What Is Hybrid Cloud?
The hybrid cloud is one system that combines
different cloud environments, typically private and public. A hybrid cloud is
usually supported by software that helps manage and automate workloads,
allowing them to operate seamlessly across on-premise and public cloud environments.
The concept of hybrid cloud is closely related to multi-cloud,
which is the combination of two or more public clouds operated by different
vendors. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Main Functions of Hybrid Cloud Management Solutions
Hybrid cloud management is a discipline, but it is almost
always practiced with specialized cloud management tools. Here the common
capabilities offered by Hybrid Cloud Management (HCM) solutions.
Service aggregation—showing services and applications
running on multiple cloud environments in one place and allowing you to manage
them as a single unit.
Cost management—allowing you to set flexible policies for
cost across cloud solutions and maximize your ROI, for example by moving data
to the cheapest applicable storage option.
Self-service—allowing users to deploy, consume and terminate
workloads without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
Release and deployment orchestration—supporting DevOps and
CI/CD workflows by letting developers automate deployment of dev, test and
production environments.
Workload and cost analytics—providing rich, actionable data
about what is running on the hybrid cloud and the costs incurred by cloud
providers.
Integrations and APIs—making it easy to integrate the hybrid
cloud with existing enterprise systems and development tools, both in the cloud
and on-premises.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)—allowing users to consume
databases and other common infrastructure elements as a managed service.
Workload migration—providing automated, fast and low-risk
options for moving workloads from private to public cloud environment and back.
While many organizations are moving to the cloud, there is
something to be said for keeping at least some of your data and operations in
your on-premise data center. Public cloud services, such as
software-as-a-service (SaaS) computing environments and tools, are often
affordable, scalable and highly available, but they can be limited in terms of
compatibility with legacy applications or security compliance requirements.
Hybrid Cloud Management Tools
There is growing interest and adoption of cloud-native
hybrid cloud management technology. Some tools use the approach of an
open-source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which comes pre-integrated with
public cloud platforms. Other tools focus on managing your existing public and
private cloud infrastructure. All the tools aim to provide abstraction and
automation to help reduce the complexity and help you “tame” your hybrid cloud.
Following are four popular hybrid cloud management
solutions.
Manage IQ
Main features:
Hybrid IT management of legacy private clouds and public clouds
Supports virtual machines, containers, and public cloud infrastructure
Self-service for end-users
Provides visibility for workloads running across environments
Powerful monitoring and performance optimization
OpenStack
Main features:
Compute orchestration, network as a service, security, and
auditing
Can be deployed as a private cloud or in the public cloud
Integrates with popular enterprise technologies
Integrates with all major public cloud providers
Broad ecosystem of OpenStack projects and open source tools
Cloudify
Main features:
Model-driven cloud management—define a desired state of application workloads and they are automatically deployed on the required clouds
Powerful automation and abstraction of cloud resources
Automates deployment and configuration across clouds
Lets you define SLA policies and ensures workloads comply with service levels
Apache CloudStack
Main features:
Compute orchestration
Network as a service
User and account management
Security
Wide hypervisor support including VMware, KVM and Citrix
API compatible with Amazon EC2 and S3
AWS CloudFormation,
Amazon CloudWatch,
AWS CloudTrail
Azure Automation,
Azure Monitor
Google Cloud Console
There is also a variety of third-party vendors that offer
tools for this purpose, such as the following:
Apptio (Cloudability)
CloudBolt
CloudCheckr
CloudSphere (HyperGrid)
Flexera (RightScale Cloud Management Platform)
IBM (Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management)
Micro Focus (Hybrid Cloud Management X)
Morpheus Data
Scalr
Snow Software (Embotics)
VMware (CloudHealth)
The most important considerations to bear in mind when choosing management tools for the hybrid cloud are to make sure the tools work with all parts of your IT infrastructure and that they cover all aspects of your management needs -- something that the native management tools built into hybrid cloud frameworks usually cannot do.