The Ultimate Guide to Hybrid Cloud - Harbour IT

The Ultimate Guide to Hybrid CloudYour comprehensive 12,000 word guide to help you get the most out

of your cloud architecture and keep ahead of the competition

Table of Contents

Introduction

What is a Hybrid Cloud?

Hybrid Cloud Solutions

What is a Public Cloud?

What is a Private Cloud?

When to Choose Each Type of Cloud Solution

What to Consider When Choosing a Hybrid Cloud Solution

What are Examples of a Hybrid Cloud Solution?

What are the most Common Use Cases for a HybridCloud?

Scenarios where Hybrid Cloud would be beneficial

Hybrid Cloud Security

Hybrid Cloud Architecture

Harbour IT’s Cloud Metro

Hybrid Cloud Deployment

Hybrid Cloud for your Business

Finding the Right Hybrid Cloud Provider

Harbour IT has you Covered

Glossary

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The Ultimate Guide to Hybrid Cloud 3

IntroductionC H A P T E R 1

Did you know that 90% of all enterprise organisations are expected to adopt

multiple cloud services and solutions by the year 2020, however only 5% of all

IT budgets globally are directed to public cloud resources?

The cloud has taken businesses by storm, with some industries being quicker on the

uptake of a cloud solution than others.


Some of the main factors currently leading enterprise corporations to cloud migration are:

• The ability to cut costs 40-50% in IT spend for data centre services by adopting

public cloud hardware and resources over dedicated on-premise solutions.

• The need to modernise legacy software applications and databases using

containers and microservices to take advantage of public cloud platform

features.

• Requirements to support custom software development teams across thousands

of microservices in simultaneous runtime while bringing new service products to

market.

• Increase in the usage of Agile project management methodologies, DevOps,

CI/CD, remote code repositories like GitHub, and version control in software

development.

• The implementation of web server deployments that are increasingly automated

and scripted using elastic platforms like AWS EC2, VMware, and Kubernetes

alongside popular DevOps tools like Jenkins, Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Docker, and

Vagrant.

A hybrid cloud solution is one of the more versatile and scalable solutions a

business can adopt when facing the factors above - but what is hybrid cloud, how

could it help your business, and what product is going to be the best for your

needs?

5

Private Cloud

Enterprises Cloud ServiceProviders

Hybrid Cloud

Common Platform, Security Model, & Management Model

Cloud Computing is a way of doing computing

Public CloudOperated solely for an

organizaton, typically within the firewall

Composition of 2 or more interoperable clouds, enablng data and applcation portability

Accessible over the internet for general Consumption

Bridging


What is a hybrid cloud?C H A P T E R 2

A hybrid cloud is the combination of both private and public cloud platform

services in complex data centre resource orchestration where the hardware,

database, and software applications required for business operations are

shared between architecture from multiple service providers in production at

scale.

Many businesses, NGOs, and other groups have internal requirements for

information security, database and software functionality that requires private

servers within an in-house data centre to maintain.


The combination of private cloud hardware and network administration with public

cloud platform resources and third-party Software as a Service (SaaS) products is

the definitive characteristic of hybrid cloud orchestration.

What is cloud infrastructure?

Cloud infrastructure is the back-end hardware and software needed to support

a cloud computing model, including servers, LAN equipment, storage, network,

and virtualisation software.

It also includes an abstraction layer that virtualises resources and presents them to

users through application program and graphical interfaces. These virtual resources

are hosted by a cloud service provider and include servers, memory, firewalls,

network switches, load balancers, and storage.

Cloud infrastructure usually involves high density systems with shared power in

order to deliver the massive capacity required by large cloud service providers such

as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).


Hybrid cloud solutionsC H A P T E R 3

Identify what you are already doing in the cloud

Self-Managed Provider-Supplied

TRADITIONAL ON-PREMISES IT

Data Application DatabasesOperational

System

Data CenterNetwork &

StoragePhysical ServersVirtualization


COLOCATION


System



HOSTING


System



IAAS


System



PAAS


System



SAAS


System




The different formats of cloud computing models include:

INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE (IAAS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is where virtualised computing resources are

hosted and delivered by a third-party provider through the internet. This means that

if an organisation chooses not to host the sort of items that are traditionally present

in an on-premises data centre, such as servers, a virtualisation layer, networking

hardware and storage, they can use an IaaS provider for these services.

Reference: An example of an IaaS offering would be the storage and computing

services provided by Microsoft Azure.

PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PAAS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is where software and hardware tools (often needed

for application development) are hosted and delivered by a third-party provider to

users through the internet. This means that if an organisation wishes to use a certain

hardware or software tool but does not wish to install it on their in-house equipment,

they can still develop or run a new application by using a PaaS provider.

Reference: An example of a PaaS application would be Google’s App Engine.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/

https://cloud.google.com/appengine/


SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SAAS)

Software as a Service (SaaS) is where applications are hosted and delivered by

a third-party provider to users through the internet as both a software distribution

model and a cloud computing model. This means that if an organisation wishes to

use an application, the third-party provider gives them network-based access to a

single copy, from which any updates or changes made by the provider are rolled

out to all users.

Users have the option of choosing where their data is stored, be that in the cloud,

locally at their premises, or in both as part of a hybrid cloud solution.

Reference: An example of a SaaS service would be the cloud-based CRM solution

Salesforce for businesses.

https://www.salesforce.com/


System ofengagement

System of record

Link new social and mobile systems to core business systems

SOR - SOE INTEGRATION

CRM

HR ERP

Use private cloud normally and switch to public cloud to recover files and data

Leverage off-premise resources for backup and archiving of on-premises resources

DISASTER RECOVERY

DISASTER RECOVERY

Abble to be implemented quickly, without infrastructure or application changes

Dev/Test Prod

Choose private, public or hybrid cloud base on independent workload requirements

INDEPENDENT WORKLOADS

Traditional IT

Public Private

Tap into public cloud resources dynamically when a shortage occurs on private cloud

RESERVE FOR CAPACITY (BURSTING)

PublicPrivate

Application and/or data are portable and can go to and from public and private for

improved optimization

PORTABILITY & OPTIMIZATION

PublicPrivate

Hybrid Cloud Brokerage & ManagementPlanned or Policy based Management and sourcing across multiple environments (infrastructure, platform & app)

Private

Public

Public

Private

Data sync

Data sync

Data sync

More complex deployment possibly requiring infrastructure or application changes


Why choose a hybrid cloud solution?

There are many reasons why a business should consider a hybrid cloud solution

when researching a cloud computing solution.

Hybrid cloud computing allows businesses to do the following:

Complex organisations are able to unify security policies across digital assets

online and to coordinate different development teams for brand websites

independently.

Organisations with thousands of employees across departments can routinely

support SaaS/PaaS products from hundreds of third-party development

companies in productivity, manufacturing, and publishing in the process of

daily workflows.

It provides organisations with the flexibility to deploy the best-in-class

hardware, software, and services according to your business needs.

It can give organisations the ability to drive greater growth and scalability of

their services without necessarily requiring additional on-premise equipment

or expensive infrastructure.


These are just a few of the general reasons why a business might choose hybrid

cloud computing – the exact applications for your business and how it can work

best for you will depend on your organisation.

However, while each business’ use of the cloud will differ, Gartner reports that over

90% of enterprise organisations expect to deploy hybrid cloud architecture in IT

departments by the year 2020, and more than $1.3trillion in IT spending will be

affected by the shift to the cloud by 2022. This shows the versatility of the hybrid

cloud model.

A few interesting stats and facts

The quarterly SaaS spending in Q2, 2018, was $20billion.01.

It is predicted that 83% of all enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by

2020. The breakdown of this by cloud computing model is:

• 41% will be run on public cloud platforms

• 20% will be private-cloud-based

• 22% will rely on hybrid cloud adoption.

02.

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2017-04-05-gartner-says-a-massive-shift-to-hybrid-infrastructure-services-is-underway

https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/cloud-adoption-statistics/

https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/microsoft-salesforce-help-saas-spending-reach-100b-run-rate

https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2018/01/07/83-of-enterprise-workloads-will-be-in-the-cloud-by-2020/#2e513c5b6261


Right Scale’s annual State of the Cloud Report 2019 has reported:

• 91% of businesses currently use the public cloud. However, just 22%

use the public cloud exclusively.

• 72% currently use a private cloud, but only 3% use the private cloud

exclusively.

