Application
Mobility
HOW TO AVOID THE PITFALLS OF MOVING
ON-PREMISES APPLICATIONS TO THE PUBLIC CLOUD
APPLICATION MOBILITY CHALLENGES
Businesses are making a shift to hybrid multicloud environments. Many want to take advantage of the unique strengths and technical capabilities of different cloud providers. Others want to reduce their dependence on costly self-managed datacenters.
Additionally, some are looking to increase business agility, using multiple clouds to accommodate spikes in IT resource demand or to protect themselves against supply chain bottlenecks with redundant infrastructure.
Whatever the reason, these mixed-cloud environments all have a fundamental requirement in common: Application mobility. Without it, businesses are unable to optimize their hybrid multiclouds for price, performance, resilience, security, and other factors using best-in-class cloud services.
The difficulty associated with application mobility across clouds depends on how the application was initially developed and deployed and the IT tool sets that are available to ease the process.
Datacenters, private clouds, and public clouds typically have different architectures, development platforms, APIs, and management and security tools. Consequently, porting applications to work in a new environment with the same performance, resilience and security can require time-consuming and costly development efforts – unless you have a modern solution that normalizes the capabilities of each underlying platform.
MEET NUTANIX CLOUD CLUSTERS
Nutanix provides indispensable capabilities that simplify and accelerate application mobility. If you’re running an on-premises Nutanix private cloud, you can use the same core hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software, along with Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) technology, to deploy and manage infrastructure in public cloud and service provider environments.
Using automated lift-and-shift capabilities, you can move your applications between on-premises and public clouds, then refactor them at your own pace, if required, to take optimal advantage of the native platform.
In addition to enabling headache-free application mobility, NC2 unifies management across your hybrid multicloud, simplifying management beyond cloud boundaries and allowing you to run other Nutanix applications that add value to your cloud environment.
The remainder of this eBook discusses how NC2 delivers application mobility in the context of current cloud adoption trends and agility challenges. It also touches on how NC2 works in conjunction with Nutanix Cloud Manager applications like Intelligent Operations, Self-Service and Cost Governance to unify and ease the management of multiple public and private clouds.
CHANGING IT MODELS
Businesses are learning that a one-size-fits-all approach to cloud computing doesn’t guarantee desired IT outcomes. Most organizations run a large, diverse mix of applications, each with unique requirements and behaviors they must accommodate.
As a result, IT strategies are evolving to distribute applications across private, public and service provider clouds in a way that aligns each application to the IT environment and location best suited to support it.
These mixed infrastructures are typically known as hybrid clouds, multiclouds or hybrid multiclouds. Ideally, they’re dynamic in nature; in other words, businesses don’t choose an optimum application environment once, then set and forget it.
Instead, businesses must make continual adjustments regarding where applications run as compliance rules, business goals, cloud provider offerings, pricing, and other conditions evolve. This is what it means to make cloud-smart decisions.
MEETING EACH APP’S REQUIREMENTS
Applications with very low latency demands or that fall under strict compliance regulations, for example, might operate in an on-premises cloud infrastructure for maximum performance or privacy control.
On the other hand, applications that facilitate collaboration across distributed workforces might migrate to a public cloud for quick, aordable scalability as the user base grows.
It's often most economical and expedient to go to market with a new, competitive application by spinning up a public cloud server instance. Over time, as that application’s usage levels and patterns become well understood, it can become more cost-effective to bring that application back into a private cloud infrastructure.
These are just a few examples of how various applications might merit different underlying IT architectures and how their requirements can fluctuate during their lifecycles.
CLOUD-SMART STRATEGIES
The continual optimization described represents what’s becoming known as a cloud-smart approach to IT. Cloud-smart strategies depend on access to private, public, and service provider cloud services and involve regular infrastructure adjustment.
Operating and continually optimizing the mixed-cloud environment requires tools that simplify and, to a degree, automate application mobility, as well as multicloud management, operations, and security policy setting and enforcement.
The Nutanix Cloud Platform with NC2 are foundational enablers of application mobility across hybrid multiclouds, which can otherwise be fraught with business risk and development complexity
WHAT THE NUMBERS SAY
A recent survey reflects the growing trend toward the adoption of hybrid multiclouds and cloud-smart strategies, as well as struggles with application mobility. Of 1,700 IT professionals surveyed worldwide for the Fourth Annual Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index report, 83 percent agreed that hybrid multicloud was the ideal IT operating model for their organizations.
At the same time, however, 80 percent agreed that moving applications from one cloud to another could be costly and time-consuming. They appeared to be speaking from experience: 91 percent reported having moved at least one application between IT infrastructures in the prior year.
The results indicate a gap between the desire to optimize IT using multiple clouds and a lack of tools to do it quickly, easily and securely. Perhaps most difficult is cloudifying legacy applications.
