A Hybrid Cloud refers to a diverse computing environment in which applications operate by leveraging a blend of computing resources, storage, and services across various settings. Hybrid Cloud integrates public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises infrastructure into a cohesive, versatile, and cost-efficient IT ecosystem.

This setup provides flexibility for diverse needs, including private resources and applications, balancing factors like resource use and legacy app compatibility. Hybrid Cloud computing offers a practical compromise between modern cloud benefits and constraints, especially in high-performance computing scenarios. It also enables a phased public cloud transition, considering factors like legacy hardware and proprietary data.

Elements of Hybrid Cloud solutions

What's involved in a Hybrid Cloud solution? Typically, the cloud and on-premises components operate independently, and the goal is to seamlessly integrate them. To achieve this, consider the following:

• Unified Management: Managing on-premises hardware and cloud networking often requires different tools. In a hybrid model, centralizing infrastructure management streamlines the handling of data and resources on a single platform.
• Consistent Architecture: As businesses increasingly adopt cloud technology, it's crucial for legacy on-premises hardware to work seamlessly with cloud elements. Employing a consistent architecture ensures organizations can operate across both sides in a portable and flexible manner, especially during migration or disaster recovery scenarios.
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Harnessing artificial intelligence and machine learning in a Hybrid Cloud can optimize resources throughout the enterprise. It automates repetitive tasks, reducing human errors, while enabling predictive maintenance and policy enforcement.

Traditional Hybrid Cloud Architecture

At first, the Hybrid Cloud architecture primarily concentrated on reconfiguring segments of a company's on-premises data center into a private cloud setup. Subsequently, it involved linking this infrastructure to public cloud environments hosted off-premises by providers like AWS, Google Cloud Services, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. This connection was achieved through prepackaged Hybrid Cloud solutions or advanced enterprise middleware, facilitating the integration of cloud resources across these environments. Unified management tools were employed to monitor, allocate, and manage these resources centrally from a single console.

This resulted in a unified IT infrastructure suitable for various purposes:

• Scalability and resilience: Leverage public cloud computing and storage resources to rapidly and cost-effectively scale up in response to unexpected spikes in traffic, all without impacting private cloud workloads.
• VMware migration: Migrate existing on-premises workloads to virtualized public cloud infrastructure through a 'lift and shift' approach, reducing the on-premises data center footprint and scaling as required without additional capital equipment investments.
• Rapid technology adoption: Seamlessly adopt or transition to the latest Software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, and integrate them with existing applications, without the need for provisioning new on-premises infrastructure.
• Security and compliance: Allocate private cloud resources for sensitive data and regulated workloads behind the firewall, while utilizing cost-effective public cloud resources for less sensitive tasks and data.
• Enhancing legacy applications: Utilize public cloud services to enhance user experiences with existing applications or extend their functionality to new devices.
• Resource optimization and cost efficiency: Optimize resource allocation by running workloads with predictable capacity on the private cloud, and migrate more variable workloads to the public cloud. Use public cloud infrastructure to quickly provision development and testing resources as needed.

Modern Hybrid Cloud Architecture

Today, the emphasis within Hybrid Cloud architecture has shifted away from physical connectivity and is now centered on facilitating the seamless movement of workloads across diverse cloud environments. Additionally, there is a strong focus on automating the deployment of these workloads to the most suitable cloud environment for specific business purposes. This transformation is driven by several notable trends.

Organizations, as a crucial part of their ongoing digital transformations, are actively creating new applications and modernizing legacy ones to harness the capabilities of cloud-native technologies. These technologies enable consistent and dependable development, deployment, management, and performance across various cloud environments and providers.

More precisely, they are either building new applications or revamping existing ones to adopt microservices architecture. This approach dissects applications into smaller, reusable components that are tailored to specific business functions. These applications are then deployed within containers—lightweight executable units that contain only the application code and the necessary virtualized operating system dependencies for execution.

At a higher level, the distinction between public and private clouds is no longer defined by physical locations. For instance, many cloud vendors now offer public cloud services that can operate within their customers' on-premises data centers. Private clouds, which were traditionally on-premises, are now frequently hosted in off-premises data centers, on virtual private networks (VPNs) or virtual private clouds (VPCs), or on dedicated infrastructure provided by third-party providers, some of whom are also public cloud providers.

Furthermore, infrastructure virtualization, also known as Infrastructure as Code (IaC), enables developers to create these environments on-demand, utilizing compute and cloud resources both within and beyond the firewall. This becomes increasingly significant in the era of edge computing, as it offers opportunities to enhance global application performance by relocating workloads and data closer to where actual computing tasks are performed.

As a result, modern Hybrid Cloud infrastructure is evolving towards a unified hybrid multicloud platform, encompassing:

• Support for cloud-native application development and deployment across all cloud types (public and private) and providers.
• A single operating system that works across all environments.
• A container orchestration platform, typically Kubernetes, to automate application deployment across cloud environments.

Cloud-native development allows developers to break monolithic applications into versatile, business-oriented units, usable across applications. A standardized operating system lets developers embed hardware dependencies in any container, while Kubernetes offers granular control over container setup, including security, load balancing, scalability, across multiple cloud environments.

Benefits of Hybrid Cloud Platform

On-premises has limitations like hardware upkeep and individual asset compliance, while cloud networking can introduce potential latency concerns, especially for resource-intensive tasks. Hybrid Cloud solutions strike a balance between these options, allowing organizations to tailor a Hybrid Cloud design to suit their specific requirements. The advantages comprise:

• Consistent management: Hybrid Cloud computing unifies on-premises and cloud solutions under a single data management framework, ensuring interoperability.
• Automation: Hybrid Cloud leverages cloud's automation capabilities for streamlined processes and provides insights into potential full-cloud deployment benefits.
• Flexible control: Hybrid Cloud allows for selective segmentation of on-premises and cloud management, optimizing resource allocation and security based on specific needs. For instance, rapid-scaling needs can be addressed in the cloud, while data with specific security requirements can remain on-premises.
• Security: Hybrid Cloud assesses and assigns data security measures according to an organization's risk tolerance, combining on-premises security with cloud benefits.
• Resource optimization: Hybrid Cloud optimizes budget and resource utilization by assigning standard processes to the cloud for cost-effectiveness and high-compute tasks to on-premises hardware.
• Improved developer productivity: A Hybrid Cloud platform fosters Agile and DevOps methodologies, facilitating development and deployment across all clouds.
• Greater infrastructure efficiency: Granular resource control enables optimized spending across public and private clouds, accelerating application modernization and data integration.
• Enhanced regulatory compliance and security: Hybrid Cloud implements consistent security and compliance measures across all environments.
• Business acceleration: Hybrid Cloud accelerates product development, innovation, time-to-market, customer feedback response, application delivery, and collaboration with partners to drive business growth.

VNG Cloud's services help support businesses in transitioning from on-premises infrastructure to a Hybrid Cloud environment. Discover how our experts can assess your unique requirements and existing hardware to create a tailored Hybrid Cloud strategy that optimizes your system operations.