• 69% of businesses are opting for a hybrid cloud solution.

03.

Cloud adoption trends suggest there’s an advantage to using both public

and private cloud solutions as this gives more flexibility and variety of

options.

04.

According to Forbes, the split between hybrid cloud services is roughly:

• 48% to SaaS

• 30% to IaaS

• 21% to PaaS

05.

https://media.flexera.com/documents/rightscale-2019-state-of-the-cloud-report-from-flexera.pdf?elqTrackId=372b6798c7294392833def6ec8f62c5c&elqaid=4588&elqat=2&_ga=2.75255952.381106268.1556868633-1445624021.1556868633

https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/cloud-computing-trends/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2018/08/30/state-of-enterprise-cloud-computing-2018/?sh=be44d87265e3


A survey of IT leaders by Datometry showed some of the reasons why

enterprises were choosing to adopt the cloud. Here are a few:

• Cost-cutting topped the list of reasons at 61%

• The desire for new features and capabilities was second with 57%

• Current warehouses filling up with equipment and infrastructure for

on-premise solutions was the reason 30% were moving to the cloud

06.

http://datometry.com/resources/surveys/cloud-data-warehousing-survey/


What is a public cloud?C H A P T E R 4

A public cloud is fully operated as part of a hyper-scale data centre on remote

hardware, often using SaaS/PaaS tools provided by an IT major to increase

efficiency of software publishing or business support operations. Public cloud

architecture is defined by multi-tenant environments, zero-trust policies towards

vendors, and “pay as you go” pricing.

Public cloud hosting companies like Microsoft (Azure), Google (Google Cloud

Platform [GCP]), Amazon (Amazon Web Services [AWS]), IBM (IBM Cloud), and

Oracle (Oracle Cloud) operate at hyper-scale with the world’s most innovative and

advanced data centres. In addition to providing commodity web server hardware for

data centre outsourcing and web/mobile application hosting, these companies also

offer a variety of platform services to customers.


Examples of platform services are hosted database products, web server stack

software, programming utilities, storage archives, and machine learning TPU

platforms.

For example, Google Drive is a perfect example of a public cloud storage service

used by hundreds of thousands of businesses and individuals across the globe,

allowing for real-time shared working and improved resource storage.

DIAGRAM OF A BASIC CLOUD MODEL:

INTERNET

Front End

Back End

Client Infrastructure

Management Security

Aplication

Service

Storage


Public cloud - costs and services

A public cloud is the most popular type of cloud service because of the relatively

low cost and the ability to scale hardware modularly according to web traffic or

user demand. Public cloud hardware is used by businesses of all sizes to address

peaks in workflow demand, develop/test software, to be a real-time accessible

storage service, or to access remote applications and platform services to perform

IT communications for daily operations.

Many businesses choose public cloud hosts because of the ability to create a

custom web server stack that can be automated in production for software support.

Others adopt public cloud services because they provide enhanced functionality,

optimised performance, or platform-exclusive tools for software development that

are cutting-edge. “Pay as you go” billing means that you are only charged for the

resources consumed, including reserved instances.

Public Cloud: Common Use Case Scenarios

Many businesses currently use Microsoft Azure virtual machines (VMs) to improve

their business security. Virtual machines are isolated environments running in

parallel on multi-tenant servers with shared kernel support at the hypervisor

level. VMs have a number of valuable uses, from testing/development to running

old software to orchestrating a multi-cloud data centre. VMs can be used to test

suspicious files while keeping the rest of your system safe. Healthcare groups run

virtual machines in order to successfully operate medical records management

software in a public cloud environment, ensuring greater protection to data privacy.


Public Cloud: Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Google App Engine is a perfect example of cloud adoption targeted to businesses

who need to create a web-based app, but don’t want to create a full infrastructure

on their own servers to do so. AWS EC2 is a popular option for websites that need to

scale elastically.

Public cloud solutions can also offer businesses a greater level of power and

functionality through applications that allow for Machine Learning, AI, etc within

their respective marketplaces. For example, when running machine learning stack

through Microsoft Azure.

Other common use case scenarios for public cloud services include running the machine learning stack on Microsoft Azure. For example:

Public Cloud Hardware: Enterprise corporations increasingly seek to

outsource their internal data centre operations to public cloud hardware for

cost savings in the support of web/mobile applications at scale or to deploy

IoT products with edge servers.

Software Development Tools: The main advantage of database-as-a-service

products (DBaaS) and programming language support through SaaS/PaaS

tools in deploying custom software in support of operations or clients on

public cloud hardware.


GPU & TPU Servers: Public cloud hosts also offer GPU & TPU hardware

that runs Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) applications

for manufacturing, mass media publishing, ecommerce, and other industrial

requirements.

Machine Learning: A hybrid cloud architecture allows enterprise businesses

to integrate AI/ML functionality into their daily workflow or on-site facilities

while making use of cloud platform services such as pre-trained algorithms,

translation apps, or image recognition.

Programming Teams: Custom software coded for industrial manufacturing,

scientific research, financial services, publishing, etc. can integrate the latest

features from AI/ML running on Azure Stack with project management in Visual

Studio on Windows.

The Azure Marketplace allows enterprise businesses to implement powerful new

AI/ML functionality into their software service applications through ecosystem utility

products that can be deployed quickly to production. The Azure Marketplace also

includes thousands of web server utilities, data centre management tools, database,

security, and development products.


Hybrid cloud vs 100% public cloud

A public cloud is one where services are delivered via the internet. The service may

be free or adopted via a subscription plan that is based on the resources consumed.

The cloud service provider develops, manages, and maintains the resources of their

customers, which are shared between multiple tenants on the same hardware units

or in the same data centre facilities. The main advantage of public clouds is that

they deliver a huge variety of highly scalable services at relatively low cost.

The main limitations of public cloud are their security risk for sensitive data and

lack of control, which many organisations require for compliance. These concerns

are largely addressed in a hybrid cloud environment due to its ability to share

resources between public and private cloud deployments according to the

organisation’s security, performance, scalability, cost, and efficiency requirements.

Most complex business organisations find it difficult to manage a 100% public cloud

deployment due to the readiness of their core applications/legacy applications built

on on-premise infrastructure.


What is a private cloud?C H A P T E R 5

A private cloud is cloud used by a single organisation, where the hardware

resources are built and maintained on-premises or operated by an offsite

vendor in a data centre facility or co-location venue. It may support both public

software services and/or internal business operations.

Private cloud architecture is isolated, single-tenant, and delivered through a secure

private network. Private cloud is often used to manage the business and security

needs of an organisation, because it offers greater control over the infrastructure

and can be used for compliance-sensitive workloads without compromising on

information privacy.


Private Cloud: Common Use Case Scenarios

A private cloud can offer public-facing software services through web servers,

the support for internal business services, or a combination of both.

A private cloud is functionally equivalent to an in-house data centre composed of a

network of private servers, switches, routers, hubs, and endpoint devices. Businesses

may use private cloud hardware to support a corporate LAN (Local Area Network) or

use virtualisation and SDN to build a Software-Defined Data Centre (SDDC).

Popular private cloud orchestration software choices for enterprise companies are

Microsoft solutions, VMware, OpenStack, CloudStack, Mesosphere, HP, Mirantis,

and Nutanix. Linux development companies like Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu offer

Kubernetes-based container virtualisation solutions for complete data centre

management. Private cloud facilities are often tasked with maintaining legacy

equipment, databases, and software applications in production while being

modernised or replaced.

It is most often used by highly regulated industries and government agencies,

technology companies with copyright interests, and large organisations requiring

efficient, cost-effective operation of advanced data centre technologies.


ON-PREMISES

NETWORK

Gateway

GATEWAY

SUBNET

VPN Gateway

WEB TIER

NSG

VM

VM

VM

BUSINESS

TIER

NSG

VM

VM

VM

MANAGEMENT

SUBNET

Jumpbox

NSG

VM

DATA TIER

NSG

VM

VM

VM

VIRTUAL NETWORK


Hybrid cloud vs private cloud

With a private cloud, computing resources are reserved for the exclusive use of

one organisation, which is hosted online by a third-party service provider. Private

clouds are often used by government agencies, financial institutions, and SMEs

with business-critical operations who need to have enhanced control over their

environment. Hybrid clouds are environments where private clouds and public

clouds can be combined, allowing organisations to enjoy the benefits of each.

