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What Is Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure?
Hybrid cloud infrastructure integrates on-premises private clouds and third-party public clouds, allowing data and applications to be shared between them. This setup provides businesses with greater flexibility and options for data deployment and management, balancing the need for control with the scalability benefits of public cloud services.
The hybrid model helps organizations optimize their existing on-premises infrastructure investments while tapping into the capabilities of public cloud resources. It offers a strategic balance, enabling agility, scalability, and enhanced operational efficiencies. Leveraging both private and public cloud environments, companies can prioritize workloads across multiple computing environments.
In this article:
- Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure vs. Multi-Cloud Infrastructure
- 6 Key Components in a Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure
- Hybrid Cloud Architecture
- Best Practices for Building and Maintaining Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure
Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure vs. Multi-Cloud Infrastructure
While hybrid cloud infrastructure combines private and public cloud environments for better flexibility and security, multi-cloud infrastructure refers to the use of multiple public clouds from different providers. The primary goal of a multi-cloud approach is to prevent vendor lock-in, thus leveraging the best services from different cloud providers to optimize performance and cost.
Hybrid cloud infrastructure focuses on maintaining a connection between an organization’s existing in-house resources and various public cloud services, thus optimizing both cost and scalability. A multi-cloud setup spreads workloads across various public clouds, achieving redundancy and risk mitigation.
6 Key Components in a Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure
A hybrid cloud infrastructure is composed of several key components that work together to integrate on-premises and cloud environments. These components include:
- On-premises infrastructure: This is the private cloud portion of the hybrid environment, typically comprising traditional data centers, servers, storage devices, and networking equipment managed by the organization. The on-premises infrastructure allows businesses to maintain control over sensitive data, critical applications, and legacy systems, which may not be suitable for public cloud deployment due to security, compliance, or performance considerations.
- Public cloud services: Public cloud services, provided by third-party vendors like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud, offer scalable computing resources, storage, and advanced cloud-based services. These services are essential for handling dynamic workloads, testing new applications, or expanding capacity without the need for additional on-premises investments. Public clouds also provide various tools for big data analytics, AI, and machine learning.
- Networking: Networking forms the backbone of a hybrid cloud infrastructure, enabling seamless communication between on-premises systems and public cloud environments. Key networking components include virtual private networks (VPNs), dedicated connections such as AWS Direct Connect or Azure ExpressRoute, and software-defined networking (SDN) solutions. These technologies ensure secure, reliable, and low-latency data transfer across environments.
- Hybrid cloud management platform: A hybrid cloud management platform provides a unified interface for managing resources across both on-premises and public cloud environments. These platforms typically offer features like orchestration, automation, monitoring, and governance. They allow IT teams to deploy, manage, and optimize workloads seamlessly across the hybrid infrastructure, ensuring consistent policies, security, and compliance. Examples include VMware Cloud Foundation, Red Hat OpenShift, and Microsoft Azure Arc.
- Automation and orchestration tools: Automation and orchestration are key to managing a hybrid cloud efficiently. These tools help automate routine tasks, such as provisioning, scaling, and load balancing, across hybrid environments. Orchestration tools also enable the integration and coordination of services between on-premises and cloud-based resources, ensuring that applications run smoothly regardless of where they are deployed. Popular tools in this category include Kubernetes for container orchestration and Terraform for infrastructure as code (IaC).
- Security and compliance tools: Security in a hybrid cloud infrastructure involves tools and practices that protect data, applications, and networks across both private and public environments. This includes firewalls, identity and access management (IAM) systems, encryption, and multi-factor authentication. Compliance tools are also crucial, helping organizations ensure that they adhere to industry regulations and standards, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC 2.
5 Expert Tips that can help you better manage and optimize hybrid cloud infrastructure
Jon Toor, CMO
With over 20 years of storage industry experience in a variety of companies including Xsigo Systems and OnStor, and with an MBA in Mechanical Engineering, Jon Toor is an expert and innovator in the ever growing storage space.
Prioritize latency-sensitive applications: When distributing workloads, prioritize latency-sensitive applications by placing them close to their data sources, whether on-premises or in a specific public cloud region. This reduces latency and improves user experience.
Adopt a zero-trust architecture: Implement a zero-trust security model across your hybrid cloud. This means verifying and securing every connection, whether it’s between users, devices, or services, before granting access, thus strengthening your overall security posture.
Optimize data gravity considerations: Consider the “data gravity” concept when designing your hybrid cloud. Data that’s frequently accessed by multiple applications should be stored close to where it’s processed to reduce data movement costs and latency.
Enable cross-environment visibility: Use monitoring tools that provide end-to-end visibility across your hybrid cloud. This ensures you can track performance, security, and compliance in real-time, enabling faster issue resolution and proactive management.
Conduct regular architecture reviews: Periodically review your hybrid cloud architecture to ensure it aligns with your evolving business needs. Adjustments may be needed as workloads grow or as new technologies become available, ensuring your infrastructure remains efficient and future-proof.
