Brien M. Posey: Hi, this is Brien Posey. And today
I want to talk about why a hybrid cloud might be
your best option. This presentation is designed to
be largely introductory in nature. And to that
end, there are several things that I want to
cover. I'm going to begin by talking a little bit
about the public cloud. Now, as I'm sure you know,
a lot of businesses have taken a cloud-first
approach to deploying IT workloads. And for good
reason, the cloud has a lot going for it. But at
the same time, there are also certain
disadvantages to running workloads in the public
cloud. So I want to spend a little bit of time
talking about some of the advantages and the
disadvantages associated with public cloud. From
there, I'm going to move on to a discussion of the
private cloud. The private cloud is a lot like the
public cloud, except for the IT resources reside
in your own data center. And like the public
cloud, there are certain advantages and
disadvantages to private cloud. And then finally,
I'm going to move on to a discussion of hybrid
cloud. Hybrid Cloud gives you the best of both
worlds. It gives you all of the advantages of
public cloud, as well as the advantages of private
cloud. So I'm going to be talking all about how
hybrid cloud may be the best option for you in
your own organization. Before I get into the main
part of this presentation, I just want to take a
moment and introduce myself and give you a little
bit of information about my background. Again, my
name is Brien Posey, and I'm a freelance
technology author and speaker. I'm also a 19 time
Microsoft MVP. Before I went freelance, I worked
as a network administrator for some of the largest
insurance companies in America. I was also the
lead network engineer for the United States
Department of Defense at Fort Knox. And I worked
as a CIO for a national chain of hospitals and
health care facilities. In addition to my IT
background, I've also spent the last several years
training as a commercial astronaut candidate in
preparation for a mission to study polar
mesospheric clouds from space. So that's just a
little bit about me. Let's get on with the
presentation. I want to begin the presentation by
talking a little bit about public cloud. I'm
guessing that most of you are probably already
familiar with public cloud. But I want to go ahead
and introduce the topic just in case because it is
going to come into play a little bit later on in
the discussion. There are actually a number of
different types of public clouds, everything from
Infrastructure as a Service clouds to Software as
a Service clouds. So for the purposes of this
discussion, when I refer to public cloud, I'm
going to be talking about Infrastructure as a
Service Cloud. Now, if you're not familiar with
Infrastructure as a Service clouds, the basic idea
is that the cloud provider gives subscribers the
ability to create various types of resources on
demand within the cloud. For example, a subscriber
might create virtual machine instances, they might
create databases, or they might provision various
managed services within the cloud. And the
subscriber is built based on the resources that
they use within the cloud. And that's actually one
of the really big advantages to public cloud is
that you're only paying for the resources that you
actually use, you never have to worry about
purchasing something and then not fully utilizing
it. Now, certainly, there are plenty of other
advantages to using public cloud. One of the big
advantages is that you don't have to worry about
buying any hardware. When you subscribe to a
public cloud, you're hosting resources on the
cloud providers hardware, so you don't have to
purchase that hardware yourself and deploy it in
your own data center. Similarly, the cloud
provider handles all of the hardware related
tasks. This might include purchasing the hardware,
getting it all deployed and set up. And all of the
ongoing hardware maintenance, such as replacing
failed hard drives, or refreshing aging hardware.
Another advantage to the public cloud is that the
cloud makes it extremely easy to deploy new
workloads. For example, if an organization needs
to deploy a new virtual machine, they can
typically do that with just a few mouse clicks.
The public cloud also provides almost infinite
scalability. If a workload needs to scale, you can
easily provision additional resources to meet the
needs of that workload. And you can deep provision
resources just as easily. And this is really nice,
because in a public cloud environment, there is no
guilt associated with the de provisioning of
resources. If you retire a workload on premises,
then you may have hardware that's going to sit
unused after that. So you're not fully
capitalizing on the investment that you made in
that hardware. Well, in a public cloud, you don't
have to worry about that because you never
actually purchased the hardware. You're simply
paying for the resources that you use on that
hardware. And when you're done with a particular
workload, you can step away from it and not have
to worry about what happens with the hardware. And
then another advantage is that large public clouds
tend to be extremely reliable and secure.