Public clouds are often used for high volume, low security needs and private

clouds for sensitive, business-critical operations. A hybrid cloud also creates an

environment where resources and workloads can be handled seamlessly across

multiple vendor resources with Microservices.

https://www.harbourit.com.au/everything-you-need-to-know-about-hybrid-cloud/#

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/guide/architecture-styles/microservices


CLIENT

IDENTITY

PROVIDER

IDENTITY

PROVIDER

IDENTITY

PROVIDER

API

GATEWAY

MICROSERVICES

REMOTE

SERVICE

MANAGEMENTSERVICE

DISCOVERY

Service

Service

Service

Service


Hybrid cloud vs on-premise data centre

An on-premise data centre is a group of servers that are located on an

organisation’s physical real estate and are privately owned. Private data

centres are tightly controlled and maintained by the parent organisation. The main

advantage of an on-prem cloud solution is heightened security and control over

sensitive data which is particularly important for maintaining compliance standards.

A hybrid cloud solution can offer similar levels of security by allowing you to keep

sensitive data separate in a private cloud, while taking advantage of the productivity

and cost-saving benefits of a public cloud.


When to choose each type of cloud solution

C H A P T E R 6

When considering which option to cloud computing solution to choose, there are a

few things to consider. For example:

• Are the benefits of moving to the cloud clear for your business, and the

number of benefits high?

• Or are the number of benefits for moving to the cloud low, and the

overall benefits to your business uncertain?

BENEFITS:


• Are the risks of moving to the cloud high and unmanageable for your

business?

• Or are the risks low and manageable?

RISKS:

The graph below outlines how these risk/benefit scenarios can apply to

the different types of cloud, and a business’ability to manage them.

Low & Uncertain

High & Clear

High & Unmanageable Low & Manageable

Be

ne

fits

Risks

Customer Profile:• LEGACY APPLICATION & Internal IT

• Attitude -driven by Fear, Uncertainty and doubt, progressive in nature? Company size.

Strategy: Avoid

Customer Profile:• Complex setup/IaaS

• Can clearly articulate need, High growth profile

Strategy: Private Cloud / Cloud Metro

Customer Profile:• Unsure of eed and benefits / Legacy

applications

• Progressive internal IT

Strategy: EXPERIMENT

Customer Profile:• Azure, GPC, AWS

• Take advantage of scaling, not complex

Strategy: Public Cloud


STRATEGY: PRIVATE CLOUD (HIGH & CLEAR / HIGH & UNMANAGEABLE)

Scenario: If as an organisation you belong in an industry that is heavily regulated,

such as Nimble in the short term loan financial space, then you will likely require a

private cloud computing solution to ensure you adhere to compliance regulations

around privacy of the customer’s financial data.

Azure for Financial Services includes APRA-compliant financial service support

software for Australian banks, insurance companies, and private equity groups

that automates auditing requirements for Prudential Standard CPS 231 Outsourcing

compliance. Enterprise businesses work through a financial services checklist to

attain compliance with APRA Prudential Standard CPS 234 on Information Security

and other industry requirements.

STRATEGY: PUBLIC CLOUD (HIGH & CLEAR / LOW & UNMANAGEABLE)

Scenario: If as an organisation you require shared online office applications to

be rolled out across the company with members from multiple locations able to

access items, such as a set of documents that need to be managed in real-time with

multiple revisers, then a public cloud solution will be sufficient. Other businesses

that would suit this model include new businesses who are not hampered by legacy

systems and thus can approach their system as ‘cloud-first’, and those

who are open to being innovative with their cloud service.

Hybrid cloud architecture based on software-defined networking (SDN) allows

administrators to extend corporate firewall protection and filters to cloud resources.

This includes support for SaaS/PaaS products under encryption through VPN

connections. Hybrid cloud networking extends the availability of local resources

through the use of cloud products, while enabling these services to be deployed or

used in production with corporate security standards.


STRATEGY: AVOID (LOW &AMP; UNCERTAIN / HIGH &AMP; UNMANAGEABLE)

Scenario: If as an organisation you are unsure as to whether you require a cloud

computing solution, and there are no clear benefits for your organisation, then it

is not recommended that you don’t make the move to the cloud until you

have determined what those benefits are. For example, if you are the Reserve

Bank of Australia (RBA), there is a high level of risk when making the transition to

a hybrid cloud solution – just one perception might be that the public cloud

aspect of a hybrid cloud model could be construed as too great a liability for the

sensitive information held by the RBA. In addition, the benefits of moving to a hybrid

cloud solution could by some be disseminated to solely a cost-saving exercise,

and so the perceived risk would be too high for the potential benefit. In terms of

the RBA this is a broad case scenario only, as there are many nuances involved in

the level of risk and potential benefit for such an organisation –and indeed

for any organisation of this size, whether private or public –, however for a

governmental institution the issue is not only the actual risk, but also the perceived

risk by the public.

When preparing an internal audit of a company’s IT resources, it is

recommended to plan for the operations of your company three to four years

in the future. In this manner, it is more evident how to schedule legacy software

applications and databases for modernisation through containers and cloud

platforms, or to replace legacy hardware upgrades with cloud data center resources

in product cycle management, while retaining current budgetary expenditure levels.


STRATEGY: PRIVATE CLOUD (HIGH & CLEAR / HIGH & UNMANAGEABLE)

Scenario: If as an organisation you have high on-site premise maintenance costs

and are thinking to make the move to the cloud, but aren’t sure which cloud service

best suits your business- needs both now and in the foreseeable future, it’s worth

experimenting to try out which solution would best suit your business. Industries

that have been disrupted and are playing catch up may try to jump here to defend

market position and remain relevant.

It’s also important for businesses to keep in mind that you don’t need to choose

a single environment when making the move to cloud computing – you can use

a combination of environments to achieve the best results based on the various

workloads and requirements you manage. The hybrid cloud approach allows you

to choose the best service providers for every department, brand, and vertical,

integrating IT resources in a unified corporate security policy.

CONTACT US

Get your free expert consultation

Contact us to learn more about which cloud

computing solution suits your business needs

https://www.harbourit.com.au/cloud-services/


What to consider when choosing a hybrid cloud solution

C H A P T E R 7

A hybrid cloud allows CIOs, IT managers, IT administrators, etc to build on

the advantages of both public and private data centre environments while

architecting unique solutions for multiple business requirements. Some issues to

consider when choosing a hybrid cloud solution are:

Multi-Cloud Architecture: Does your enterprise business organisation

operate hybrid cloud orchestration with multi-cloud functionality where more

than one public cloud service provider is utilised?


Data Privacy: Does your business keep sensitive internal information from

clients, partners, employees, and manufacturing facilities on private cloud

hardware while still utilising the innovative new platform services from public

cloud hosting companies in production operations remotely in a hyper-scale

facility?

Network Security: Does your business need to build a unified corporate

security policy with firewalls, content filters, VPN, anti-virus, & storage

encryption applied across remote cloud hardware resources?

Hybrid cloud networking can also include firewall integration and VPN support

for employee connections to third-party websites in order to access SaaS and

PaaS applications for productivity. Businesses and other complex organisations

typically adopt virtualisation in data centre operations in order to build hybrid cloud

architecture across vendor hardware resources more quickly, securely, and cost-

efficiently.


CLI

Existing Application

Azure Container Registry

1

2 Azure Database for MySQL

AKS

Azure Active

Directory

3

4

OSBA

Virtual network

< >...5


Virtualisation allows network administrators to make better use of hardware

allocations on web servers and to automate data centre processes to scale

elastically with web traffic requirements in production. Hypervisor virtualisation

using VMs (virtual machines) and container virtualisation with Docker/Kubernetes are

the two leading solutions to hybrid cloud orchestration for enterprise data centres.

AWS’s EC2, EKS, S3, and DBaaS (Database-as-a-Service) platforms compete

with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and VMware products as the most popular

public cloud service providers for hybrid cloud integration.

One of the key benefits of a hybrid cloud is the agility it offers to enterprise

corporations in bringing new software products to market. Being able to adapt

and change direction quickly is a key requirement in a modern digital business

environment. Hybrid cloud’s ability to combine public clouds, private clouds, and

on-premise resources gives complex business organisations the agility needed for a

competitive advantage.

Benefits of hybrid cloud solutions

Building a hybrid cloud offers an organisation a big range of potential benefits including:

FLEXIBILITY - The ability to distribute workloads across public and

private environments based on security, efficiency, and cost.

https://www.vmware.com/solutions/virtualization.html

https://www.vmware.com/solutions/virtualization.html

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/reference-architectures/containers/aks-microservices/aks-microservices


RELIABILITY - Less likelihood of downtime because services are

distributed across multiple public and private data centres.

