Hybrid cloud infrastructures represent a strategic blend of on-premises and cloud-based resources, allowing organizations to optimize their IT environments for various workloads and business needs. Adopting a hybrid cloud strategy enables businesses to harness the cloud’s scalability, agility, and cost-efficiency without the risk and expense of deprecating on-premises investments.
Download the #1 Hybrid Cloud Backup Guide
While hybrid cloud architectures are often unplanned, they’ve become indispensable in the modern business landscape. Many organizations require agility and scalability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, handle fluctuating workloads, and accelerate innovation. As a cost center, IT often faces blockers to experimentation and development, getting trapped in break/fix activities.
Off-loading infrastructure-management tasks to cloud providers enables organizations to use cutting-edge cloud services, such as AI, machine learning, and big-data analytics. This fosters collaboration and agility, allowing cross-functional teams to access resources and collaborate on projects more efficiently.
The ability to quickly spin up and tear down cloud-based resources lowers the barriers to entry for innovative projects, promoting experimentation and entrepreneurship within the organization. As a result, businesses can leverage the hybrid cloud’s innovation-enabling capabilities to develop and deploy new products and services faster, gaining a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced digital landscape.
Let’s discuss how to address the challenges of on-premises and cloud-based infrastructures so you can better understand their benefits, keep costs down, and maintain security.
Understanding Hybrid Cloud
A hybrid cloud is a combination of two or more computing environments, including private or public clouds, and on-premises data centers, all orchestrated as a unified and distributed computing environment. Some key characteristics include:
- An on-premises data center
- A combination of one or more hosted public or private clouds
- A management environment that unifies the management of both on-premises and cloud environments, and potentially multi-cloud extensions.
From the bottom up, the hybrid cloud includes several layers:
- Hybrid cloud infrastructure: The hybrid cloud infrastructure layer includes the public and private cloud infrastructure and on-premises data centers.
- Hybrid cloud platform: This layer spans the cloud and on-premises environment.
- Hybrid cloud software: Applications run in the hybrid cloud software layer.
- Observation layer: This layer acts as a window to provide an overview of all applications running in the hybrid cloud.
Importance of Hybrid Cloud in the Enterprise
As enterprises look to expand and scale to and from the cloud, having a hybrid cloud environment gives you the flexibility to repatriate workloads back on premises if needed for compliance or data retention needs, or to re-deploy into the cloud to balance storage costs and flexibility for growth. A hybrid cloud is an excellent way for enterprises to optimize workload resources and easily scale operations. The importance can’t be understated:
- Increased flexibility: Flexibility to work in the environment most suited to the application, such as running public-facing workloads in the cloud and keeping critical data on premises or in a private cloud.
- Workload portability: When working with a unified platform and supported by containers, it is easy to move workloads around the hybrid cloud.
- Support for innovation: The hybrid cloud supports innovation, allowing developers to easily experiment with different solutions without the need to invest in additional hardware and facilities.
Advantages of Hybrid Cloud
Enterprises with on-premises and public clouds for data can deploy security measures to protect against ransomware and implement cost-efficient best practices while scaling their environments to maintain business continuity.
Cost Efficiencies
Cost efficiency in the cloud typically surpasses on-premises solutions due to reduced capital expenditures, lower operational costs, and greater scalability. With the cloud, businesses don’t need to invest in expensive hardware and data center infrastructure. Cloud providers can leverage economies of scale to provide cost-effective services, and organizations can scale resources up or down as needed, avoiding over-provisioning.
Users only need to see one shocking cloud bill to realize the cloud isn’t a utopia. Misconfigurations, overzealous development, and other common mistakes can result in overspending in the cloud, an issue that’s less likely with on-premises infrastructure. Organizations must find the best-fit infrastructure type to ensure costs stay under control.
Scalability
The scalability of the cloud is a standout feature, allowing businesses to scale-up or down based on demand. With cloud services, organizations can rapidly scale their infrastructure to accommodate traffic spikes or growing workloads, ensuring optimal performance and responsiveness.
Whether adding more virtual servers, storage, or network capacity, the cloud’s scalability empowers businesses to adapt swiftly to changing requirements, making it a vital asset for growth-oriented organizations.
Security
Five years ago, security wouldn’t have appeared on a list of advantages of hybrid cloud architectures. However, cloud providers have invested heavily in state-of-the-art security and compliance measures, including data encryption, access controls, and infrastructure protection. Today, cloud security offerings often exceed what organizations can achieve independently.
Security in the cloud is a shared responsibility. Customers are responsible for securing their data and applications. Properly configured and managed cloud resources, strong authentication and access controls, regular security audits, and compliance adherence are essential for safeguarding data and applications.
Organizations hosting highly sensitive data or managing strict regulations may consider on-premises or specialist industry-specific cloud services well-suited for their requirements.
Business Continuity
Business continuity and disaster recovery are often entry use cases for organizations leveraging the cloud. For on-premises infrastructures, cloud hosting can offer off-site data hosting for restoration on-premises or failover directly into the cloud.
When it comes to workloads hosted in the cloud, high-availability architectures offer uptime that’s generally unattainable from on-premises infrastructures. However, data management is a shared responsibility, just like security. Third-party backup tools, such as Veeam, integrate natively with the cloud, unlocking the portability of backups across subscriptions, availability zones, and out of the cloud provider entirely for true resiliency.
Key Components of a Hybrid Cloud Strategy
Critical tools are needed to bridge the divide between on-premises and cloud-based workloads and to avoid a hodgepodge approach to infrastructure management. Many third-party tools offer extensive compatibility across hypervisors, databases, cloud services, and more to deliver cohesive outputs across heterogeneous environments.
