What Is a Hybrid Cloud?
A hybrid cloud is a computing environment that combines the use of public cloud services, private cloud infrastructure, and on-premises resources to deliver the benefits of both public and private cloud models. This approach enables organizations to optimize their IT infrastructure by leveraging the scalability and cost-efficiency of public cloud services while maintaining the security and control of private clouds and on-premises systems.
In a hybrid cloud setup, workloads and data can be seamlessly moved between public and private cloud environments based on business needs and requirements. This flexibility allows organizations to take advantage of the best features of each environment, such as the ability to scale resources on-demand from the public cloud or to maintain sensitive data on a private cloud or on-premises.
How Does Hybrid Cloud Architecture Work?
A hybrid cloud architecture typically comprises of a public Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform, a private cloud or data center, and access to a secure network. Many hybrid models utilize a local area network (LAN) and a wide area network (WAN).
Companies adopting a hybrid cloud strategy typically start with an IaaS solution and extend their capabilities to the private cloud. To effectively deploy a hybrid strategy, public and private clouds must be compatible and able to communicate with each other. Private clouds are often built to be compatible with popular public cloud platforms.
In recent years, IaaS providers have improved interoperability between services using application programming interfaces (APIs), making it easier for businesses to connect on-premises resources to public cloud solutions. Architects can also deploy a hypervisor layer to create virtual machines that connect to the public cloud through another software layer that orchestrates the cloud environment.
Hybrid Cloud Model: Key Benefits
The key benefits of hybrid clouds include:
- Flexibility—it combines traditional on-prem systems with modern cloud technologies to avoid vendor lock-in. It also allows organizations to migrate their workloads anytime. Hybrid clouds are agile and scalable, offering more resources than a corporate data center and better handling changing demands.
- Cost management—organizations can choose between fixed-cost and flexible pricing models in different environments, optimizing infrastructure and operating costs. A hybrid cloud also offers interoperability and resiliency—businesses can increase redundancy and ensure that workload components run in all environments.
- Compliance—especially if industry regulations restrict where an organization can store data. Sensitive information can reside in the private environment while operations run in the public cloud. This approach helps companies meet regulatory requirements while leveraging the cost-effectiveness and elasticity of the cloud.
Hybrid Cloud Use Cases
Hybrid clouds are useful for various situations. For example, hybrid cloud computing facilitates disaster recovery because organizations can fine-tune their public and private recovery strategies to their needs. It simplifies backups by reducing the local storage space required.
A hybrid cloud setup makes it easier to migrate workloads. It could be a temporary strategy during migration to a long-term cloud solution. A hybrid cloud-based transition can speed up the migration process and minimize downtime.
Another use case is enabling resources to shift throughout the development lifecycle. The release phase won’t require the same resources as the testing phase. Hybrid clouds allow easy scaling of resources without overhauling configurations or hardware. A hybrid cloud environment also supports legacy applications, with some moving to the cloud while others remain on-premises.
Hybrid Cloud vs. Multi-Cloud
A multi-cloud strategy involves multiple cloud providers or platforms that handle different tasks. An organization can use AWS for some tasks and GCP or Azure for others.
Multi-cloud deployments differ from hybrid clouds in design and purpose. Both strategies provide redundancy and flexibility, support highly customized infrastructure, and enable businesses to replace upfront capital investments with operational costs.
However, they also have key differences:
- Hybrid clouds necessarily combine public clouds with private clouds or physical data centers.
- Multi-clouds only use public cloud deployments (i.e., PaaS, IaaS, SaaS).
- Hybrid clouds create a unified environment between the public and private clouds.
- Multi-clouds don’t establish interoperability.
While each model serves different purposes, it is possible to combine these approaches. For example, businesses can merge their private clouds with multiple public cloud solutions to build a hybrid multi-cloud deployment. However, this strategy is technically complex, so it is usually only feasible for large enterprises.
Alternatively, an organization might use a hybrid cloud solution from one cloud vendor while leveraging the services and resources of another cloud platform independent of the hybrid cloud.
4 Best Practices for Successful Hybrid Cloud Management
Identify and Optimize Workloads
The first step in building a hybrid cloud infrastructure is to understand and analyze the data and applications running in different cloud environments. Stakeholders should collect information such as who uses the data, how users and applications interact with the data, how data flows between environments, and which resources are critical to business continuity.
Hybrid cloud performance is highly dependent on the ability to move data across the network, so it’s important to focus on storing and moving data. Unnecessary data flows can negatively affect performance.
Perform Cost Analysis
When reviewing existing infrastructure for hybrid migration, workload and cost analysis go hand in hand. Each cloud provider offers its own pricing model, and organizations need to consolidate this information and analyze the cost of existing and future workloads.
Most hybrid cloud transformations are designed to reduce costs and improve performance, so it is important to consider both short-term and long-term costs. Additionally, any capital expenditures required for new hardware or software should be analyzed against the cost of using the public cloud.
It is also important for organizations to understand the cloud provider’s SLAs and costs. Most public cloud providers don’t charge for data coming into their systems, but they do charge for data leaving their systems. When these costs are combined, hybrid clouds can be more expensive than private clouds.
Enforce Uniform Governance Policies
Hybrid cloud administrators need to create policies for cloud governance. This should be crafted in coordination with multiple stakeholders within the organization, including the DevOps team, the business team, and legal or compliance teams. Among other benefits, data governance can ensure there are no idle resources in the cloud, depleting funds available for other operational activities, and that no data is lost or corrupted during migration.
Formulate a Hybrid Cloud Security Strategy
Hybrid clouds span multiple locations and environments. This means your security security controls cannot be easily deployed at scale. Developing a sound security strategy must be part of your hybrid cloud strategy.
There are three types of security controls to consider:
- Physical security controls—these are often part of an SLA with a cloud provider.
- Technology controls—these include identity and access management (IAM) solutions, firewalls and content filtering systems.
- Encryption—because data is constantly moving between environments, you must enable data encryption for data at rest and data in motion. Too much encryption can be costly in terms of performance and availability, so strategic consideration is necessary.
- Security controls—including disaster recovery plans and other activities to ensure business continuity.
Manage Data in Hybrid Cloud with Imperva Data Security Fabric
Continuously discover and classify valuable data whether structured or unstructured and located on-premises, hybrid, cloud, or multi-cloud environments with Imperva Data Security Fabric. Imperva Data Security Fabric (DSF) automates, simplifies, and lowers the cost of regulated data compliance and security for business data assets.
