A hybrid cloud is an infrastructure that combines cloud and on-premises environments. The cloud environments can be public, private, or a combination of the two. Public clouds are accessed via the Internet and provide access to resources that are shared with other cloud customers.
Examples of public clouds include Google Cloud Platform, Azure, and AWS. Private clouds can be hosted on-premises or remotely and provide access to dedicated, isolated resources. These infrastructures can be operated in-house or by vendors.
For an environment to be considered a hybrid cloud it must:
- Integrate on-premises and cloud resources
- Use a network of devices
- Be scalable and provide high-availability
- Enable communication and transfer of data and workloads between infrastructures
In this article, you will learn about the benefits of the hybrid cloud, including six tips for a successful hybrid cloud migration.
Hybrid Cloud Benefits
Hybrid clouds can provide a variety of benefits to organizations beyond that of pure clouds.
-
Greater innovation ”removes limitations imposed by pure environments. These limitations include storage, computing, and cost. Hybrid systems also make it easier for developers to test and create applications for a wider variety of environments.
-
Business continuity ”enables you to more fully control data to meet security, compliance, and policy standards. Hybrid clouds also make it easier to duplicate and restore data across environments.
-
Increased flexibility ”enables you to adapt to changing resource needs in real-time at an optimal cost. Hybrid environments enable you to move workloads and applications as needed. These environments can also help you extend the life of on-premise resources, reducing technical debt.
6 Hybrid Cloud Migration Tips
Once you begin migrating your workloads and data to the cloud, there are several migration strategies and tips you can use to ease the process.
1. Develop an Informed Plan
Your migration success is directly related to the amount and detail of planning you put in. To ensure the greatest success, your plan should correlate with your existing business goals and objectives.
You need to understand what your current and future goals are and how goals align or conflict with hybrid capabilities. This requires including a variety of stakeholders in your planning process, including executive-level employees, board members, and IT teams. Once you understand your organization’s objectives, you can begin planning a configuration and timeline to best support these goals.
2. Consider a Phased Migration
While it may seem appealing to get your migration completed in one big move, this migration style requires significantly more planning. It also has the potential for significantly greater issues. In contrast, a phased migration enables you to test and adjust your migration strategy as you go.
In a phased migration, you should typically start with your low-priority, low-complexity data. For example, backups or archives. This limits the amount of resources that you need to configure at once and presents minimal risk of downtime. Once you have verified that your strategies are sound and secure, you can begin moving higher-priority workloads and applications.
A phased migration also enables you to shift assets as your technical debt is retired. For example, transitioning from legacy applications to cloud-native services.
3. Prioritize Migration Order
When planning your migration, you should create an inventory of your assets and classify assets by value and sensitivity. Once you know what assets you have, how assets are stored, and how critical assets are to business operations, you can prioritize migration. Asset complexity and availability requirements should both be taken into account when determining your timeline.
You may also find that you do not need to migrate certain assets. For example, it may not be worth migrating complex legacy applications. This is particularly true if you are planning to retire these applications in the near future.
4. Encrypt Data
Migration to the cloud is typically performed over Internet connections. This makes data more accessible to attackers and increases the risk of theft or corruption. To protect against these risks, you need to ensure that your data is protected both at-rest and in-transit. You also need to make sure that the networks you are using to transfer data are as secure as possible.
Alternatively, you may wish to transfer your assets via an appliance. Appliances are hardware that is made available through your cloud vendor or a third-party. These tools avoid the need for transferring over the Internet and can help you reduce bandwidth costs. However, if you use an appliance, you should still encrypt your data before the device is transferred.
5. Centralize Monitoring
Hybrid systems are inherently complex, making monitoring a challenge. To ensure that your systems are properly protected and that you are getting the best possible performance, you should centralize your monitoring efforts.
Most cloud providers offer monitoring tools and services that can integrate with on-premises or external tools. Additionally, System Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions can help aggregate and correlate data from across your tooling. The more centralized your monitoring and management tools are, the easier time your security and operations teams will have.
6. Test Everything
You should include testing procedures throughout and after your migration process. You want to verify that configurations are correct, that data is properly secured, and that applications are functioning with the performance you expect. You should also verify that your connectivity is up to standards and that your resources are optimized for cost efficiency.
Depending on your cloud provider, there may be tools or services available to help you automate this process. Many providers offer tools that can evaluate your configurations and compare settings to compliance standards and best practices. Some can even supply recommendations for improving your deployments.
Conclusion
A hybrid cloud provides a high level of flexibility and control. It enables organizations to build a customized architecture that fits their unique needs, without being restricted to the specific limitations of either on-premise or the cloud. However, the more environments you combine, the more complex your ecosystem becomes. Be sure to plan your migration, consider all the eventualities, prioritize migration order, and test everything.