AFFORDABILITY - Outsourcing to public cloud eliminates the need to

purchase and maintain additional resources to handle short term spikes in

demand.

OPPORTUNITY - Barriers to innovation are reduced because new

concepts can be tested and prototyped without great expense in a cloud

environment, then rapidly deployed and measured for success.

SECURITY - By outsourcing non-sensitive workloads to public cloud,

sensitive workloads can be run on dedicated resources in private clouds.

CONTINUITY - Business continuity is not interrupted during a failure or

disaster, as data is still accessible with little or no downtime.

ACCESSIBILITY - The cloud offers the advantage of anywhere, anytime

access (important with an increasingly mobile workforce).

SCALABILITY - The ability to outsource workflow peaks to public cloud

environments and to scale resources up and down as the business

demands change.


Hybrid cloud architecture can help retail sellers manage peak web traffic for

ecommerce websites and mobile applications through elastic web servers and

DBaaS products. It can also increase data privacy protections for ecommerce

companies or ensure compliance with local auditing and regulatory requirements

for regional businesses.

Successful real world examples for when a hybrid cloud solution could be beneficial include:

Hybrid cloud supports innovation in the software development lifecycle across

enterprise companies, startups, non-profits, educational institutions, healthcare

groups, and government organizations.

AFFORDABLE DISASTER RECOVERY AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY -

Using a hybrid cloud setup where on-premise data fails over to a public

cloud in an emergency.

COST-EFFECTIVE ARCHIVING - Cheaply putting at-rest data in a hybrid

cloud for long periods of time for future analysis or to satisfy compliance

requirements.

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT - Using public clouds to speed up the

development process and then moving applications back to the on-

premises data centre for production deployment.


CLOUD BURSTING - Running applications in a private cloud until a

predetermined demand level for resources is reached, then causing them

to fail over to a public cloud service.

BIG DATA PROCESSING - using a public cloud for the majority of big data

analysis and leaving sensitive big data on a private cloud.

DEALING WITH TEMPORARY DEMAND - allocating public cloud

resources for short term projects at a lower cost than possible with your

own private data centre.

SEPARATING WORKLOADS - using a public cloud for dynamic and non-

sensitive workloads and leaving less volatile or more sensitive workloads

on a private cloud.

MOVING TO THE CLOUD - adding workloads to a public cloud gradually

while expanding the remote presence as needed on public and private

clouds or a mixture of both.

BEING PREPARED FOR THE FUTURE - having the resources to be able

to match your data management needs with the most appropriate public,

private or on-premise resources.

SPEED TO MARKET - implementing best practices for Agile project

management and DevOps in the software development lifecycle with CI/

CD, version control, and automated testing for software code.


SECURITY AND REGULATION, DATA SOVEREIGNTY - ensuring business

compliance with ISO 9000/14000 regulations, HIPAA for healthcare

groups, APRA for financial institutions, GDPR for data privacy and cookie

usage, or other required auditing standards.

PUBLIC FOR SCALE - guarantees uptime of software services by

offloading web traffic in peak operations to public cloud hardware using

containers or VM orchestration.

COST TRANSPARENCY AND CONTROL - utilising public cloud “pay as

you go” billing with reserved instances and competitive bidding for spot

pricing on hardware resources.

DATA SECURITY - The hybrid cloud model also allows you to keep data

secure on local servers for internal business requirements while adopting

the latest web development, cloud hosting, and programming tools for

software applications.

INNOVATION - integrate API calls across the service mesh or over the

internet to build new functionality and features for web/mobile apps like

AI/ML and serverless support.

SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING (SDN) - build multi-cloud

architecture across public cloud vendor hardware with containers,

Kubernetes, and VMs for SDDC outsourcing.

https://www.apra.gov.au/sites/default/files/information_paper_-_outsourcing_involving_cloud_computing_services.pdf


Challenges of hybrid cloud computing

While there are many opportunities associated with building a hybrid cloud, there

may also be challenges an organisation will need to overcome, including;

SECURITY

Security is definitely a benefit of hybrid cloud when compared to a public cloud

solution. In particular, if the private cloud is delivered by a Managed Service

Provider (MSP) like Harbour IT, then data may move out of customer data centre and

into our data centre/private cloud securely.

PREPARATION

It’s important to remember that with a hybrid solution you may need to take some

precautionary steps to ensure maximum data security is applied to your data in the

public cloud.

COMPATIBILITY

Care must be taken in the choice of public cloud services and their API integration

capabilities, or they may not perform optimally with on-premise infrastructure.

SCALABILITY

A careful eye must be kept on environment automation to avoid overshooting

scalability limits of data that is required to be kept in the private cloud due to

compliance and security reasons.


OFFLOADING

Because the public cloud scalability is hyper-scale, there are more areas open to

public cloud offloading and less likelihood that you will run into scalability issues.

COMPLIANCE

Depending on what type of business or industry you are in, compliance regulations

may prevent you from using a public cloud or storing data offsite.

INTEGRATION

Depending on the type of data and applications you currently have, there may be

integration problems to overcome when transferring to a hybrid cloud environment.

NETWORKING

You may also need to upgrade your network bandwidth to prevent highly active

applications in the cloud from bottlenecking other applications.


Choosing a Managed Service Provider (MSP)

Complex business organisations that adopt hybrid cloud architecture or multi-cloud

solutions without an MSP to manage the migration will likely encounter problems

with:

UNDERSTANDING

Without sufficient education, some organisations may struggle to understand the

nature of cloud computing and how to exploit its full potential.

TRAINING

A different skill set is required with hybrid cloud technology, which may be in short

supply until appropriate training can produce more qualified candidates.

EXPERTISE

If an organisation does not have the necessary skills in-house, they will have to hire

outside experts to build their hybrid cloud, which can be expensive.

HARDWARE

If the private cloud is to be on-premise, rather than operated by an offsite provider,

then all necessary hardware will need to be purchased, programmed, and

maintained. This is a potentially expensive exercise.


OPTIMISATION OF COSTS

The continuous improvement of the hybrid cloud set up to ensure costs are

managed and performance is optimised may be harder for an organisation without

an MSP.

SUPPORT

The ability to ensure that you’re resourcing the management of the operations

correctly, including monitoring, SLA’s (for lines of business), DR, BU (managed by the

MSP) etc may be reduced.

COMPLEXITY

MSP’s should have a Cloud Management Platform featuring a suite of integrated

software tools they can offer to businesses, which could assist with resource

management, service management, and more.

For this reason, working with a managed service provider such as Harbour IT could

greatly improve the efficacy and management of your hybrid cloud solution.


What are examples of a hybrid cloud solution?

C H A P T E R 8

Most enterprise corporations have a long history of managing IT

operations both internally and externally through an in-house data centre.

On-premise data centre facilities are used to run databases and software

for clients, customer relations, and staff. As hardware becomes outdated,

web standards change and software platforms require updating, business

organisations often choose to migrate to public cloud platforms for

modernisation.

Hybrid cloud networking permits enterprise companies to maintain their legacy

operations in an on-premise data centre while gradually migrating to new

products and services on a public cloud host.


One common method of a hybrid cloud implementation is cloud bursting. With this

method, an enterprise organisation uses a local private cloud until it requires more

resources, storage, or processing than is available on the network. At this point, it

“bursts” onto the public cloud, temporarily leasing resources to continue its work

in support of website, SaaS, or mobile application. Once this work is completed,

proprietary data and code is moved back onto the private cloud.

Whether or not cloud bursting could work for your business will depend on the

nature of the information that would then be hosted on the public cloud, as the

security will differ from that of your local private cloud. For example, if you are a

business with access to sensitive financial data such as an individual’s personal

identity information and financial account details, you should ensure only non-

sensitive resources are moved to a public cloud and that the sensitive data remains

hosted securely on your local private cloud to remain compliant with the relevant

legislation and/or internal policies you would have in place to protect the data.

The most common use cases for hybrid cloud are support for full data centre

outsourcing, productivity software, manufacturing processes, IoT devices,

websites, and mobile applications. Many businesses are forced to adopt hybrid

cloud architecture solutions in order to maintain in-house support for local

computer operations in a private cloud, while making use of other SaaS/PaaS

products from public cloud and third-party software vendors in their workflow.

