Hybrid cloud management is a combination of public, and private, often on-premise data centers. While public cloud services are affordable and are easy to scale up or down, keeping some data on private and on-premise data centers is also important. It allows maintaining legacy applications and sometimes, it’s necessary to fulfill security requirements. Let’s understand more about hybrid cloud management, its benefits, and the essentials to make the shift.
What is hybrid cloud management?
Hybrid cloud is often confused with multi-cloud, and while they are similar, there is one major difference. A multi-cloud environment has multiple public cloud services, usually for different purposes. A hybrid cloud environment essentially has at least one private cloud along with at least one public cloud.
Hybrid cloud management is an effective strategy to maintain the security and legacy application benefits of a private cloud with the affordability and scalability of one or more public clouds.
Why choose hybrid cloud management?
Hybrid cloud management is complex and requires tools that are specialized in cloud management. However, it is worth the effort and has several benefits. Some benefits are as follows:
1. Service integration: you can see all the services and applications running on multiple clouds in a single place. You can manage all of them as one unit.
2. Scalability: you can use the public cloud for your dynamic data and the private cloud for the data that needs more security. You can also store any legacy applications you wish to maintain on your private cloud. With your dynamic data on the public cloud, scaling up or down becomes easy.
3. Access to remote workers: you can keep all the data that is important for day-to-day functioning on the public clouds and sensitive data on the private cloud. It would allow remote employees to access all the necessary services and applications from anywhere, as long as they use correct credentials.
4. Cost-effectiveness: since public clouds are cheaper than private clouds or on-premise data centers, your storage costs are reduced significantly. You can use the public cloud to accommodate an increase in demand and scale it down when the demand reduces, or you can also use it for long-term growth. All the while, all your sensitive and legacy applications are safe in the private cloud.
5. Reducing business downtime: private servers may not be as easily scalable, so the services will slow down if demand increases, and this will result in business downtime. However, when there is an increase in demand, the public cloud can quickly accommodate the additional data at a low cost.
Essentials of hybrid cloud management
Since it’s a complex system, hybrid cloud management requires more than just an understanding of the technical aspects. Here are a few things you must consider before making the shift to a hybrid environment:
· Security: you must identify the security requirements of the services you use and determine what needs to remain on the private cloud and what can be moved to the public cloud. You must also optimize your practices to ensure secure logins across platforms. It’s also important to ensure encryption and other security requirements don’t affect performance.
· Data inventory: you need to take stock of all the data that will function on the hybrid cloud and map how each service or application uses the public or private cloud. Understand the data requirements, end-user value, expected workloads, and any other factors that impact performance or data availability.
· Environment integrations: use tools and services to ensure that all your data from all clouds is accessible in one place. Multiple dashboards will become chaotic quickly.
