrid cloud is better than a standalone private or public cloud. However, most people need to understand why this is the case.
The truth is that hybrid cloud architecture applies to more varied IT storage solutions than almost any other data management term.
One of the disadvantages of using a standalone public or private cloud is that enterprises continuously need help to scale their business offerings in these computing environments. A balanced workload placement approach is more suitable where users rationalize their on-premise environment with a public cloud environment. It's now time for the hybrid cloud.
In this post, we'll discuss everything you should know about hybrid cloud architecture, including what it is, how it can benefit your organization, and the tips for selecting a cloud storage provider for your hybrid strategy.
What is a Hybrid Cloud Architecture?
A hybrid cloud refers to a cloud environment made of different types of infrastructure, often a public cloud with either a private cloud or an on-premise infrastructure. Hybrid cloud architecture orchestrates on-premise, private cloud with third-party, public cloud platforms. As computing needs and costs change, hybrid cloud architecture gives businesses greater flexibility and deployment options, making moving workloads between public and private clouds possible.
Hybrid cloud architectures often have the following attributes:
Unified Management: One overarching tool usually manages the hybrid cloud infrastructure, eliminating the need for separate cloud management.
Data Integration: With a hybrid cloud, you'll synchronize your data across a public cloud and other cloud storage infrastructures. However, synchronizing data across different infrastructures can be difficult, so you must implement additional technical solutions to ensure your data is consistent.
Network connections: Network connectivity is crucial for deploying a hybrid cloud architecture. Remember, private clouds, public clouds, and legacy infrastructure connect through a public or private network.
Consolidation of IT resources: A hybrid cloud infrastructure will require you to consolidate your IT infrastructure.
Orchestration of processes: This entails automating tasks needed to manage the connections and operation of workloads.
Another trait of the hybrid cloud model is that it can scale out swiftly by providing new resources.
That said, deploying hybrid cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular, with organizations opting to combine tightly controlled private cloud infrastructure with the power of the public cloud. In fact, according to a recent report, about 82% of IT leaders said they had adopted a hybrid cloud.
How Does a Hybrid Cloud Work?
How a public and private cloud work as part of a hybrid cloud is similar to how they work as standalone cloud environments.
A local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), application programming interface (API), or virtual private network (VPN) connects multiple computers. Then software-defined storage and containers abstract resources enabling you to pool them into data lakes. Management software allocates these resources into locations or environments where applications can run. Afterward, an authentication service helps provide the resources on demand.
The network connections between the various hybrid cloud infrastructures are crucial. Your organization is only running a hybrid cloud infrastructure if they are connected. Instead, you're running several cloud environments parallel to each other, which could result in the misalignment of data.
Separate cloud infrastructures only become hybrid when they are seamlessly interconnected. The interconnectivity optimizes the movement of workloads, process orchestration, and management unification.
Types of Hybrid Cloud Models
There are different types of hybrid cloud models. They include:
Cloud Bursting: This model allows you to keep your applications in the private cloud while simultaneously allowing you to move applications to the public cloud whenever you have increased demand.
Edge Hybrid: Edge computing fits across hybrid and multi-cloud computing and entails running servers closer to where the data is created. It requires each device operating on a LAN network to play a part in information processing. This is usually referring to a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Most cloud service providers offer CDN for anything you can think of—Amazon AWS, Google GCP, Microsoft Azure, etc.
Tiered Hybrid: This hybrid cloud allows you to deploy existing applications in the public cloud and keep your computing in the private cloud.
How to Build a Hybrid Cloud
Each cloud environment is unique since private clouds are one-of-a-kind while several public cloud providers exist. As such, there isn't a one-size-fits-all hybrid cloud solution—how you organize your solutions to build a hybrid cloud will be unique. However, there are two primary ways of building a hybrid cloud environment.
Traditional Hybrid Cloud Architecture
Traditional hybrid clouds result from connecting private and public cloud environments using sophisticated and massive volumes of middleware. You can either use a pre-packaged cloud infrastructure or a private cloud. You'll also need a public cloud provider.
These two clouds must be linked. Moving resources between the two environments require you to use powerful middleware. Most cloud service providers offer preconfigured VPNs in their packages.
Modern Hybrid Cloud Architecture
While the traditional hybrid cloud architecture is relatively effective, most organizations build their hybrid clouds differently. They create and deploy applications as collections of independent, small, and loosely coupled services. Modern hybrid cloud architecture focuses on the portability of the applications that run within the environment instead of connecting the environment itself.
By managing all components using a unified platform and running them in the same operating system in the IT environment, modern cloud architects extend the universality of the applications to the underlying environments.
Using the same operating system abstracts all hardware requirements, while orchestration abstracts all the application requirements. You may build a consistent and interconnected computing environment that allows the movement of applications between the environments without the need to use APIs, which change every time you change or update cloud providers.
The Difference Between Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Models?
