What Is a Hybrid Cloud?
A hybrid cloud is the integration of a public cloud with private cloud or on-premise resources. The idea is to take advantage of both environment types.
Private clouds and on-premise environments offer companies greater control over their computing resources, as well as security. The organization manages all of the infrastructure, and they can customize it to match its specific needs. However, an independent IT environment is costly to run and maintain.
Public clouds, offer scalability and are easier to manage, because the cloud provider takes care of the maintenance of the infrastructure. Using a public cloud is cheaper, but it may provide less flexibility and control over critical factors such as storage security.
Many organizations opt for hybrid clouds to balance the advantages and disadvantages of public clouds and private infrastructure. As needs and cost requirements change, companies can move workloads between their public and private clouds. This provides companies with the flexibility and security they need, while giving them a scalable and cost-effective solution.
This is a series of an extensive series of guides about hybrid cloud.
In this article:
- How Does Hybrid Cloud Architecture Work?
- Hybrid Cloud vs. Multi-Cloud Architecture
- Hybrid Cloud Architecture Patterns
- Hybrid Cloud Architecture: Pros and Cons
- When is a Hybrid Cloud the Right Solution?
How Does Hybrid Cloud Architecture Work?
Hybrid Cloud Resources
Hybrid cloud resources involve a mix of public and private cloud resources, along with on-premise data centers. Organizations can allocate workloads to the most appropriate environment based on performance, compliance, and cost considerations:
- Critical and sensitive data may be stored in a private cloud or on-premises, ensuring stringent security and control.
- Less sensitive, scalable applications can run on the public cloud, benefiting from its elasticity and cost-efficiency.
Connectivity across Environments
Connectivity is vital in a hybrid cloud setup, ensuring seamless integration and communication between public and private cloud environments. This often involves using VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), dedicated leased lines, or cloud providers’ direct connection services to establish secure and high-speed links.
These connections allow for the transfer of data and applications between environments, supporting hybrid cloud functionalities like load balancing, failover, and disaster recovery.
Virtualization, Containerization, and IaC
Virtualization and containerization are fundamental to hybrid cloud architectures. Virtualization enables the creation of virtual machines (VMs) that can run different operating systems and applications on a single physical server, improving resource utilization.
Containerization, using technologies like Docker and Kubernetes, provides a lightweight alternative, encapsulating applications and their dependencies in containers. These containers can be easily moved between environments, enhancing flexibility and consistency in deployment.
Virtualization and containerization are the primary techniques enabling workload portability—the ability to move applications and data across different environments without significant reconfiguration. In addition, infrastructure as code (IaC) practices ensure that workloads can seamlessly and automatically transition between public and private clouds.
Orchestration and Automated Provisioning
Orchestration and automated provisioning streamline the management of hybrid cloud environments. Orchestration tools coordinate the deployment, scaling, and operation of applications across multiple cloud environments. Automated provisioning enables the rapid and consistent setup of infrastructure resources as needed.
Tools like Kubernetes, Terraform, and CloudFormation help automate these processes, reducing manual intervention and minimizing errors, ensuring efficient and reliable infrastructure management.
Data Synchronization and Consistency
Data synchronization and consistency are crucial in hybrid cloud setups to ensure that data remains accurate and up-to-date across different environments. This involves using replication and synchronization tools that can handle data transfer and updates between clouds.
Technologies like database replication, distributed file systems, and data lakes facilitate real-time or near-real-time data consistency, supporting applications that require reliable and current data regardless of where they are hosted.
Unified Visibility and Control
Unified visibility and control provide a comprehensive view and management capabilities over hybrid cloud environments. Centralized management platforms and tools allow administrators to monitor performance, manage resources, and enforce security policies across both public and private clouds.
Cloud management platforms (CMPs) and multi-cloud management tools offer dashboards, analytics, and automation features to maintain oversight and control, ensuring that hybrid cloud deployments are efficient, secure, and compliant with organizational standards.
Hybrid Cloud vs. Multi-Cloud Architecture
Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud architectures are both popular strategies for leveraging cloud technologies, but they serve different purposes and offer distinct benefits.
A hybrid cloud architecture integrates private clouds and/or on-premises resources with public cloud services. The primary goal is to combine the best of both worlds: the control and security of private infrastructure with the scalability and cost-efficiency of public clouds. Hybrid clouds facilitate workload portability, allowing organizations to run applications and store data where it makes the most sense based on performance, security, and cost requirements.
A multi-cloud architecture involves using multiple public cloud services from different providers, without necessarily integrating them with private clouds or on-premises resources. The main advantage of a multi-cloud approach is to avoid vendor lock-in, enhance resilience, and leverage the unique features and pricing models of different cloud providers.
