Nov 8, 2016: Hybrid cloud hosting is a hot topic these days and as we know, the adoption rate is skyrocketing. But the fact that remains unknown is that migrating data to the hybrid cloud is not as easy as it seems. Challenges and risks are just a part of the overall expedition. Many enterprises are agreeing that two cloud or more than that are better than one.
Multiple reasons contribute to the increasing count of organizations extending their IT platforms across private and public clouds. Some of the major reasons include compliance and disaster recovery. If the growth continues to surge the market estimates will soon reach to $200 billion in 2025, predicts a research firm MarketsandMarkets.
In addition, businesses must ensure to clear the operational and management obstacles before making most of the hybrid cloud services because the hurdles might hamper the solution from functioning to its full potential. The organization also need to make other essential decisions such as what needs to be run on public cloud and private cloud, its network optimization for hybrid models, and cost management and minimization. Let’s discuss this further.
Resource allocation
If you don’t want to move all of the data to the private cloud or to the public environment then you can easily do so with the hybrid technology. Hybrid cloud provides the flexibility to move certain applications to the public cloud, while lets you locate the rest on the private ecosystem. There are some data that we don’t want to transition entirely on the public cloud because it’s private and thus, we can’t go 100% to a public cloud.
In spite of this, many organizations are unable to decide which applications and data to place where. Experts say that the age or type of an application signifies where it should go – private or public cloud. This could be made easier with an example like traditional sets of applications require refactoring for efficient performance when in public cloud and thus, these are often located on-premises or in a private cloud for optimum output because old applications tend to consume more resource than actually required. This results in resource inefficiency. Hence, determining the right location for organization’s data and applications can improve overall performance and could enable reaping more out of the hybrid cloud.
Cost management
It doesn’t end with designating applications their location in hybrid cloud, IT operators need to get the networks ready for the migration. While you shift your mission-critical data, it’s also essential to apprehend the new data traffic patterns of the hybrid cloud because this is what determines the application performance and resiliency.
To ensure optimum performance and resiliency in the IT network environment, organization need to involve multipathing, a set up that develops multiple routes between a server and storage device that allows data to travel between cloud instances. This assists with load balancing, reduces latency and maintains uptime. Moreover, organizations also need to establish a dedicated connection between the private and public cloud and this thing requires significant capital investment. However, there are cost-effective ways to do this process and organizations need to ensure that they use their finance efficiently. For that purpose, IT managers need to ensure that users don’t disorderly spin up new resources in the public environment.
Spinning up resources can be an expensive matter if not taken care of because it requires a major portion of power output and running resources when not requires would definitely add up to your IT overhead. Organizations need to efficiently manage their cost structure in order to avoid additional expenses. They can also consider using cost management tool that would help to ensure that only resources that are being used are run on the cloud. This process can help manage cloud spending.