Another standard cloud computing model that you should be aware of is multi-cloud architecture. This cloud computing model leverages multiple public cloud services to enhance flexibility by allowing organizations to deploy cloud services that meet their business needs.
At first glance, hybrid and multi-cloud architectures are similar. For starters, they both use multiple clouds. However, they aren't the same. While multi-cloud architecture combines two clouds of the same type (i.e., two or more public clouds), hybrid cloud architecture combines public and private clouds.
One cloud strategy isn't necessarily better than the other; they serve different use cases. For example, suppose you're looking to mitigate the risks of having a single cloud provider; then multi-cloud architecture would be suitable. But a hybrid cloud model would be ideal for your business if you already have significant on-premise IT infrastructure.
How Secure Are Hybrid Clouds?
The global average data breach cost is approximately $4.35 million, so it's only natural to wonder whether a hybrid cloud environment is secure.
Proper design and integration help manage your hybrid cloud and can be as secure as a traditional on-premise IT infrastructure. While some unique challenges may exist, such as a larger attack surface and increased complexity, hybrid cloud environments can pose a strong defense against various risks.
The interconnected cloud environments allow you to choose where to store sensitive data depending on requirements. Additionally, when cloud environments are interconnected, security teams can augment their disaster recovery efforts by standardizing redundant cloud storage.
The Benefits of Hybrid Cloud Architecture
Generally, the hybrid cloud gives you the best of the public and private cloud worlds. Here's an outline of the main benefits that you get when you deploy hybrid cloud architecture:
1. Flexibility and Scalability
Without a doubt, the primary benefit of the hybrid cloud is its flexibility. Managing in-house IT infrastructure requires substantial money and time investment, and scaling your IT infrastructure requires planning.
The cloud is ready and can provide IT resources, even with short notice. Cloud bursting is the temporary, on-demand use of the public cloud whenever demand surpasses the available resources in the private cloud. For instance, some companies experience seasonal spikes that can burden private clouds more. A public cloud can take up this extra demand. Demand may also vary with events, geographic location, and other variables. When you have a private and a public cloud, the public cloud can offer the elasticity to handle anticipated and unanticipated IT loads. The alternative is investing in on-premise IT resources that are not efficiently utilized in the long run.
For a data storage user, the private cloud offers high access speeds, among other benefits, especially since they are usually on-premises.
Otherwise, for data that's needed with the lowest latency levels or isn't accessed regularly, it makes more sense for an organization to move such data to a secure yet less expensive location. The public cloud would be ideal for storing such data—the data will still be readily available. Moreover, the public cloud offers an excellent platform for sharing data with specific users, clients, or even the general public.
2. Cost Savings
The public cloud element of a hybrid cloud infrastructure offers cost-effective IT resources without incurring significant capital expenses and labor costs. Your in-house IT staff can help you choose a suitable cloud provider, configuration, and ideal location for your public and private clouds. This way, they'll help cut costs by matching each task with a practical resource.
You can quickly scale, redeploy, or reduce services whenever necessary, cutting your costs through enhanced efficiency and reducing unnecessary expenses.
3. Compliance
Deploying a hybrid cloud gives you additional options for making your IT environment compliant with the latest security and data protection standards. Since most cloud vendors comply with various standards and are certified by different organizations, you'll only need certification for your on-premises environment.
4. Infrastructure
With a hybrid cloud infrastructure, you can still maintain your legacy on-premise servers when integrating with a public cloud in a non-disruptive manner. You can gradually integrate with a public cloud while running your most vital operation on the public cloud.
The Challenges of Hybrid Cloud
While the hybrid cloud model offers many great benefits, it has some downsides. Some of the challenges of a hybrid cloud include the following:
1. It's More Expensive Compared to Public Cloud
A public cloud solution is suitable for smaller organizations with a limited budget since the cost of setting up, running, operating, and managing private servers can be substantial. Moreover, if your business has limited IT resources, building or maintaining a private cloud is only viable if it requires cloud architects to build it and IT staff to operate and manage it.
2. Less Control
A hybrid cloud environment requires seamless integration between public and private cloud environments. When using hybrid cloud architecture, you sacrifice some control over your computing and storage service. As such, your private infrastructure should be capable of adapting to any changes in the public cloud environment that are out of your control.
3. It Might Limit the Speed of Operations
If you have applications that require high speeds, then a hybrid cloud environment may not be ideal. However, this will depend on specific cloud implementations. While latency may be a key data storage factor for some users, it's less of a factor for data downloads and uploads than for organizations that utilize the hybrid cloud environment for computing.
Use Cases of Hybrid Cloud Architectures
We've discussed why a hybrid cloud infrastructure can make sense for your organization and some challenges you may face. Here, we will look at specific use cases for a hybrid cloud environment.
Disaster Recovery Plans
Suppose your IT environment includes on-premise servers; you need a disaster recovery plan in case of emergencies such as total power outages or a fire outbreak in your data center.