Hybrid Cloud Architecture
Here are some of the important elements of a hybrid cloud architecture, which brings together the above components to meet an organization’s specific goals.
Interconnected Environment
At the heart of hybrid cloud architecture is the seamless interconnection between on-premises infrastructure and public cloud services. Networking solutions facilitate this integration, allowing data and applications to move freely between environments. This interconnected framework enables organizations to extend their private data centers into the cloud, creating a unified environment where resources can be allocated dynamically based on demand.
Workload Distribution
A fundamental aspect of hybrid cloud architecture is the strategic distribution of workloads across on-premises and cloud environments. Critical, sensitive, or legacy applications often remain within the on-premises infrastructure to maintain control, meet performance requirements, or comply with regulatory standards. Meanwhile, workloads that require scalability, such as web applications, big data analytics, or disaster recovery, are deployed in the public cloud. The hybrid cloud management platform orchestrates this distribution, ensuring that each workload runs in the most appropriate environment.
Unified Management and Orchestration
The hybrid cloud management platform is the central hub that unifies the disparate components of the hybrid cloud architecture. It provides IT teams with a single pane of glass to monitor, manage, and optimize resources across both on-premises and cloud environments. Through automation and orchestration tools, the platform enables seamless deployment, scaling, and management of applications, regardless of their location. It also ensures that policies, security, and compliance standards are consistently applied across the entire infrastructure.
Security Integration
Security is integrated into every layer of the hybrid cloud architecture. On-premises security measures, such as firewalls and IAM systems, are extended to the cloud through VPNs and cloud-native security services, creating a secure environment that spans both private and public domains. Encryption, access controls, and multi-factor authentication are applied uniformly across the hybrid environment to protect data and applications from unauthorized access and breaches. Compliance tools further ensure that data handling practices meet industry regulations across all environments.
Scalability and Flexibility
The architecture of a hybrid cloud infrastructure is inherently designed to be scalable and flexible. Organizations can easily extend their on-premises resources into the cloud during peak periods, ensuring that they meet performance demands without over-investing in physical hardware. When demand decreases, workloads can be scaled back or shifted entirely back to on-premises systems, optimizing cost and resource utilization. This elasticity is crucial for businesses looking to maintain agility in rapidly changing market conditions.
Data Flow and Integration
Data flow within a hybrid cloud architecture is managed carefully to ensure efficiency and security. Data integration tools enable the synchronization of information across on-premises databases and cloud storage, ensuring that applications have access to the most up-to-date data, regardless of where they are running. Data pipelines may be established to process data in the cloud while keeping sensitive information within the private data center. This approach optimizes processing power while maintaining control over critical data.
Best Practices for Building and Maintaining Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure
When building and maintaining a hybrid cloud infrastructure, the following best practices can ensure the system is reliable, secure, and efficient.
Establish Clear Governance and Policies
To ensure smooth operations across both on-premises and cloud environments, it’s crucial to establish clear governance frameworks and policies. Define roles and responsibilities for managing the hybrid cloud infrastructure, including who has access to specific resources and how data is handled. Governance should also encompass compliance requirements, ensuring that the organization adheres to regulatory standards across all environments.
Establish policies for data privacy, security protocols, and incident response to maintain consistent and controlled operations. Regular audits should be conducted to ensure that these policies are followed and adjusted as necessary to reflect changes in the business environment or regulatory landscape.
Optimize Workload Placement
Optimizing workload placement is essential for maximizing the benefits of a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Analyze each workload to determine the best environment—on-premises or public cloud—based on factors like performance requirements, security needs, and cost efficiency.
Critical or sensitive applications that require low latency or have stringent compliance requirements might be best kept on-premises, while workloads needing high scalability can be deployed in the public cloud. Use automation tools to continuously assess and rebalance workloads based on changing conditions, ensuring optimal resource utilization and performance.
Monitor and Optimize Costs
Cost management is a critical aspect of maintaining a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Use cloud cost management tools to monitor spending across both on-premises and cloud environments. Track the usage of cloud resources and identify opportunities to optimize costs by rightsizing instances, eliminating unused resources, and leveraging reserved instances or spot instances where appropriate.
Establish budgets and alerts to prevent unexpected expenses, and regularly review billing statements to ensure alignment with financial goals. Implementing policies that govern resource provisioning can also help control costs by preventing over-provisioning and sprawl.
Regularly Test and Update Disaster Recovery Plans
A robust disaster recovery plan is vital for ensuring business continuity in a hybrid cloud environment. Regularly test disaster recovery (DR) procedures to validate that both on-premises and cloud-based components can be restored quickly and effectively in the event of an outage or disaster.
Ensure that backups are up to date and stored in multiple locations, including off-site or in the cloud, to protect against data loss. Update the DR plan regularly to reflect changes in the infrastructure, such as new applications or configurations, and train staff on their roles in executing the plan. This proactive approach minimizes downtime and ensures that the organization can recover from disruptions with minimal impact.
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.
