The hybrid cloud has emerged as a popular option for businesses looking to adopt cloud infrastructure. Combining both internal private clouds and external public cloud services, the hybrid cloud offers a unique range of cloud use cases to small to medium-sized businesses. These include disaster recovery, data tiering, and cloud bursting.
Unsure of what these cloud use cases mean and their functions? We’ll clarify them for you.
Disaster recovery uses the public cloud as a secondary failover site to run mission-critical applications if a disaster renders on-premise data centers or private clouds unusable.
Data tiering enables enterprises to store mission-critical or sensitive data on secure private clouds while archiving older and less important data within low-cost public cloud data storage services.
Cloud bursting dynamically deploys an application between private and public clouds according to peak demand on IT resources.
These cloud use cases are crucial features that make the hybrid cloud option an attractive one for smaller businesses because of their flexibility and scalability. It's imperative to ensure a proper setup from the outset, and this article provides five best practices for a successful hybrid cloud implementation.
1. Prioritize Compliance
Arguably the toughest complexity to deal with when building a hybrid cloud is the issue of compliance. Regulations such as HIPAA, GLB, Dodd-Frank and the GDPR strongly govern the use of certain types of sensitive data, and breaches of these laws can lead to harsh punishments.
Concerning a hybrid cloud, businesses must thoroughly understand the appropriate regulations and make sure that both their public and private clouds comply with relevant laws. If the public cloud is not suitable for sensitive data storage, businesses must actively monitor data movement between the two clouds to ensure compliance.
2. Look for Expert Knowledge
While the hybrid cloud offers several unique use cases, it is also the most complicated type of cloud implementation to get right. Building a successful hybrid cloud requires expertise in several areas, such as compliance, virtualization, network management, and administration.
If a business lacks the required expertise for building a hybrid cloud, it would be prudent to look for outside help. A technology partner like Grind Analytics can help with migrating existing systems and applications to a hybrid cloud.
3. Minimize Hybrid Cloud Latency
Hybrid cloud latency refers to the time it takes to communicate between the public and private cloud systems. High latency connections can be a huge obstacle for businesses when deploying a hybrid cloud because application performance suffers significantly and employees become less productive as a result.
To minimize hybrid cloud latency, businesses can take steps such as reducing the distance between public and private clouds by choosing a nearby public cloud region or opting for a public cloud provider that offers a direct connection to its services.
4. Create A Hybrid Cloud Policy
A hybrid cloud policy provides all cloud users with clear guidelines on the type of data that can enter into public cloud systems, regulatory requirements that need to be met, and information on mission-critical business applications and how they'll be orchestrated between the clouds during peak demand periods.
The aim of the hybrid cloud policy is to ensure that employees don't end up using these systems in a way that compromises security, performance, or compliance.
5. Build the Private Cloud First
The private cloud will be the platform on which businesses run most of their mission-critical applications and workloads in the cloud. It makes sense; therefore, to build the private cloud first before connecting to a public cloud vendor.
This approach ensures companies get their main apps and workloads up and running while also gaining valuable cloud computing experience, which makes the move to a full hybrid model less daunting.
Already running a private cloud?
If you’re already running on a private cloud but are looking to get your team the benefits of scale and anytime anywhere access offered by the public cloud - a hybrid cloud may make a lot of sense.
A few practical benefits include:
Faster implementation time compared to a complete public cloud migration
Continue to run mission-critical applications on premise while moving other elements to the public cloud
Less change and a gradual team adoption can ensure operational success
Additional Resources
If you are still somewhat lost on how to optimize your hybrid cloud infrastructure, Grind Analytics has cloud computing experts equipped with products and solutions to help take your business to the next level.
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