Multi-CAD and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) enable more companies to

migrate traditionally local computing processes to cloud hardware for various

business cost advantages.

What are the most common use cases for a hybrid cloud?


Another example of hybrid cloud orchestration is containerising legacy software

applications from mainframes or locally running database processes on in-

house servers in tandem with remote hosted code on public cloud hardware

for modernisation. Many businesses choose Microsoft Azure for hybrid cloud

orchestration in order to implement network integration with the Windows operating

system installed across all hardware resources. Other companies may choose

VMware software tools for hybrid cloud networking requirements to implement

solutions using virtualisation that will support multiple operating systems in

production.

Common examples of industries that can greatly benefit from implementing a hybrid

cloud solution include:

The healthcare sector is increasingly adopting hybrid cloud solutions due to their

flexibility and ability to move applications seamlessly between private or public

clouds.

Hybrid clouds also provide the increased security the industry needs to protect

sensitive patient data and meet regulatory compliance. Hybrid cloud use is

expected to grow as attacks on network systems increase and compliance

regulations become more stringent.

One of the major benefits of hybrid cloud use in healthcare is the ability to fully

digitise healthcare delivery, encompassing everything from automation to telehealth

and remote monitoring, and the sharing capabilities of required data with other

healthcare providers/organisations, such as Medicare.

Healthcare


Healthcare organisations need to address a variety of critical IT needs, including a

need for increased security, protection of sensitive patient data and meeting regulatory

compliance. Over 28% of healthcare respondents named security and compliance as

their number one decision criterion in choosing where to run workloads.

With hackers targeting medical records containing sought-after personal details such

as patient healthcare and insurance information, healthcare organisations require

technology solutions that can handle the movement of sensitive data compliantly, and

without security risk.

Source: Gov Tech Review

The financial services industry is increasingly leveraging hybrid clouds due to their

flexibility, power, scale, and seamless connectivity.

Hybrid cloud solutions offer financial services companies significant benefits

including the ability to extend existing infrastructure without a huge cost for

capacity and still retain certain data on-premises, as required by regulatory

guidelines. Hybrid clouds also let them take advantage of new cloud services such

as the rapidly growing enterprise container platforms without having to rewrite

applications, allowing them to continue cost-effectively producing new financial

products and services to meet every growing consumer demand.

Container solutions are used in banking and finance to support online applications

with millions of simultaneous users for increased isolation, such as by a neobank.

Finance

https://www.govtechreview.com.au/content/gov-cloud/sponsored/the-rise-of-hybrid-cloud-in-healthcare-1463830789


According to Downs and Quinn, Westpac employees used to spend up to 80 percent

of their time on data entry and managing systems, but with Dynamics 365, they

can now spend that time building relationships with customers. “The ability to sync

customer data in real time has changed what our relationship managers can achieve,”

says Downs. “From our front-line customer service staff to the back office, we’re using

Dynamics 365 to change the way we operate.”

Source

Another example of how a banking giant has used the cloud to revolutionise their

operations is the migration to Microsoft Dynamics 365 (hosted in Microsoft Azure)

made by Westpac New Zealand. They did this in a bid to streamline and automate

their sales and business processes.

Government agencies around the world are slowly coming to embrace cloud-based

services. Some now use cloud email and collaboration tools and a mixture of public

and private cloud infrastructure, but highly classified systems are likely to remain

on-premise for the foreseeable future.

Apart from security concerns, the biggest obstacle to faster government migration to

a hybrid cloud infrastructure are the internal cultural barriers that must be overcome

and the huge number of legacy systems that need to be adapted or replaced.

This has in turn resulted in the creation of The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA).

Government

https://customers.microsoft.com/en-au/story/westpac-new-zealand-banking-capital-markets-dynamics365


In June 2019 it was announced that Amazon Web Services have signed a whole-of-

government deal to help simplify cloud procurement for federal, state and territory

agencies in Australia.

According to AWS, the primary benefits come from cost-savings by leveraging demand

across government agencies, and removing some of the barriers of adopting and

expanding cloud use in the public sector.

Source

The DTA has mandated the move to the cloud for certain services by Australian

government entities. Their goal is to facilitate the move to online for the betterment

of government processes, which in turn will positively impact the Australian

community.

An example of this is:

As another example, IBM’s cloud services are used extensively for government

services worldwide, with HPE and Oracle Cloud services supporting many ministry-

level regulatory departments for industry as contract suppliers.

The global cloud computing market in education is growing rapidly, with institutions

keen to enhance their productivity and improve the learning experience. The cloud

is changing education by eliminating the need for expensive textbooks, doing away

with on-premise hardware and eliminating paper, thus reducing the industry’s carbon

footprint. Cloud education also offers easy accessibility, greater mobility, and more

opportunities for collaboration, creating a better overall environment for students

and educators.

Education

https://www.crn.com.au/news/aws-scoops-whole-of-govt-procurement-deal-527345


HYBRID CLOUD ARCHITECTURE can be configured using software-

defined networking (SDN) standards and virtualisation in order to

maximise the efficiency of hardware utilisation in large-scale education

and campus network administration.

KUBERNETES can be installed on public cloud hardware or private

cloud data centres in a vendor-agnostic fashion for elastic web server

architecture on open source licensing.

CONTAINER-BASED VIRTUALISATION using Docker and Kubernetes

can support millions of simultaneous web server runtimes for cloud

SaaS applications in hyper-scale data centres used in high-performance

computing (HPC) research.

SERVICE MESH solutions are implemented by many colleges &

universities for complex hybrid cloud orchestration requirements,

integrating Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, VMware, and Kubernetes

products for academic requirements.

A recent example of hybrid cloud uptake in Australia is the NSW Department of

Education, which is currently adding public cloud accessibility to its private cloud

usage to maximise the scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency of its application

testing. Deakin University has taken to revolutionise their online learning structure

through a custom cloud computing system. By developing and integrating multiple

cloud tools, educational institutions like Deakin can connect students to all their

most important apps and have them available at any endpoint. Their platforms are

shown in the diagram below:


CLOUD LEARNING SYSTEM DASHBOARD T1 2014

Problem areasManaging Assignments

Tumitin

Managing discussion boards

Action takenImproved help guides for assigments

Increased Turnitin licesing Index added

to Discussion boards

569Incidents reported*T1 active units

1,274

*Based on eSolutions Service Now calls ServiceNow being implemented for DLF HelpDesk in T2

CloudDeakin

Planned actionIncrease o resence on high traffic

webpages

15,550Students activated during T1

43,137Enrolled Deakin students in T1

12Incidents reported Yes to activate

63,96%

Activated36,04%

DeakinSync


CLOUD LEARNING SYSTEM DASHBOARD T1 2014

Problem areasHigh volume of issues due to end of life

technology

Problem areasSystem or Device failures

Aborted by presenter

No sync with timetable changes

Action takeneLive retired and BBCollaborate

implemented for T2 commencement

Action takenCleared system of redundant data

Added capacity to the echo system

Implemented tool to synchronise

timetable changes

1,035Incidents reported*

163Incidents reported*

642,375Total views

10,783Succesfull captures

Intro to BBColaborate

2,187seasions

Source

eLive / BBCollaborate

https://www.crucial.com.au/blog/2014/12/17/cloud-computing-in-education-deakin-university-case-study/

https://www.crucial.com.au/blog/2014/12/17/cloud-computing-in-education-deakin-university-case-study/


According to Deakin University Senior Project Manager Martin Brandwyk, the

benefits they expected this integration of tools to bring were:

Research collaboration improvement, mostly achieved through Lync and

SharePoint that represent secure sharing and collaboration spaces.

A consistent set of tools for all students and researchers regardless of their

actual, physical location.

Enhanced student experience that enables everyone to work efficiently from

anywhere.

Innovative use of technologies among both students and academics.

Many retailers need to support hundreds of brands and domain names where

each may be managed by a separate development team on different code and

infrastructure fundamentals. Hybrid cloud architecture improves enterprise support

for microservices to enable development teams and programmers to build on

separate public cloud resources under a unified IT management department. For

example, CRM software can be run in the cloud or on private servers on-premises to

support customer orders, shipping, and logistics in retail supply operations.

Hybrid cloud architecture implements best practices in virtualisation and

Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) solutions, while corporate internet traffic maintains

unified firewall security settings across data connections. Many enterprise

organisations implement VPN encryption on version control, database backups, and

other network transfer communications.