Network Connectivity
Hybrid cloud networking tools are essential for creating and managing the connectivity between on-premises data centers and cloud resources. These tools enable organizations to establish secure and reliable network connections, such as virtual private networks (VPNs) or direct interconnects, ensuring seamless communication between their local infrastructure and the cloud. They also often include features for traffic optimization, load balancing, and network monitoring, helping businesses maintain optimal performance and latency across their hybrid cloud deployments.
Security and Compliance Tools
Security and compliance tools for hybrid clouds safeguard sensitive data and ensure adherence to regulatory requirements. They typically offer advanced threat detection, encryption, and identity and access management to bolster security across on-premises and cloud environments. These tools also help organizations automate compliance assessments and audits, ensuring they meet industry-specific or regional compliance standards.
Data Protection and Backup
Data protection tools for hybrid cloud environments play a critical role in maintaining the availability and integrity of data — regardless of where it resides. Capabilities provided by these tools include backup, disaster recovery, and data encryption to safeguard data across on-premises and cloud-based storage locations. These tools enable businesses to implement data retention policies, ensure business continuity, and adhere to data privacy regulations, fostering confidence in the security and resilience of their hybrid cloud data assets.
Implementing a Hybrid Cloud Strategy With Veeam
Implementing a hybrid cloud backup strategy with Veeam is easy. Set up a hybrid cloud consultation with our experts, where you can questions relevant to your deployment and explain the workloads and environments you want to protect. Our experts can provide the necessary information to develop a comprehensive hybrid cloud backup data protection strategy with Veeam.
Each environment and situation is unique, and your strategy depends on how many workloads you want to protect and in which environments you want to protect them. The 3-2-1-1 Rule specifies that data stored locally should have multiple copies backed up and at least one copy stored off-site.
Aim to have a flexible system that encompasses your VMware, Windows Server, Oracle DB, and other essential services and provides centralized management to protect edge devices. The ability to send backups between the cloud, an on-premises data center, or the edge is critical.
How to Build a Hybrid Cloud Strategy
Consider the following questions when developing your hybrid or multi-cloud strategy:
- Are there any regulatory requirements you must meet with your IT operations?
- Do you have any legacy applications that could be retired as a part of a cloud migration?
- Which applications that can’t be migrated would you like to keep for on-premises?
- Do you have any legacy applications that can’t be migrated candidates for replacement with more modern SaaS solutions?
- Is it possible to use microservices to gradually replace elements of legacy applications?
- Where applications require significant changes, can you refactor them to improve stability/reliability?
After you’ve answered those questions, follow these best practices:
- Evaluate each application and its data individually to determine requirements for availability, response times, and data protection.
- Research cloud cost management strategies, including suitable hybrid cloud storage types and data ingress/egress fees, to avoid overpaying for the services you use.
- Revisit your backup strategy and policies to ensure all cloud and on-premises servers are covered.
Try to move one application at a time, testing thoroughly before altering other applications. You may encounter issues with syncing data between remote applications or having applications failover during an outage. It’s best to test potentially complex scenarios before fully transitioning.
How Veeam Supports Hybrid Cloud Environments
Whether using a hybrid or multi-cloud environment, Veeam offers flexibility to move your data freely between on-premises and the cloud, between multiple clouds or among data centers. Whether it’s leveraging universal licensing to backup cloud data or software to backup and protect on-premises data, the ease of Veeam Data Platform’s centralized management, layered security, and hybrid and multi-cloud-ready approach create a unified support system that integrates seamlessly with your environment, providing cost savings and greater peace of mind.
Veeam Case Studies of Successful Implementations
Check out our Hybrid Cloud Customer Success Guide to read stories from Veeam customers worldwide as they share their challenges, solutions, and outcomes with implementing Veeam Data Platform for their hybrid and multi-cloud data protection needs.
For more success stories, visit our Veeam Success Stories Library.
Future Trends in Hybrid Cloud
The trend around fluid movement between hybrid and multi-cloud storage strategies continues to grow like the adoption of cloud-powered tools and services. Based on this multifaceted approach, organizations have started emphasizing long-term retention in their IT strategies. It’s an especially sensitive point involving data protection specific to data loss prevention.
Many organizations started with self-managed backup using cloud storage but later switched to a managed service provider. These shifts have a prolific impact due to increased optimism around hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, and the importance of a comprehensive data protection strategy. Veeam’s Cloud Protection Trends for 2024: The Future of Cloud Data Protection report provides more of this perspective, along with statistics and future trends from a survey of 1,600 unbiased organizations that use cloud-based production and cloud-powered protection services.
Let Veeam Help With Your Cloud Backup
It’s important to understand your cloud data isn’t protected by public cloud vendors and it won’t protect itself — and snapshots aren’t enough. The benefits of implementing a backup solution such as Veeam into your hybrid cloud strategy include the following and more:
- End-to-end security
- Visibility to the state of your protected data
- Fast, reliable recovery
- Flexibility
These core benefits can give you the confidence to backup and recover your data in and out of the cloud, no matter where it resides. Having complete ownership of your data across all your environments can’t be understated. A sound data protection strategy is essential to ensure your organization can weather ransomware attacks and cybersecurity incidents.
For more information, download our #1 Hybrid Cloud Backup Guide, the ultimate guide for owning your data on any cloud.
The post Hybrid Cloud Strategy: Best Practices for Secure & Scalable Solutions appeared first on Veeam Software Official Blog.
from Veeam Software Official Blog https://ift.tt/frmclKP
Share this content: