Trend of Transformation: How to Manage Hybrid Clouds & Multi-cloud?

2024-09-16

Hybrid Cloud eASPNet
16
9 月

Hybrid Cloud eASPNet

Multi-cloud is a topic that has been gaining momentum in the cloud services industry, where digital technology is employed to change the ways enterprises create and communicate values. Hybrid-cloud allows users to strengthen their existing resources rapidly and cost-effectively: using public clouds to rapidly add onto new computational power, bandwidths, and storage spaces, while simultaneously keeping secured and confidential data in the private clouds.

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What is hybrid-cloud application?

The cross-application of different cloud platforms connected through networks is known as hybrid-cloud. However, as this definition is too vague, we will interpret hybrid cloud applications in a different way.

  • The cloud platforms on both ends are consistent; resources and services are allocated through the same bottom layer of platform, but under different cloud-environments.
  • The cloud platforms on both ends are different, the virtual machine formats of the bottom layers differ from each other as well; under this premise, the classical hybrid-cloud applications include disaster remote backup, data remote backup and S3 data storage, et This form of architecture for hybrid data storage application is not limited to the virtualization technology of the cloud platform’s bottom layer.
  • A new trend in recent years: even if both ends of the cloud are on different platforms, applications can still be divided into micro-services and dispersed across different cloud platforms, through technologies such as Kubernetes and containerization. These microservices can even be migrated and operated across different public clouds through tools such as Live Migration.

The evolution of hybrid-cloud?

The hybrid-cloud was born from the need for unified management, resource allocation and data protection. When resources are needed, they can be rapidly deployed on public clouds; conversely, the public cloud can be used for agile application and development, conducting tasks such as system migration, data backup or disaster remote backup across different clouds.

Differences between single and multi-cloud applications

On paper, the difference between single and multi-cloud applications is the difference between “one” and “multiple” clouds and each cloud platform is unique

For example, eASPNet’s GWS Cloud, is a general, computational public cloud, similar to AWS, GCP and Azure. Its scope of services encompasses a wide range of applications like IaaS, cloud databases, computation, and storage.

Although there are many clouds are all single cloud platforms on the market, only GWS uses VMware platform as its bottom layer, and just so happens that 80% of enterprise private clouds are also based on VMware’s platform. Users who use VMware-based private cloud architectures or eASPNet’s GWStack HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure) can rapidly implement migration of virtual machines and resource allocations by linking with GWS at both ends, achieving hybrid-and-hybrid clouds applications (also a form of multi-cloud application).

Common hybrid-cloud architectures/systems

The most common architecture/system is connecting the cloud to “ground” (on-premise) and cloud-to-cloud platforms through the Internet, MPLS VPN or IPSec VPN. With the rise of SD-WAN architectures in recent years, it has gradually replaced MPLS VPN or IPSec VPN. MPLS VPN involves significant expenses in dedicated lines, while IPSec VPN can only encrypt the transmission, not improving its speed; SD-WAN on the other hand can easily aggregate the ISP lines from two vendors, achieving load balance, data encryption and enlarged bandwidths, allowing users to connect different cloud platforms with relatively fewer costs and achieving maximum benefits.

How to manage multi-clouds application under a multi-cloud architectures/system?

In the era of Web 3.0, management of multi-cloud architectures with a single portal or through multiple portals is not without its hidden costs: requiring not only the use of API to integrate multi-cloud architectures/systems into a single portal, but also considerations in cross-cloud resource allocations and unified billing mechanisms.

These will significantly raise the technical complexity in the management of such architectures/systems. A better way to manage is through MCM (multi-cloud management), which incorporates multi-cloud systems and architectures under a unified interface, allowing users to view billings from different cloud platforms and facilitate in creating financial reports, while simultaneously achieving immediacy and uniformity of cross-cloud resource allocation.

For example, the IP addresses used internally within an enterprise were private in nature; if, for instance, the on-premise data center has failed for some reason, the backup-restorations were normally implemented between cloud and on-premise. After Switched to cloud-only, how can these 3 IP addresses identify themselves to the global visitors? When performing cloud-to-on premise backup or restoration, in addition to switching networks, a Global DNS must be used to propagate the domain, since the IP and environments between the cloud and on-premise are different. If the cloud-platform is slated to take over the provision of services to global users, it is essential to let the world know that the services have been transferred from the on-premise to the cloud, so users can enjoy the service experiences uninterrupted.

solution eASPNet

This shows that as the hybrid cloud utilization increases in popularity, network interfacing is likely a crucial point that enterprises may overlook when managing hybrid clouds.