A hybrid cloud is a type of cloud computing environment that combines elements of both public and private clouds. It allows organizations to use a combination of on-premises, private cloud, and third-party public cloud services to manage their data, applications, and workloads.
In a hybrid cloud environment, the private cloud can be used for sensitive data and applications that require high security, compliance, and control, while the public cloud can be used for less sensitive data and applications that require high scalability, availability, and cost-effectiveness. The combination of both environments provides greater flexibility, agility, and cost optimization for organizations.
The arrival of cloud computing to enterprise IT brought much more than new business value and end-user utility. An entirely new set of terms was created to describe the many varieties of virtual data storage and transmission.
Hybrid cloud architecture is the design and implementation of a cloud computing environment that combines elements of both public and private clouds. A hybrid cloud architecture typically includes a mix of cloud computing models such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), as well as various deployment models, such as on-premises, private cloud, and public cloud. It also includes networking, security, and management tools to ensure seamless integration and interoperability between different cloud environments.
The design of a hybrid cloud model architecture depends on several factors such as:
Business and IT requirements - The specific requirements of an organization for scalability, agility, security, compliance, and cost-effectiveness. For example, an organization that requires high security and control over their data may choose to use a private cloud for sensitive workloads, while an organization that requires high scalability and cost savings may choose to use a public cloud for non-sensitive workloads.
Workload characteristics - The characteristics of workloads, such as data volume, processing power, and storage requirements. Workloads that require high performance may be run on a private cloud, while workloads that require high scalability may be run on a public cloud.
Connectivity requirements - The design of a hybrid cloud architecture also depends on the connectivity requirements between different cloud environments. This includes establishing connectivity between on-premises infrastructure, private cloud resources, and public cloud services, as well as ensuring data and application portability across different cloud environments.
Compliance and regulatory requirements - Organizations that operate in regulated industries or regions must comply with specific regulatory requirements, such as data privacy, security, and compliance. The design of a hybrid cloud architecture must consider these requirements to ensure that data and applications are secure and compliant.
Budget and resources - Organizations must balance the cost savings of using public clouds with the cost of managing and securing a hybrid cloud environment. They must also consider the availability of resources, such as hybrid cloud services or IT staff, to manage and maintain a hybrid cloud environment.
To ensure that you have the proper visibility and security over your clouds—public and private—make sure you enforce a “security-first” model that maintains continuous monitoring and management of cloud security risks and threats. This model will leverage innovative tools and automation that detect security threats in real time, act on those threats, and measure security and compliance results. Evaluate and add tools that monitor hybrid cloud security and governance continuously, performing automatic health checks on a regular basis, and understand that in a public cloud world security is a “shared responsibility” between the user and the cloud vendor.
Your enterprise needs a cloud operating system that gives you the ability to monitor, manage, and orchestrate across all environments using a single set of tools. Most approaches to hybrid cloud models are based on a strategy of trying to determine the best way to make all the disparate pieces—legacy infrastructure in your datacenters, public clouds, and cloud service providers—somehow work together. Based on the realities of the current cloud environment, this approach has a higher likelihood of success:
Private cloud functions as the foundation of a hybrid cloud strategy. The ideal core of that private cloud foundation is a hyperconverged infrastructure core. The efficacy of this approach is contributing to the more than 70 percent of organizations now repatriating workloads back on-premises.
Hybrid cloud computing is becoming more popular due to its ability to provide organizations with the best of both worlds - the scalability and cost-effectiveness of public cloud services and the control and security of private cloud infrastructure. This flexibility allows organizations to choose the most appropriate cloud environment for each workload or application, optimizing cost, performance, and security. In addition, hybrid cloud models allow organizations to easily scale their IT infrastructure to meet changing demands while maintaining control over their data and applications. The need for greater agility, innovation, and efficiency is driving the adoption of hybrid cloud computing among organizations of all sizes and industries, and it is expected to continue to grow in popularity in the years to come.
In today’s digital innovation era many organizations need to operate their applications and data in an environment spanning on-premises private clouds and public clouds. It does not need to be difficult. Expanding from private to public cloud can pose challenges, including the need to manage complex networking, re-architecting applications, managing multiple infrastructure tools for various clouds, security and more. There is a pressing need for a single platform that can span private, distributed and public clouds so that operators can manage their traditional and modern applications using a consistent cloud platform.
Nutanix delivers the industry’s first hybrid multicloud platform with the flexibility, simplicity and cost efficiency needed to run applications in private or multiple public clouds. Nutanix extends the simplicity and ease of use of Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software as well as the full Nutanix stack to public clouds like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Using the same platform on private and public clouds, Nutanix dramatically reduces the operational complexity of migrating, extending or bursting your applications and data between clouds. This hybrid cloud solution allows operators to use a single management plan to truly manage both their private and public cloud infrastructure managed and operated as a single cloud.