A private cloud is also known as an on-premises cloud architecture, and it’s deployed on a business’s in-house datacenter. More vendors nowadays offer their own private cloud services to boost or even replace a business’s own private cloud environment.
The private cloud definition from The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) says that “the cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization comprising multiple consumers. It may be owned, managed, and operated by the organization, a third party, or some combination of them, and it may exist on or off premises.”
While there are key differences between the benefits of private, public, and hybrid clouds, a private cloud, on its own, does offer some of the main features you’ll see in a public cloud. Namely, businesses can still enjoy self-service, scalability, the ability to provision and configure virtual machines (VMs), scale resources up and down when needed, and automation to help simplify tasks.
Not to mention, organizations can implement chargeback tools to track computing usage and ensure the business only pays for the resources or services they’re actually using.
What are the Challenges of Private Cloud Computing?
Despite the advantages of private cloud, there are multiple limitations that cannot be ignored. In the next section, we will explore how to address and overcome these challenges.
Though private cloud has its benefits, especially in regards to security, many businesses don’t intend on only using an on-prem cloud, hoping instead to expand to a hybrid or multicloud architecture in the future. That said, many IT decision makers have to pause that goal due to major budget constraints, keeping them from preparing for the multicloud operating model.
That’s why it’s important businesses make sure their underlying infrastructure is well-suited to support your hybrid and multicloud initiatives, or, if they intend on sticking with a private cloud long-term, that the infrastructure delivers public cloud-like power and flexibility into the on-prem environment. But ultimately, the separate storage, servers, virtualization, and networking components in legacy, 3-tier architecture are the root of the issue.
With hyperconverged infrastructure, these separate components merge, eliminating silos. Indeed, this architectural solution supports the private cloud paradigm, providing:
- Reliable security configurations and audits
- Data-at-rest encryption
- Micro-segmentation
- Built-in data protection, backup, and disaster recovery
- Rapid, non-disrupted deployment
- IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS)
- Reduced operating expenses and improved ROI

Top 20 Private Cloud Questions Answered
Clouds, clouds, clouds. When you think of a "cloud," do you think of public clouds? You wouldn't be alone—many organizations think "heading for the clouds" means adopting a public cloud, but that same agility and flexibility can be harnessed in your very own datacenter with a robust private cloud.

There are three general cloud deployment models: public, private, and hybrid.
A public cloud is delivered through an independent, third-party vendor. Most popularly, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure dominate the market for public cloud. Companies like these maintain compute resources that their customers can utilize when needed. Businesses who use the public cloud share these resources. This is commonly referred to as a “multi-tenant” environment.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a business can create, own, operate, and maintain their own private cloud. While there is more security in this format, on-premises cloud architectures aren’t always the most flexible or scalable because the organization must depend on the resources they already have rather than a third-party vendor’s resources.
Many businesses have realized the benefits of both public and private clouds, and have thus moved on to adopt a hybrid cloud model. In this architecture, a private cloud connects with a public cloud, letting businesses run workloads in both worlds. Commonly, the business will primarily use their private cloud environment, and then “burst” into the public cloud when needed. For a hybrid cloud model to work, there must be a high level of compatibility between the software that runs the clouds and the services used in both.

Having a well-architected private cloud will make your hybrid cloud deployment easier and help ensure success if needed at a later time. Some of the reasons for this are just common sense. If your private cloud is burdened by the challenges mentioned earlier, IT is going to have a lot less time to devote to hybrid cloud as well. Hybrid applications that are dependent on services from your private cloud will suffer the effects of its limitations, especially performance, automation, or integration challenges.
The right private cloud solution should actively facilitate integration with the public cloud. This includes tools for copying, replicating, or migrating VMs and data from one location to another, support for different hypervisors, and the ability to support both VMs and containers. By choosing the right private cloud solution, you effectively create an on-ramp to the hybrid cloud that makes hybrid operations easier and more cost effective, delivering better results.

Public Cloud Benefits You Want. Private Cloud Control You Need.

Private Cloud for Dummies

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Top 20 Private Cloud Questions Answered