Retail


Data centre orchestration across multiple international facilities is used to enable

High-Availability (HA) requirements.

The use of multiple international data centres from public cloud hosting companies

has the advantage of positioning web servers in closer geo-proximity to major retail

markets for better connection speeds. Multiple data centres are also required for

“Five Nine” (99.999%) uptime support in ecommerce operations.

As a live example, Chumbak – a fast-growing and leading retailer of lifestyle

products in India – used a hybrid cloud solution to assist them with building beyond

the 40 stores they operated across the country and move more into the online

commerce realm. With a need for quick integration across all platforms, a reduction

in IT-generated costs and to reduce operational inefficiencies, the choice of a hybrid

cloud solution to host and run its enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, a

cloud computing solution was the answer.

Chris Kozup,Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Nutanix

“More than many industries, retailers are acutely aware of how IT strategy and

execution directly impact the customer experience and the bottom line. The high

adoption and planned growth of hybrid cloud in retail show that retailers understand

that hybrid is the best solution for keeping up with customer demands while keeping

flexibility, security and costs in line.

I expect the retail industry to keep its lead in IT innovation as they form new strategies

to delight their customers in the retail experience.”

Source

https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/blogs/hybrid-cloud-rains-benefits-on-forward-thinking-retailers/

https://www.information-age.com/hybrid-cloud-retail-digital-transformation-123478151/


Enterprise brands and popular online marketplaces need to support complex

eCommerce operations with thousands or millions of simultaneous, logged in users

at a time. This type of web traffic places enormous burdens on web server hardware

in database support or when generating customised, dynamic content for web

pages. Elastic cloud web server platforms are designed to scale with user traffic

automatically, booting up virtual machines or new containers during times of peak

traffic, and automatically degrading resources during downtimes. CDNs (Content

Delivery Networks) are primarily used in ecommerce for anonymous browsing

support, however do not provide all of the functions of a cloud computing solution.

Public cloud hosting companies also offer many Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS)

products like Amazon Aurora, DynamoDB, or Microsoft’s Cosmos DB that are

designed for the unique needs of large ecommerce websites. Aurora allows

businesses to run MySQL or PostgreSQL databases for web/mobile applications in

synchronisation with the AWS EC2 platform. DynamoDB is a NoSQL solution that

allows businesses to build upon the same ecommerce tools used by Amazon.com

to support their customers during peak-time traffic such as holiday season shopping.

Cosmos DB is a NoSQL solution that competes with MongoDB and Cassandra for

use with customised ecommerce applications at the highest scale.

“Zero trust” policies implemented at public cloud facilities ensure the use of

encryption on data connections across web applications, storage facilities, and

backups in ecommerce operations.

For example, in 2016 eCommerce retail giant ASOS made the decision as a

business to migrate to a microservices architecture powered by Microsoft Azure.

eCommerce

https://customers.microsoft.com/en-au/story/asos-retail-and-consumer-goods-azure


ASOS now uses Azure Cosmos DB across the company, such as for product

machine learning models to generate real-time recommendations (the ‘you may

also like’ model) and as a low-latency data store for tasks such as storing and

retrieving precalculated user profiles (‘you previously bought and this is like that’

model). It also uses Microsoft Azure SQL Database to store relational customer data.

Bob Strudwick,Chief Technology Officer at ASOS

“We chose Azure Cosmos DB because of its global distribution and ability to handle

heavy seasonal bursts like Black Friday. We can distribute our data models to be near

the microservices they’re serving-wherever that is in the world.”

Retail websites use product recommendation engines based upon consumer

browsing habits, likes, and previous purchases to display dynamic content on

websites that is customised to every user. Enterprise companies increasingly adopt

Machine Learning (ML) solutions to generate content and product recommendations

to users. Public cloud hosts like Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google all offer cutting-

edge machine learning platforms that can be integrated into ecommerce websites

through hybrid cloud methodologies.

Many businesses prefer Microsoft Azure machine learning resources because of the

ease of building functionality into existing Windows environments. AWS offers the

Sagemaker service to speed up the use of the most common algorithms in product

recommendations, text translation, or image recognition via Jupyter notebooks. The

company also offers GPU servers for running AI/ML apps in the cloud.

Machine Learning (ML)


Google has designed their own TPU chips for TensorFlow applications utilising

machine learning and deep learning that can be integrated into hybrid cloud

constructs for web/mobile app support or industrial manufacturing requirements.

A great example, which is also linked to our previous example of ASOS making the

move to Microsoft Azure for microservices, also showcases how this move assisted

them with their machine learning challenges.

In order to create a ‘brand recommender’ (creating brand recommendations using

datasets of ASOS’ 19.2 million customers, drawing on gigabytes of data each day

and then publishing to Azure Cosmos DB for global scalability), ASOS and Microsoft

paired up for a 4-week ‘hackathon’ that resulted in an agnostic platform using

Azure’s Machine Learning to tie it all together.

The ASOS teams wanted tools that would help them do more than just accelerate

the modelling process. They envisioned a new, enterprise-wide ethos-breaking

down barriers for teams and developing best practices for dealing with data science

and modelling.

“We believed that with Azure Machine Learning service, we could encourage the two

practices that we thought would help us speed up modelling,” says Khedarun. “By

unifying our tech stack and bringing our engineers in Big Data and online software

together with data scientists, we got our development time down from months to just a

few weeks.”

You can read the full breakdown of the use case here.

https://customers.microsoft.com/en-au/story/asos-retailers-azure


Hybrid Cloud Security C H A P T E R 9

Hybrid cloud security is based on “zero trust” policies across public cloud

hosting company infrastructure where encryption is the key aspect of remote

data security.

Data in the cloud is stored in an encoded form that can only be deciphered with

an encryption key, and the security of that data depends on how securely the key

is stored. Most cloud service providers keep the key themselves, which is only

accessible when the enterprise logs in with a password. The problem with this is

that an enterprise is then entirely at the mercy of the public cloud provider’s security

systems and practices. If they are less than ideal, the key may be stolen or misused

without the enterprise organisation’s knowledge.


Because of this, many businesses keep certain data and applications on private

servers in-house where their own security policies can be maintained within a hybrid

cloud network, ensuring they have full control to access of the encryption key and

can implement stringent security measures as required for the level of sensitivity of

the data.

The specifics of the security used for protecting an encryption key within a hybrid

cloud network will largely depend on your organisation, the sensitivity of the data

being hosted on your servers, and also any legislation/regulations you need to

remain compliant with. As such, it’s recommended that you enlist the assistance

of an expert when setting up your hybrid cloud security measures to ensure your

encryption key is held securely.

In fact, most of the security threats surrounding hybrid cloud are not the result of the

system itself, but of those who build and manage it. Security issues may include:

Lack of encryption

Inadequate compliance

Improper risk assessment

Weak security management

Unprotected APIs

Poor data redundancy

Lack of communication with cloud providers

Badly constructed cross-platform tools

Data leakage

Disgruntled or malicious employees


Each of these can lead to vulnerabilities in your cloud security that can then be

targeted by hackers.

The solution to these problems largely involves better governance and compliance,

where workloads are tracked, rules are applied, and networking components

are displayed on one centralised console with easy to read security alerts for

administrators.

In addition, the maintenance and ongoing improvement to your cloud’s security

policies as new threats are developed is essential. The skill level of hackers and

malicious software will continue to grow as the security programs designed to

protect hybrid clouds grow, so this cannot be a ‘set and forget’ task.

https://www.harbourit.com.au/about-us/


Hybrid Cloud Architecture C H A P T E R 1 0

The three main elements required to establish a hybrid cloud architecture are:

A public cloud service provided by a vendor such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon

Web Services (AWS), or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

A private cloud, either on premise or via an offsite provider.

A wide area network (WAN) to provide connectivity between the two.

The private cloud must also be made compatible with the public cloud, which is

likely to have a different hardware and software infrastructure depending on the

provider. Cross-platform compatibility must be enforced across hardware devices

such as web servers, cloud/local storage, LAN equipment, and network load

balancers.