These programs were originally designed for traditional three-tier datacenters, in which compute, storage, and network functions run on separate servers or purpose-built appliances. Each platform is managed separately and is largely hardware-driven.
Legacy applications were also designed with the expectation that the underlying infrastructure provides resilience. Consequently, performance is controlled by adding or removing physical compute, storage and networking hardware. In contrast, cloud-native applications are designed to assume infrastructure fallibility. As such, they build resilience into the application layer. Performance is typically controlled by adding or removing instances of the application in a scale-out model.
Cloud environments use flexible, software-defined controllers and virtualized instances of compute, storage and networking. These resources can be converged onto off-the-shelf hardware, deployed on demand, and managed collectively for greater efficiency and agility.
If a business determines that a datacenter application would be better served by a different infrastructure, what’s next? How that business successfully migrates the application to the desired location depends on how the application was initially architected.
THE Rs OF APPLICATION MIGRATION
The approaches to addressing existing datacenter applications in modern IT infrastructures generally fall within two broad categories of change: 1) moving an application unaltered to the cloud or 2) modifying it (a little or a lot) to make optimum use of the new cloud environment. These options are often referred to as rehosting and refactoring the application, respectively.
Other options are to re-architect the application from scratch as a cloud-native application or to retire (decommission) the application and replace it with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application that's developed, hosted and maintained by a cloud service software provider.
STRATEGIES FOR MANAGING APPLICATION MOBILITY
Retain
Continue running a legacy application as-is in the existing infrastructure,
deferring any decision to a point in time in the future.
Retire
Turn off or decommission a legacy application
Rehost (a.k.a. replatform)
Move an application to the cloud as-is without changes; also called lift-and-shift
Refactor (a.k.a. re-architect)
Modify an application to varying degrees to perform better in the cloud environment and leverage cloud native capabilities.
Rearchitect
Modernize the application by rewriting it or redeploying it to a new cloud infrastructure.
Replace
Move from a self-hosted application to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) option, such as swapping out Microsoft Exchange for Office 365.
Retention, replacement and retirement options can be less risky than refactoring or re-architecting legacy applications, which is more complex.
However, these options often don’t address the need to simply and cost-effectively support business-critical applications and ensure that requirements are always met by the underlying infrastructure. At the same time, modifying applications to run in the new environment can introduce long lead times and development costs before the final application becomes operational.
BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
Enterprises can realize the best of all these options by rehosting an application on the new platform. This is done by encapsulating it in a virtual machine (VM) and moving the VM. This alternative is generally low risk and provides a level of application mobility not previously available. With VM encapsulation, IT can quickly and easily optimize application placement across hybrid multicloud environments.
If you’re already running an on-premises datacenter or private cloud powered by Nutanix HCI software, you can use NC2 to enable this type of VM-based rehosting. NC2 enables you to move applications to the public cloud as-is and then refactor them at your own pace, if desired, to fully exploit the features and capabilities of the new cloud platform.
This approach also helps with adhering to budgets and timelines, which is a key consideration. It’s common for application refactoring and re-architecting projects to run over budget and take longer than expected, adding enormous risk to business timelines.
NC2 is an extension of the Nutanix Cloud Platform. It replicates the core Nutanix HCI software used on-premises in a public cloud hyperscaler environment, delivering the same virtualized, software-defined benefits in private and public clouds.
This enables users of the Nutanix Cloud Platform to move VM-encapsulated applications to the public cloud of their choice without retooling, code changes or new skill sets. It’s a simple way to take advantage of the strengths of private and public clouds for optimum treatment of each application.
NC2 is natively integrated with leading public-cloud hyperscaler services. The dierences and complexities of these platforms are hidden from IT operators by an abstraction layer. This layer makes viewing and managing a mix of Nutanix public and private clouds appear as a single, unified cloud, while giving IT administrators control over where applications are deployed.
NC2 enables enterprises to move VM-encapsulated applications to the public cloud without any retooling, code changes or new skillsets.
NUTANIX CLOUD PLATFORM
IT can use NC2 to scale-out public cloud instances on demand to accommodate bursts of additional capacity required to meet seasonal or unexpected surges in usage or resource demands.
A common NC2 use-case dynamically sets up a disaster recovery infrastructure for the quick retrieval of data and applications in the public cloud if a primary hosting site goes offline. This setup eliminates the cost and complexity of building and managing additional datacenters to accommodate disaster recovery strategies.
In short, NC2 software extends the simplicity of Nutanix HCI software and the full Nutanix Cloud Platform software stack to public cloud environments. By leveraging one unifying platform for public and private clouds, Nutanix dramatically reduces the operational complexity of migrating applications and data between cloud providers.
Nutanix customers generally rehost tens of thousands of workloads each month from traditional IT infrastructure or cloud-native VMs to new locations using the Nutanix Cloud Platform. Once an application is in the NC2 environment, it can run on-premises in a private cloud or operate in any supported public or service provider cloud.
