
In simple words, Hybrid Cloud is a combination of Private Cloud and Public Cloud. A combination of private, on-premise computing and one or more public clouds. This integrated cloud service gives organizations the ability to perform various functions within the organization using the combination of Public and Private Clouds. While today you can find various cloud computing platforms, AWS is perhaps the most popular and the most extensively used cloud platform. Therefore, cloud computing veterans understand the importance of cloud computing in the future and also the importance of mastering AWS certifications to land a job in this domain.
What is Private Cloud?
This is a model of cloud computing that is implemented in an organization’s infrastructure and is managed internally by the IT department. There is Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) which is also a private cloud that uses a third party infrastructure and is managed via an organization’s internal resources. In both the cases a single organization is the owner and operate it by themselves.
Typically, private clouds are integrated in the enterprises when they think the public clouds are inadequate or when there is involvement of sensitive data of their business operations.
What is Public Cloud?
Public cloud can be explained as a cloud computing provided by a third party provider to the public over the internet, making them accessible by the general public. Public can pay and purchase public cloud to use it as per their choice. Sometimes, the services can be free or sold on-demand allowing the users to pay only for the CPU usage.
Unlike private clouds, the huge cost of on-premise hardware, infrastructure, and cloud maintenance can be saved by purchasing or using the public cloud where the cloud service provider is completely responsible for everything from hosting to maintenance.
Requirements for Hybrid Cloud Computing: Architecture
To establish a Public Cloud, the availability of these is certain:
- A Public Cloud: Any third party cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform used by enterprise to perform definite functions.
- A Private Cloud: An on-premise cloud computing that has been incorporated within the company. Sometimes, it can also be hosted on the third party cloud provider but controlled by an in-house team.
- An efficient Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity between the above mentioned computing platforms.
Since the enterprise has no control over the public cloud, which is completely controlled by the host. Thus, the enterprise must design their private cloud in such a way that it must be compatible with the public cloud or clouds in order to deploy a Hybrid Cloud. This includes on-premise implementation of suitable hardware, servers, storage, load balancers and Local Area Network (LAN).
To deploy cloud computing, an enterprise must deploy a hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM) to launch VMs (Virtual Machines) and containers to ensure reliability. Then, on top of hypervisor, a private cloud software layer must be added by the IT team to enable cloud service capabilities like automation, reliability, and billing.
While choosing hypervisor and private cloud software layer, the IT team must choose the compatible public cloud’s APIs and services. The compatibility between those two accredits compute or database instances to migrate seamlessly between the public and private clouds. These mixed services and resources from public and private clouds will also help developers to create advanced applications.
Already a plethora of enterprises have adopted the Hybrid Cloud computing which has allowed them to exploit the benefits of private cloud at a cost of public cloud. As it happens with all the new technological implementations, implementing Hybrid Cloud also possesses some challenges and benefits.
Benefits of Hybrid Cloud computing
The prime benefit of implementing Hybrid Cloud computing is saving the cost. Instead of owning a huge infrastructure just to support occasional burst in the system usage, which happens only for fraction of time, enterprises can leverage the third party public cloud to offload heavy usage. Additionally, it makes them pay only for the fractional usage.
Another major benefit of Hybrid Cloud computing is enhanced security. Remember, since the third party public cloud is integrated with the private cloud, no security threats while the migrating instances. Contradicting to the myth that cloud computing is less secure, TechTarget reports that cloud computing suffer from less attacks than the on-premise computing. Hybrid cloud computing always provides higher security as all the data transfer between private and public cloud is encrypted and managed by the on-premise IT team.
Business continuity is one of the most important elements of enterprise operations. Business continuity is not just about backing up nor it is a simple Disaster Recovery plan. It is the ability to continue the business process even during the system failure or disaster. The enterprises can leverage public cloud to experience no downtime and fewer outages.
Improved scalability. In a fast growing organization, scaling IT infrastructure is extremely expensive and inefficient. However, Hybrid Cloud can provide opportunities for businesses to scale up for specific workloads.
Challenges of Hybrid Cloud computing
Implementation and effective operation of Hybrid Cloud requires tools and top-notch skills. There are very few skilled professionals who can do it and hiring them will cost you a pretty large share of your profits. If you are you looking to move your business operations to the cloud, then ensure to look for an outside talent with the necessary skills. If possible, plan to train the implementation team to avoid further flaws that can deteriorate the business operations.
While deploying Hybrid Cloud, data and application integration is one of the top challenges. They both must go hand in hand in order to complete an operation and each of them are useless without the other. So, while storing each of them, accessibility must be considered. For instance, the application is on third party hosting while the data is in the on-premise server. Then it’s cardinal that the application is saved right, so that it can access the data remotely.
Compatibility between the Public and Private Clouds is the daunting challenge most enterprises face while implementing the Hybrid Cloud. While the enterprise have control over Private Cloud, the Public Cloud is completely out of the control. Any changes to the public cloud can always disrupt the compatibility between the two. Can they be managed on the same tool? Or the team must learn a new set? However, it can be achieved by learning the hybrid cloud computing. There is a plethora of resources to learn the hybrid cloud such as AWS certifications which can help people to garner skills and excel at it.
Hybrid Cloud has potential to benefit many enterprises. However, it depends on the situation and the difference it can make to the bottom line. There is nothing like “one solution fits all” when it comes to complex IT infrastructure. As any computing, hybrid computing has its own benefits and challenges too. The enterprise must always look forward to implement right things to increase the benefits with precise plans and executions.