Just as there are advantages to hosting certain
workloads in the public cloud, there can also
potentially be some disadvantages that you need to
be aware of. One such disadvantage is cost. From
the very beginning, the public cloud has been
marketed as being the inexpensive option for
hosting it workloads. And in a lot of cases,
running a workload in the cloud can indeed save
you a lot of money. But you have to remember that
the public cloud providers bill you based on the
resources that you consume. So what this means is
that you have to be very careful to avoid
allocating excessive resources to a workload,
otherwise, it's going to cost you a lot more money
to run that workload than what is really
necessary. So you do have to keep an eye on cost
in order to avoid surprise billing. Another
potential disadvantage to be aware of is that
there are going to be some workloads that simply
don't work all that well, in a public cloud
environment. This can be especially true for
legacy workloads. And those workloads might be
better suited for remaining on premises. Something
else to be aware of is that hosting a workload in
the cloud can complicate your security. Now, this
isn't to say that your security is going to be
weakened simply because you moved a workload to
the public cloud. As a matter of fact, the
opposite often happens, moving a workload to the
public cloud can in some ways, improve the
workload security, but just know that the
migration process will cause you to have to re
evaluate the workload security. And in some cases,
things can be a little bit more complicated.
Another potential disadvantage to be aware of is
that when you host a workload in the public cloud,
you don't have access to low level resources on
the server that the workload is running on. This
can limit your ability to customize the workloads
platform. For a lot of workloads, this isn't a big
deal, but it is something that you need to be
aware of. Another thing to keep in mind with
regard to hosting a workload in the public cloud
is that some workloads could potentially overwhelm
your organization's internet connection. Now,
certainly, this isn't true for all workloads. But
if you have a workload that generates a heavy
amount of internet traffic between your
organization and the cloud provider, that workload
is going to be competing with your end users and
with other applications for internet bandwidth. So
you just need to make sure that you've got plenty
of internet bandwidth to accommodate that
workload. And a moment ago, I mentioned that there
are some workloads that really don't work all that
well, in a public cloud environment. Sometimes
that happens, because a workload just doesn't
really mesh well with the cloud infrastructure.
But another reason why you might have trouble
making a workload work in a public cloud, is
because you might not be able to reuse your
software licenses in a cloud environment. Now,
again, this isn't true for every workload, but it
is something that's worth paying attention to. And
then finally, one last disadvantage is that there
can be a temptation to skimp on the resources that
are allocated to your application. Remember, in a
public cloud environment, you're paying for the
resources that you consume. So there can be a
temptation to cut some corners and not given
application, all of the resources that it really
needs, just in an effort to stretch the IT budget
a bit. So now that I've talked a little bit about
public clouds, I want to turn my attention to
private clouds. private clouds have a lot of
similarities to public clouds, in that they
provide authorized users with a self service
environment that allows them to create resources
on demand. For example, an authorized user might
create virtual machines based on a template that's
been put into place by an administrator within the
private cloud environment. The primary difference
between a private cloud and a public cloud is that
the private cloud is based on the organization's
own hardware. That's hardware that the
organization owns, that exists in the
organization's own data center. One of the most
important things to understand about a private
cloud environment is that although the environment
does indeed give you cloud like functionality,
you'll lose one of the key benefits that's
associated with public clouds, namely, Pay As You
Go pricing. Because remember, the private cloud is
based on hardware that exist in your own data
center. So that means that you have to purchase
all of the capacity that you're going to need in
advance of actually needing it. And you're also
going to have to handle all of the hardware
maintenance yourself. Whereas in a public cloud
environment, the cloud provider takes care of all
of the hardware acquisition, and all of the
hardware maintenance on your behalf. Now that I've
spent some time talking about both public cloud
and private cloud, and the advantages and
disadvantages of each one of them turned my
attention to hybrid cloud. Hybrid Cloud is
essentially a combination of public and private
cloud resources.
The public and private clouds are merged together
in a way that gives the organization's all of the
benefits of both technologies. It's a way of
getting the best of both worlds. And as you can
imagine, there are many compelling benefits to
choosing the hybrid cloud option. So I want to
talk about some of those benefits. One of the big
benefits to building a hybrid cloud is that it
doesn't require an organization to abandon its
existing hardware resources. Because very often
when an organization is running a workload on
premises, and they decide that they want to
migrate that workload to the cloud, then once the
workload has been migrated, they have to figure
out what to do with the hardware that the workload
had previously been running on. Remember, this is
hardware that the organization had bought and paid
for. And now it's just sitting idle. And because
the hardware is sitting idle, the organization's
no longer realizing a return on investment. From
that hardware. Oftentimes, the hardware ends up
being prematurely retired, simply because it no
longer has a workload to run. But in a hybrid
cloud, on premises resources are still used, and
they're combined with resources that reside in the
public cloud. So you can continue to make use of
that hardware that exists within your data center.