The same enterprise-class on-premises capabilities provided by the Nutanix Cloud Platform are available to applications and workloads, regardless of deployment locations; you don’t give up any features or functions by migrating an application to an off-premises cloud environment.
ONE-CLICK MIGRATION
An important preparatory step to using NC2 is the migration process, which includes a function called data seeding. Seeding your data involves copying data in the background of a live production application to a new location and mapping target-to-source networks.
Once this process is complete, cutover to the newly migrated VM is a one-click process controlled by IT at a convenient time. During cutover, applications are taken offline for
a brief period to complete a final synchronization of data.
While applications aren’t available during cutover, downtime can be as short as a few minutes. To minimize downtime, Nutanix provides a simple way for IT to prevalidate migrations and application functionality by testing them first on isolated, or sandboxed, networks.
FOUR PHASES OF ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Infrastructure modernization
IT operations automation
Cloud adoption
Unification of disparate cloud operations
Source: IDC
Licenses are transferable between public and private cloud deployment models so you can migrate applications among locations without relicensing Nutanix software.
Customers can migrate VMs individually or in groups, which is particularly useful when applications consist of multiple VMs. These migrations are facilitated quickly and easily by transferring VMs from ESXi, Hyper-V and public cloud environments to the Nutanix Cloud Platform. It is manageable using either an HTML5-based interface or APIs.
This agnostic approach to cloud platform software enables IT to execute what IDC researchers call the four phases of enterprise digital transformation: The unification of dissimilar cloud platforms at the visibility, policy, mobility, security, and management levels.
For additional simplicity, Nutanix customers can choose from several different licensing models when migrating to the Nutanix Cloud Platform and deploying NC2.
You can purchase right-to-use software licenses, opt for on-demand consumption using the traditional cloud pay-as-you-go model, or choose a cloud-commit approach, which exchanges a minimum annual usage commitment for reduced per-unit pricing.
Licenses are transferable between public and private cloud deployment models so you can migrate applications among locations without relicensing Nutanix software.
COMPLEMENTARY APPLICATIONS ADD VALUE
Applications that run on the Nutanix Cloud Platform further enable the cloud-smart approach to optimizing applications across mixed-cloud infrastructures. For example, Nutanix Cost Governance continually evaluates the most cost-effective environment for each application with constant assessments of your IT consumption needs.
Nutanix Cost Governance compares public cloud pricing of multiple providers with private cloud costs. It also identifies unused or underutilized resources across multicloud deployments that are unneeded and can be moved to another pricing tier or other cloud service for savings. These automated insights enable you to move data and apps among clouds for ongoing IT optimization.
Additionally, Nutanix Intelligent Operations provides one unifying management console that gives you complete visibility into all cloud deployments at every location. Through a central dashboard, you can easily monitor and manage your entire hybrid multicloud environment as a single cloud.
NECESSITY DRIVES CHANGE
The Fourth Annual Enterprise Cloud Index report reveals a divide regarding the right location for a wide range of business applications. Each one has unique requirements for accessibility, performance, security, regulatory compliance, and business continuity.
Public cloud services tend to excel at lowering upfront entry costs and leveling the playing field among businesses of different sizes and budgets. However, over time cloud subscription expenditures have been shown to surpass on-premises support costs by two to three times,1 conservatively, as application behaviors become predictable. At that point, enterprises are likely to repatriate applications, or move them back on-premises.
The hybrid multicloud is emerging as a sign of these diverse times. IDC estimates that about two-thirds of enterprises (64 percent) run hybrid multiclouds today; statistics from the Fourth Enterprise Cloud Index put the number lower, at about 36% on average, but with 64 percent expecting to run mixed-cloud environments by 2024.
To succeed, organizations need fast, seamless application mobility that minimizes the risks associated with making continuous optimization changes to applications or the hybrid multicloud infrastructure. Cloud-agnostic tools such as the Nutanix Cloud Platform, NC2, and related unified management and cost assessment tools help get organizations over the finish line – quickly and aordably – while meeting cloud-smart IT transformation goals.
1 Andreessen Horowitz, 2021
FIVE SIGNS YOU MIGHT NEED NUTANIX CLOUD CLUSTERS
Reducing or decommissioning a three-tier datacenter is part of your IT plan.
You’re under an executive mandate to move applications to a public cloud with optimum speed and minimal risk.
You’d like to build or supplement disaster recovery infrasturucture with a public cloud service.
You’d prefer to accommodate seasonal spikes in IT usage with dial-up, on-demand resources rather than overprovisioning expensive infrastructure
You want to use best-in-class cloud services or take advantage of different providers’ pricing but lack the in-house expertise to manage multiple cloud-native environments.
LEARN MORE
Contact us to gain a deeper understanding of application mobility with NC2.
