What is hybrid cloud management?

A hybrid cloud refers to a blended computing environment utilizing a mix of resources across public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises data centers or edge locations. This approach accommodates diverse computing needs, leveraging the strengths of different environments. Organizations opt for hybrid cloud setups to optimize costs, mitigate risks, and facilitate digital transformation initiatives.

Hybrid cloud management (HCM) involves overseeing an organization’s infrastructure deployments and services, both on-premises and off-premises. It aids in designing, deploying, and managing IT infrastructure across various environments such as clouds, data centers, containers, virtual machines (VMs), and hardware platforms. Typically facilitated by software, HCM integrates both on- and off-premises infrastructure into a unified management platform, empowering administrators to monitor and regulate resources effectively.

Hybrid clouds merge resources and services from multiple computing environments, requiring seamless integration, orchestration, and coordination for swift information sharing, shifting, and synchronization. Effective hybrid cloud networking is vital for seamless deployment, typically achieved through local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), virtual private networks (VPNs), and application programming interfaces (APIs).

Hybrid cloud architectures abstract and aggregate resources by utilizing virtualization, containerization, and software-defined networking and storage technologies. Dedicated management software facilitates resource allocation and on-demand provisioning across environments, similar to other cloud computing models.

As organizations increasingly adopt hybrid IT models, they face a host of complex challenges:

Key advantages of hybrid cloud models include the following:

Before delving into the technical aspects of implementing a unified hybrid cloud management platform, businesses must first develop a comprehensive hybrid cloud management strategy. While strategies may vary depending on unique business objectives, here are key steps to consider:

Before integrating a hybrid cloud infrastructure, understand different use cases and their advantages, disadvantages, and potential remedies. This evaluation will ensure alignment with your organization’s IT and business requirements. Here are several hybrid cloud use cases:

• Digital transformation: Many enterprises seek to modernize their IT infrastructure through public cloud adoption. However, constraints such as legacy applications or compliance obligations may allow the retention of a private data center. Hybrid cloud solutions facilitate migrating select IT components to the cloud while maintaining critical on-premises applications.

• Application migration: Hybrid clouds offer secure and efficient migration pathways, allowing organizations to leverage optimal cloud environments based on workload characteristics. While newer applications seamlessly transition, older legacy applications may pose challenges during migration.

• Development and testing: Public cloud environments streamline application development and testing processes by eliminating the need for costly on-premises hardware setups. Developers commonly utilize cloud services for project hosting, resulting in boosted efficiency and reduced expenses.

• Cloud bursting: Hybrid clouds offer scalability for fluctuating workloads, particularly useful for scenarios involving sudden spikes in demand or seasonal surges. However, effective cloud bursting execution is crucial to mitigate potential latency issues associated with data movement.

• Backup and disaster recovery: Hybrid cloud architectures facilitate seamless replication of on-premises workloads and data backup in the cloud. In the event of a data center disruption, workloads seamlessly transition to the cloud environment, leveraging on-demand resources.

• AI and machine learning: The development of expansive AI models on-premises requires significant costs and expertise. Hybrid cloud configurations offer a solution by leveraging technological advancements and optimizing hardware costs. Nonetheless, deploying AI workloads via public cloud services introduces new security, privacy, and data management considerations.

• Edge computing: Integrating edge computing into hybrid cloud environments improves the ability to execute data-intensive tasks closer to the source, reducing latency and enhancing data protection. However, ensuring security in distributed setups may necessitate the adoption of zero-trust architectures and additional management methodologies.

Cloud management tools are critical in centralizing the deployment and administration of data, applications, and workloads across hybrid architectures. Here, we outline the key tools and services designed for seamless hybrid cloud management:

1. Next-Generation hybrid cloud frameworks Azure Stack, Azure Arc, AWS Outposts, and Google Cloud Anthos represent the forefront of hybrid cloud framework technology, offering the technical foundation to seamlessly manage and orchestrate workloads across on-premises and public cloud environments…

2. Conventional management platforms VMware Cloud Foundation and Cisco Intersight offer robust solutions for managing hybrid cloud environments.

3. Hybrid Kubernetes management services Services like Elastic Kubernetes Service Anywhere enable efficient management of workloads across private infrastructure utilizing Amazon’s managed Kubernetes service.

4. Centralized hybrid cloud management tools CloudBolt, Embotics, Flexera Cloud Management Platform, IBM Turbonomic, Morpheus Data, Nutanix Cloud Manager Cost Governance (formerly Beam), and Scalr provide centralized control over on-premises and cloud-based resources, offering features such as cost monitoring, performance optimization, security, reporting, and analytics.

5. Infrastructure-as-Code tools Ansible, Chef, HashiCorp’s Terraform, Puppet, and Salt empower users with hybrid cloud management capabilities, allowing for streamlined deployment and configuration across diverse environments.

6. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools: Vendors like Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks offer cloud security posture management tools, automating risk assessment and compliance monitoring to ensure the continuous security of cloud-based systems.

Selecting the right combination of tools is crucial for organizations utilizing hybrid cloud environments. Each tool brings unique capabilities to the table, catering to specific requirements and improving overall efficiency and security in hybrid cloud management.

Embarking on a hybrid multi-cloud strategy requires careful consideration of the strengths and weaknesses offered by different cloud providers. By integrating various providers alongside DigitalOcean’s scalable and flexible platform, businesses can effectively leverage the unique advantages of each.

DigitalOcean stands out for its developer-centric approach, cost-efficiency, global presence, and thriving ecosystem, making it an ideal choice for firms adopting a multi-cloud approach. Utilizing DigitalOcean within a hybrid cloud architecture enables organizations to enjoy more flexibility, risk mitigation, cost optimization, and superior performance, fostering resilience and innovation.

This strategy is also a proactive measure to efficiently manage computing resources and mitigate potential data loss or downtime. Small enterprises, in particular, stand to benefit from a hybrid cloud setup, allowing them to tailor services and expenses by selecting specialized cloud providers that align precisely with their needs. This approach may be preferable to relying solely on a single, larger cloud provider.

To explore DigitalOcean’s comprehensive suite of cloud services and discover how they can elevate your business operations, please take a closer look at our product suite here.