Another especially compelling benefit to building
a hybrid cloud is that our hybrid cloud gives you
flexibility, you're free to run a workload in the
location where it makes the most sense to do so.
And there are any number of criteria that might
establish where it makes the most sense to run a
given workload. One such criteria is cost, you may
find that it costs less to host a particular
workload on premises than in a public cloud. Of
course, the opposite can be true, too, you might
find that it's cheaper to run a given workload in
the public cloud than it is to run it in your own
data center. And in a hybrid cloud environment,
you have that flexibility of being able to place
that workload where it makes the most sense to do
so based on cost. Another factor that sometimes
plays into the decision as to where a particular
workload should be hosted, are your compliance
requirements. For example, there may be a
compliance mandate that requires a given workload
to be hosted on premises rather than it residing
in the public cloud. And if you have a hybrid
cloud environment, you're certainly free to do
that, you can place a workload where it needs to
go based on your compliance mandates. one more
factor that often plays into the decision as to
where a particular workload should be hosted is
simply the workload logistics. For example, if you
have a very bandwidth intensive application, you
may want to keep that application in your own data
center so that you're not consuming an excessive
amount of internet bandwidth. At the same time, if
you have a workload that depends on a number of
other managed services residing in the public
cloud, then it might make more sense to host that
particular application in the public cloud. The
bottom line is that a hybrid cloud environment
gives you the flexibility to run that workload
wherever it makes the most sense to do so. Yet
another benefit to building a hybrid cloud is that
hybrid clouds give you on demand scalability, but
without the hardware investment. Now, as you'll
recall, hybrid clouds make use of hardware that's
running on premises, but they also make use of
resources in the public cloud. So if you suddenly
need to scale up a workload, you don't necessarily
need to go out and purchase more hardware, you
could use resources residing within the public
cloud to help you to scale that workload. If at a
later time you need to scale that workload back
down. Well, then you could simply d provision
resources in the public cloud and bring the entire
workload back on premises. The point is that the
hybrid cloud gives you the ability to demand scale
your workload either up or down, without
necessarily having to purchase additional
hardware. Another benefit is that hybrid clouds
can improve an organization's agility. Remember,
hybrid clouds use resources residing both locally
in the organization's own data center and in the
public cloud. And having all these resources at
your disposal makes it very, very easy to
provision and deploy new workloads at a moment's
notice, thereby helping to make the organization
far more agile than it might otherwise be. Yet
another benefit to the hybrid cloud is that when
properly configured, a hybrid cloud can help an
organization to achieve business continuity and
disaster recovery capabilities that might
otherwise be out of reach. One of the most popular
use cases for hybrid cloud is to configure
workloads that are running on premises to
automatically fail over to the public cloud,
should something happen in the organization's own
datacenter
hybrid clouds are often also used for disaster
recovery purposes. For example, workloads running
on premises might be backed up to public cloud
resources. These are just a couple of different
examples of some of the ways that organizations
achieve business continuity and disaster recovery
capabilities through the hybrid cloud. And one
more benefit to building a hybrid cloud is that
hybrid clouds are really good for accommodating
temporary workloads. If for example, an
organization needed to provision a new workload,
but they knew going in that that particular
workload was going to be temporary in nature, then
the hybrid cloud would make it very easy for the
organization to deploy the resources that were
needed by that workload. And then to reclaim those
resources once the workload is no longer needed.
So those are just a few of the many benefits to
building a hybrid cloud. Throughout this
presentation, I've stressed the idea that there
are three main types of clouds, public, private,
and hybrid. And in the vast majority of cases,
hybrid cloud is the preferred model. Now, having
said that, hybrid cloud does have some
disadvantages just as public and private cloud
have disadvantages. The main disadvantage to
building a hybrid cloud is that some hardware is
going to be required. That means that if you don't
already have hardware in your data center, you're
going to need to purchase some hardware. And
because of that, hybrid cloud probably isn't going
to be the best choice for startups. If you've got
a startup organization, it's generally going to be
more cost effective to deploy workloads in a
public cloud. But if you do have hardware in your
own data center, then you can certainly use that
hardware to build a hybrid cloud. Now, if you're
interested in building a hybrid cloud, and you
don't already have hardware or don't have enough
hardware, there is another option available. There
are vendors that will give you consumption based
pricing for data center hardware. So that's just
something to think about. The bottom line is that
in the vast majority of cases, hybrid cloud is the
preferred solution because it gives you the
greatest degree of flexibility for your workloads.
So I hope you found this presentation to be
informative. I'm Brien Posey, thanks for watching.