Azure Portal

On-PremisesDatacenter

Azure Service Integration Platform

Azure VMware Solution by CloudSimple

ExpressRoute and Network Edge services

On Prem VMware

Microsoft Azure Cloud Admin Dev/ User

VMware vCenter

ESXi Hosts

Azure Management

Azure ServicesAD, Storage, Security

Third-party ServicesZerto, Veeam, etc

Storage Network

VM VM VM

Azure bare metal servers

VMware vCenter

ESXi Hosts

Storage Network

VM VM VM


Enterprise businesses are migrating to public cloud service products because they

are cheaper and easier to maintain over time when compared to the costs of an

on-premise data centre. Public cloud hosting companies operate on hyper-scale

and secure the cheapest commodity rates on rack server hardware available from

suppliers. In addition, public cloud hosts usually employ 24/7/365 computer security

experts for platform maintenance.

By outsourcing hardware, security, and maintenance tasks from an in-house data

centre to a public cloud host, enterprise companies can reduce their IT operating

expenses 40% to 50% on average over time. Cost savings come from better

hardware resource allocation, improved management of overcapacity, and the need

to retain less trained staff on-premises for network administration.

However, if security and control over your cloud is required by an organisation, then

a hybrid cloud architecture can provide a ‘best of both worlds’ scenario that would

allow for scalability and reduced operating expenses without sacrificing your data

security.

Why use Hybrid Cloud Architecture?

Virtual Machines (VMs) running on hypervisors share drivers across partitions at

the operating system level to make network nodes vendor agnostic on bare metal

hardware across public cloud service providers. A disk image containing the entire

web server stack can be automatically installed in each VM to build the service

mesh across web servers that is required to support enterprise business operations.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vmware-cloudsimple/cloudsimple-vmware-solutions-overview


BUSINESS CONTINUITY - Are appropriate service level agreements

(SLAs) in place and does your provider uses snapshots, mirroring,

backups, and rapid recovery to minimise possible downtime?

MANAGEMENT - Do you know how service levels are monitored and

managed in a hybrid cloud environment, so that you can manage both

public and private environments?

LATENCY - Does your cloud storage provider match or exceed your

network speeds and are you likely to experience any problems due to

latency (delays when processing data)?

RELIABILITY - If your cloud provider indexes your data, do they have

measures in place to ensure its integrity during transfer and also in

storage?

REPORTING - Does your provider have transparent billing showing

transactional charges and storage costs so you know what your bill will

be at the end of the billing cycle?

SECURITY - Does the provider have adequate security measures while

data is stored and when it is being transferred between storage and on-

premise locations?

INTERFACES - Are the APIs available from the cloud provider

interoperable and compatible with your own?


Harbour IT’s CloudMetro C H A P T E R 1 1

CloudMetro is a custom solution for enterprise corporations and other complex

organisations using a pure storage, all Flash array setup (eg Cisco) or other VMware

platform tools for virtualisation. Around 45% of enterprise companies internationally

currently use VMware solutions for complex data centre management at scale on

hyper-converged infrastructure. CloudMetro is an IaaS service offered by Harbour

IT which can be deployed as either a private cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid cloud

solution. CloudMetro features all-flash storage and proven technology from the

world’s leading computing providers, including Cisco, NetApp, Pure Storage, and

VMware.

Leveraging Tier 3 (the cream of the crop) Australian data centres and seamlessly

complementing Cisco’s FlexPod and FlashStack reference architectures, CloudMetro

offers non-stop computing, total data integrity, and rapid disaster recovery.

https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2018/12/07/vmware-the-most-deployed-hci/


Data is instantly and continuously replicated with no inconsistency. Aligned with

key industry bodies such as APRA, our commitment to compliance and sound

governance means CloudMetro is trusted by customers from key industries such as

financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail.

Cloudmetro key features:

Enterprise-grade technology

All-flash speed and reliability guaranteed

Data held in multiple datacentres

High redundancy at every level

Total data sovereignty with real time data synchronisation

State-of-the-art fibre technology


Harbour Net

Direct

Connect

Harbour IT Cloud Connect Axon VX & UCS Director

CORE BUSINESS APPLICATIONS CONFIDENTIAL DATAERP WORKLOADS

ARCHIVE COLLABORATIONPRODUCTIVITY APPLICATIONS

All Flash Speed & Reliability

Harbour IT Self Service

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Hybrid Cloud Deployment C H A P T E R 1 2

Managing costs across multiple clouds in a hybrid environment can be a big

challenge, and incomplete planning can lead to unexpected costs and budget

overruns. To overcome this, organisations need to have a solid hybrid cloud strategy

that will provide a more accurate forecast of expenses and better visibility of cloud

infrastructure once in use.

Cloudmetro key features:

As noted by Sid Nag, Gartner Research Vice President, from data based on their

recent surveys,

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-04-02-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-public-cloud-revenue-to-g

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-04-02-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-public-cloud-revenue-to-g


They also need a new suite of user-friendly self-service tools that manage costs

across all public and private cloud environments.

These management tools could include:

Sid Nag,Gartner

“As cloud continues to become mainstream within most organizations, technology

product managers for cloud related service offerings will need to focus on delivering

solutions that combine experience and execution with hyperscale providers’ offerings,”

said Mr. Nag. “This complementary approach will drive both transformation and

optimization of an organization’s infrastructure and operations.”

A COST MANAGEMENT TOOL - this could assist your organisation with

monitoring resource consumption, and providing the reports required for

the team to accurately assess and measure cost / profitability of the cloud

services you are using.

A UTILISATION MANAGEMENT TOOL - this could assist with monitoring

the resources that are being hosted on the cloud, including the cost of

virtual machines and utilisation of shared resources running in the cloud.

This can provide insights into capacities and efficiencies, which could

simplify your cloud infrastructure management.

A CLOUD OPTIMISATION TOOL - this could assist with optimising the

cost and performance of public and hybrid cloud deployments, providing

insights on spending and helping the deployment of resources internally.


There are of course many providers of these types of tools to choose from, and you

should opt for a tool that addresses each of the functionalities you require to best

assist with your cloud management.

While the long term savings will eventually overshadow them, there are some initial

costs associated with switching to a hybrid cloud environment over and above the

actual build. These can include:

Breakdown of costs

CUSTOMISATION - There may be costs associated with customising on-

premise applications being migrated to public clouds so they will work in

the hybrid environment. Configuration work and testing may need to be

done. If the application is not compatible, it may need to be rewritten.

MANAGEMENT - Once installed, multiple environments will need to be

managed including on-premise and public clouds. If current IT staff do

not have the required skills, they will need to undergo training in the

management and maintenance of the hybrid cloud environment.

COMPLIANCE - If an organisation is subject to compliance obligations,

the cloud service(s) being used may need to be audited to ensure they

meet the appropriate requirements. This would be an added expense in

addition to the organisation’s existing on-premise audits. Customers may

also require official proof of compliance.


As far as initial costs go for setting up a hybrid environment, there are a wide range

of prices offered by cloud service providers which take into account factors such

as CPUs, RAM, and storage as required. Enterprise organisations may be able to

negotiate flexible payment terms with public cloud hosts based on their scale of

operations and annual budget.

Some typical pricing models being offered in today’s market include:

Cloud pricing models

FREE TRIAL - Most providers offer free, limited access to cloud resources

to try out PaaS environments without any up-front financial commitment.

LOW COST TRIAL - Developers may be offered more resources and

longer use periods than no cost trials to test experimental applications,

often because of their organisation’s larger overall relationship with the

provider.

PAY AS YOU GO - A cost effective strategy requiring no up-front

investment which involves no-commitment billing for the use of cloud

computing services. “Pay as you go” means that you only pay for the

resources you specifically consume.

RESERVATION - A commitment for a specific period for a given workload

or service at a much cheaper rate than pay as you go, but where you are

billed for 24/7 use whether you utilise it or not.


DEDICATED HOST - A subscription to a dedicated server as a web host

for a predetermined period or perpetually as a reserved resource.

CAPACITY BOOST - An on-demand capacity boosting agreement where

more VMs are made available if required.

BATCH COMPUTING - Access to spare capacity at a significantly

reduced price, for off-hours non-urgent computing needs.

EXCESS CAPACITY RETURN - An agreement allowing the release of

unused reserved capacity either for a guaranteed return value or by

selling to another customer.

BYO LICENCE - The option to re-use an existing licence or migrate a

licence from on-premise to a cloud to acquire computing resources at a

lower cost.

MSP PRICING - You will most likely have a predictable monthly

management fee, which could cover various elements of the above.


Hybrid Cloud for your business

C H A P T E R 1 3

The answer to this question will depend on how competent your organisation is in

managing and implementing cloud infrastructure and how much support you are

likely to require.