Some organizations build geo-redundant data centers, that's usually expensive. Because of this, most organizations are now building disaster recovery sites using cloud services and providers. Cloud vendors provide unique solutions to enhance data recovery services for such scenarios. With such solutions, physical and virtual machines are replicated by cloud providers. In case a disaster occurs, the virtual machine can be launched in the cloud and then, later on, moved back to on-premise servers.
Cloud providers can also help safeguard and recover other resources, including application and database services. This can help reduce your recovery duration and even keep some critical services running during a disaster.
Data Processing
Some organizations must perform data processing on-premise and then send the processed data to the cloud for further use. Such organizations are located far away from any wide area network (WAN) access and can only gain access to the internet via expensive satellite connections.
For such organizations, a hybrid cloud environment would be suitable. A hybrid cloud environment will allow them to run their application workloads or IoT and enable centralized management.
Processing data in the cloud means you don't have to invest in your hardware, and data processing is done on demand. After the data is processed, it is stored on-premise. Such cases are common in financial and insurance companies.
Development and Testing
Organizations may experience shortages during the testing phase of developing a new service. Having shortages isn't an ideal situation to be in, given that it could result in extended development cycles or problems during the actual deployment.
When you deploy a hybrid cloud infrastructure, you can spin up and integrate test and development environments into your network. As such, developers will have the best environment to properly develop and test their services before producing them.
With new technologies like Kubernetes, developers can seamlessly transfer applications from a cloud-based test environment to an on-premise climate without making major project adjustments.
Suppose such a test isn't needed anymore; you can just shut it down until you need it again. Shutting down is an efficient and convenient way of avoiding significant hardware, services, and maintenance investments.
Flexible Capacity Management
Capacity planning stress declines when you can easily migrate your access capacity to a public cloud and free up on-premises storage. A hybrid cloud configuration can utilize integrated solutions to transparently migrate your infrequently used data.
Selecting a Cloud Storage Provider for Your Hybrid Cloud
Choosing the right mix of cloud services for your business can take time and effort, given the many cloud service providers available. Fortunately, some factors can help simplify setting up your hybrid cloud solution. They include:
Ease of Use: By choosing a cloud provider with an easy-to-use solution, you'll avoid the steep learning curve and save yourself hours of work and effort in managing your cloud deployments. Conversely, choosing a provider with overly complex pricing tiers and services can slow you down.
Data Egress Fees: While some cloud providers don't charge clients for retrieving data from the cloud, others charge an additional fee for the data retrieval. This fee is known as data ingress. The fees usually make it costly to switch providers. In addition to checking for such fees, ensure you review the data speeds offered by a provider.
Data Security Controls: Before settling on a provider, compare how each facilitates proper data control. For instance, you can look at their authentication, encryption, and object lock.
Storage Tiers: You need to check that a cloud provider offers storage tiers that fit your needs. Remember, some cloud providers offer a wide range of storage tiers, some of which are low cost, but you'll sacrifice access. And while paying for cheaper cloud storage may be enticing, evaluate whether you can wait for long periods (hours or even days) to retrieve your data.
Interoperability: Interoperability and flexibility are crucial reasons for using cloud services. If they lack the necessary integration, they may burden your team greatly to keep the service running effectively. As such, you must understand the provider's integration ecosystem before entering into a contractual relationship with a provider.
Pricing Transparency: You only want to pay what is budgeted. Build a spreadsheet to compare the pricing model of the cloud providers you are considering. Pay close attention to the cloud provider's pricing model and tier options.
Scenarios When Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure is the Right Solution
With hybrid cloud architecture, an organization gets a balanced solution between a public, a private, and an on-premises environment.
This cloud environment could be perfect for your organization if you need considerable agility. It can allow you to serve diverse clients with different regulatory, security, and processing requirements. Reaching diverse clients is especially vital in today's tight compliance climate.
Hybrid cloud infrastructure is also the right solution for your organization if it wants to maintain the benefits of private and public clouds. A hybrid cloud offers a strategic approach, given that it prevents a situation where you are stuck with a particular vendor. Since you'll already have split your infrastructure between the two cloud environments, it'll be easier to migrate to another public cloud provider.
Wrapping Up
Should your organization embrace a hybrid cloud? Depending on your organization's needs, hybrid cloud infrastructure can be a great tool. Adopting hybrid architecture allows you to make the most of the flexibility and scale of the public cloud and maintain the security and control of a private cloud or an on-premise data center. When you approach hybrid cloud architecture with adequate planning and a structured approach, it can empower legacy applications, cut operating costs, deliver on-demand flexibility, and drive your digital transformation. If a hybrid cloud platform is something you are interested in, Mach One Digital can help. We partner with clients to create new digital experiences or modernize their existing applications. Schedule a discovery call with Mach One Digital.