Hybrid Cloud Architecture Patterns
1. Public Cloud and Private Cloud
This pattern integrates a public cloud with a private cloud, providing a balanced approach to resource allocation. Sensitive data and critical workloads are kept within the private cloud to maintain security and compliance, while less sensitive operations take advantage of the public cloud’s scalability. This setup is ideal for businesses needing stringent control over certain data while still leveraging the public cloud for cost and scalability benefits.
2. Public Cloud and On-Premises
In this pattern, on-premises data centers are combined with public cloud resources. Companies can extend their existing infrastructure into the cloud, benefiting from the public cloud’s elasticity during peak demand times or for specific applications. This approach is particularly useful for organizations with significant investments in on-premises hardware that want to gradually transition to cloud-based resources without a complete overhaul.
3. Multi-Cloud Hybrid
A multi-cloud hybrid pattern involves the integration of multiple public clouds with private cloud or on-premises resources. This setup maximizes flexibility and resiliency by leveraging different cloud providers for different tasks. For example, an organization might use one public cloud for disaster recovery, another for development and testing, and its private cloud for sensitive customer data. This approach reduces dependency on a single vendor and allows businesses to choose the best cloud service for each specific need.
4. Hybrid Host
The hybrid host pattern uses a unified hosting environment to manage workloads across public and private clouds and on-premises resources. Here, a common platform or orchestrator, such as VMware or OpenStack, manages resources uniformly across all environments. This pattern provides a consistent operational model, making it easier to deploy, manage, and scale applications regardless of where they are hosted. It is particularly beneficial for organizations looking to simplify management and maintain uniformity in their infrastructure operations.
Hybrid Cloud Architecture: Pros and Cons
Here are the key benefits of a hybrid cloud architecture:
- Flexibility and scaling—hybrid clouds allow you to store sensitive and frequently used data in your private cloud or data center, while storing other data, such as backup and archives, on a public cloud. A hybrid solution also provides you with agility in case you need to increase or decrease your resources as needed on a short notice.
- Cost saving—the cost of running and maintaining a private cloud or data center can increase quickly, especially as a business grows. A hybrid cloud solution allows you take advantage of the relatively cheap public cloud storage space, while still using a private cloud for data that is frequently used or sensitive in nature.
- Infrastructure—a hybrid infrastructure allows a company to maintain their legacy on premise servers, while integrating with a public cloud in a way that is not disruptive to daily operations. This can be done by progressively integrating with a public cloud, while running the most critical operations from the private cloud.
Hybrid cloud architectures also have several important disadvantages:
- More resources needed—while a hybrid solution is cheaper than depending solely on a private cloud, it is more resource intensive than using a public cloud exclusively. For small companies with limited IT resources, it may not be viable to build and maintain a private cloud, as this requires cloud architects to build the infrastructure and IT staff to manage it. However, smaller companies can hire managed services providers instead of building themselves.
- Less control—a company sacrifices some control when using a hybrid cloud. For operations to run smoothly, hybrid clouds require strong integration between the public and private environments. This means that the private infrastructure needs to be adapted to possible changes in the public cloud, over which you do not have any control.
When is a Hybrid Cloud the Right Solution?
A hybrid cloud’s architecture gives companies a balanced solution between a public cloud and a private or on-premise environment.
It could be the right solution for a company that requires substantial agility. This can happen when a company has a diverse client base with different security, regulatory, and processing requirements. In today’s regulatory climate, this may be especially relevant. In addition, it enables you to run SaaS solutions that can only be used on secure private networks.
A hybrid cloud architecture is also a good solution for a company that does not want to compromise on the advantages provided by public and private clouds. Moreover, a hybrid cloud is a strategic approach as it prevents you from being locked in to a single vendor. As your infrastructure will already be split between two systems, it will be easier to migrate to a different public cloud when a better model enters the market.
Set Up Hybrid Cloud Storage with Cloudian
Adopting a hybrid cloud infrastructure allows you to take advantage of the scale and flexibility of the public cloud, while maintaining the security and control of a private cloud or data center. It also allows you to pursue a tiered storage strategy for maximum cost-efficiency.
You can simplify the process of setting up and maintaining a hybrid cloud with Cloudian, which offers an off-cloud object storage platform called HyperStore. Cloudian’s solution is infinitely scalable and can be integrated with various cloud services and on-premise environments. For example, it is S3 API compliant and supports intelligent search and analytic functions.
HyperStore has the added benefit of offering a cloud-like structure and searchability, with the use of metadata. It is easy to manage, allowing you to create policies for replication scheduling, lifecycle time, erasure coding and more.