Knowing the advantages, main challenges, and the likely costs of switching to a

hybrid cloud environment, business owners must then ask – is this the right next

step for your organisation?

Is hybrid cloud the right fit for your business?


If you want more flexibility to be able to react quickly to changing demands, needs,

and costs, then hybrid cloud architecture could be the right choice for your business.

The cloud can provide you with IT resources whenever you need them at short

notice and for much less than the cost of developing them through in-house teams.

Businesses that could benefit more than most from this flexibility might include those

that experience large spikes in demand, such as taxation-related businesses or

those where seasonal peaks and troughs are experienced.

In addition, the public cloud gives you the flexibility to deal with both anticipated

and unanticipated loads, where the alternative would be expensive fixed cost

investments in on-premise resources that might be under-utilised for most of the

year. Organisations involved in data storage might also benefit more than most from

hybrid cloud use, as data that is non-sensitive and infrequently accessed. Archival

data can be moved to a public cloud storage facility where it is secure, but it is much

less expensive to store these files on-premises.

However, there are circumstances where a hybrid cloud approach might not be the

best fit for a business. Smaller organisations with less operating capital may not be

able to justify the cost of setting up and running the servers required for a private

cloud. Many SMEs are better suited to a purely public cloud solution, lacking the

scale requirements of enterprise data centres.


Finding the right hybrid cloud provider

C H A P T E R 1 4

One of the biggest considerations for hybrid cloud is choosing the right service

provider. They will be an important partner in your hybrid cloud solution, so you

should vet them thoroughly beforehand to determine their suitability.

Ask for references and look for companies with a history of

supporting organisation similar to your own.

1. REFERENCES

Question for choosing the right cloud provider


STRATEGY - What has their cloud strategy been? What is it going to be?

What are their plans for the next three to five years?

HISTORICAL INVESTMENTS - What historical investments have they

made to keep their technology ahead of the curve?

Look for a provider that is the right size fit for your

organization. Generally mid-market companies will

want a provider they can have some influence over and

connection with.

3. RIGHT SIZE

Determine what the provider uses as basis for its cloud

design. Providers with an arhitecture recognised for cloud

hosting will get a better support from product vendors.

4. CLOUD PLATFORM SUPPORT

Check that all of the operational areas like security, testing,

disaster, recovery through to penetration are in place.

5. OPERATIONAL CHECKLIST

Other points to consider are:

Make sure a provider has an organisation of people that

you fell have similar culture to yourseves ad that you can

work with.

2. CULTURAL FIT

Remember, it is just as important to choose the right cloud service provider for

your business as it is choosing the right cloud solution. Hybrid cloud solutions

are designed to be vendor-agnostic. This allows enterprise organisations to

avoid vendor lock-in and secure better pricing on public cloud services. This also

increases the portability of “Big Data” and applications. Deploying to the cheapest

commodity hardware is a key element of optimising cost savings on public cloud

platforms through competitive bidding on elastic resources.


Harbour IT has You coveredAt Harbour IT, we offer you total flexibility and can help you design the perfect

combination of public and private cloud services for your organisation’s needs.

Partner with us and you’ll enjoy secure access to your own private cloud

infrastructure on our CloudMetro platform or our Azure Stack as a Service, while

also having access to popular public cloud services such as Microsoft Azure,

Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services (AWS).Harbour IT offers total end-

to-end support, including building your hybrid cloud solution, migrating your data,

applications, and services. We provide ongoing support and management services

to keep your hybrid cloud environment fully optimised.

To find out more, visit our Hybrid Cloud Solutions page here.

https://www.harbourit.com.au/hybrid-cloud-solutions/

DATABASE - A cloud database is a collection of informational content, either structured or unstructured, that resides on a private, public or hybrid cloud computing infrastructure platform. Essentially, a cloud database is no different from a database that operates on a business’s own on-premises servers – it’s just located in a different place.Source

SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS - Software is a set of instructions, data or programs used to operate computers and execute specific tasks. Opposite of hardware, which describes the physical aspects of a computer, software is a generic term used to refer to applications, scripts and programs that run on a device. Software can be thought of as the variable part of a computer and hardware the invariable part.Source

HYPERVISOR - A hypervisor is a process that separates a computer’s operating system and applications from the underlying physical hardware. Usually done as software although embedded hypervisors can be created for things like mobile devices. The hypervisor drives the concept of virtualisation by allowing the physical host machine to operate multiple virtual machines as guests to help maximise the effective use of computing resources such as memory, network bandwidth and CPU cycles.Source

VIRTUALISATION - Virtualisation is the “creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a server, a desktop, a storage device, an operating system or network resources”. In other words, virtualisation is a technique, which allows to share a single physical instance of a resource or an application among multiple customers and organizations. It does by assigning a logical name to a physical storage and providing a pointer to that physical resource when demanded.Source

CONNECTIVITY - Connectivity in cloud computing is the act of connecting a cloud computing model with an organisation.

SERVICE MESH - A service mesh is a dedicated infrastructure layer that controls service-to-service communication over a network. It provides a method in which separate parts of an application can communicate with each other. Service meshes appear commonly in concert with cloud-based applications, containers and microservices.Source

KUBERNETES- Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation. It has a large, rapidly growing ecosystem. Kubernetes services, support, and tools are widely available.Source

SDN - Software-defined networking (SDN) is an architecture that aims to make networks agile and flexible. The goal of SDN is to improve network control by enabling enterprises and service providers to respond quickly to changing business requirements.Source


GlossaryThe different elements of the cloud and how each interact with cloud computing:

https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cloud-database

https://searchapparchitecture.techtarget.com/definition/software

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3243262/what-is-a-hypervisor.html

https://www.javatpoint.com/virtualization-in-cloud-computing

https://searchitoperations.techtarget.com/definition/service-mesh

https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/what-is-kubernetes/

https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/software-defined-networking-SDN

SD-WAN - SD-WAN is an acronym for software-defined networking in a wide area network (WAN). SD-WAN simplifies the management and operation of a WAN by decoupling (separating) the networking hardware from its control mechanism. This concept is similar to how software-defined networking implements virtualization technology to improve data center management and operation.Source

SDDC - An SDDC (software-defined data center) is a data storage facility in which all infrastructure elements -- networking, storage, CPU and security -- are virtualized and delivered as a service.Source

CDNS - CDN is short for content delivery network. A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver pages and other web content to a user, based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and the content delivery server.Source

CLOUD ARCHITECTURE - Cloud computing architecture refers to the components and subcomponents required for cloud computing. These components typically consist of a front end platform, back end platforms, a cloud based delivery, and a network. Combined, these components make up cloud computing architecture.Source

MULTI-TENANT CLOUD - A multi-tenant cloud is a cloud computing architecture that allows customers to share computing resources in a public or private cloud. Each tenant’s data is isolated and remains invisible to other tenants.Source

HYPERSCALE COMPUTING - Hyperscale computing refers to the facilities and provisioning required in distributed computing environments to efficiently scale from a few servers to thousands of servers. Hyperscale computing is usually used in environments such as big data and cloud computing.Source

SINGLE-TENANT CLOUD - A single instance of the software and supporting infrastructure serve a single customer. With single tenancy, each customer has his or her own independent database and instance of the software. Essentially, there is no sharing happening with this option.Source

ORCHESTRATION - Cloud orchestration is the use of programming techniques [change to techniques] to manage the interconnections and interactions among workloads on public and private cloud infrastructure. It connects automated tasks into a cohesive workflow to accomplish a goal, with permissions oversight and policy enforcement..Source

DATA CENTRE - A data centre is a facility that centralises an organisation’s IT operations and equipment, as well as where it stores, manages, and disseminates its data. Data centres house a network’s most critical systems and are vital to the continuity of daily operations. Consequently, the security and reliability of data centres and their information is a top priority for organisations.Source


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD-WAN

https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/definition/software-defined-data-center-SDDC

https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CDN.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing_architecture

https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/multi-tenant-cloud

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/28869/hyperscale-computing

https://digitalguardian.com/blog/saas-single-tenant-vs-multi-tenant-whats-difference

https://searchitoperations.techtarget.com/definition/cloud-orchestrator

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/what-is-a-data-center

AWS - Amazon Web Services

EC2 - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

EKS - Amazon Managed Kubernetes Service

S3 - Amazon Simple Storage Service


Amazon Cloud Services

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Documents

The Ultimate Guide to Hybrid Cloud - Harbour IT