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Hybrid Cloud in Cloud Computing
In this article, I am going to discuss Hybrid Cloud in Cloud Computing. Please read our previous article where we discussed the Private Cloud in Cloud Computing. At the end of this article, you will understand what is Hybrid Cloud Computing and the advantages and limitations of the Hybrid cloud and when to use it.
What is a hybrid cloud?
A Hybrid cloud in cloud computing is nothing but is the combination of both Private and Public cloud allowing data and applications to be shared between them. That it is not a different cloud altogether. Here, in the Hybrid cloud, the private and public clouds are going to work together to meet the business needs.
Why we need a Hybrid Cloud?
The hybrid cloud combines the good features of both private and public clouds. That means if you want the good features of both private and public cloud, then you need to go for Hybrid Cloud. For example, you can use the Private Cloud Critical Business Operations like financial reporting, security-sensitive data like password, credit card details, etc. On the other hand, you can use the public cloud for non-sensitive or lower sensitive data, high-volume needs, etc. That means it gives you the best of both Private and Public Cloud.
What is Cloud Bursting?
There is a concept in Cloud Computing called Cloud Bursting. Let us understand what it means. You have an application and service. In order to start the application or service, you host the application in your private cloud. Your application running smoothly in the private cloud until there is a spike in the demand. As soon as there is a spike in demand in your application, “burst through” to the public cloud to get the additional resources so that your application runs smoothly. Again, when the spike in demand subsides or down, you scale down to your private cloud and no longer use the public cloud resources.
With a private cloud, you only have the physical infrastructure that is up to a limitation. So, how much you scale up that basically depends on the physical infrastructure you have for your private cloud. So, beyond a certain point, if you have to scale up, then again you need to buy additional physical resources which not only expensive but also time-consuming to set up the physical cloud environment. But the most important point is, when the spike in demand decreases or subsides, these additional physical resources are no longer use.
Benefits of Hybrid Cloud in Cloud Computing:
Provides Best of both: The Hybrid cloud combines the good features of both private cloud and public cloud. So, with a hybrid cloud, you will get the best of both.
Flexibility for the future: No matter how well you plan to meet today’s business needs, unless you have a crystal ball, you won’t know how your needs might change next month or next year. A hybrid cloud approach lets you match your actual data management requirements to the public cloud, private cloud, or on-premises resources that are best able to handle them.
Provides Better Control: With the hybrid cloud, you will have better control over what services run where. For example, you can use the private cloud for security-sensitive apps and the public cloud for those apps that have high-volumes of traffic, but not that security-sensitive.
Temporary processing capacity needs: A hybrid cloud lets you allocate public cloud resources for short-term projects, at a lower cost than if you use your own data center’s IT infrastructure when there is a spike in demand for your business. In this way, you will not over-invest in equipment you’ll need only temporarily.
Provides Cost-effective: As we already discussed, with hybrid cloud, we only need to use public cloud resources when there is a spike in demand. When the spike of the demand subsides or down, again you just scale down to your private cloud.
Separating critical workloads from less-sensitive workloads: You might store sensitive financial or customer information on your private cloud, and use a public cloud to run the rest of your enterprise applications.
Limitations of Hybrid Cloud in Computing
Low visibility and control: Just like the public cloud, in a hybrid cloud also, you don’t have that much visibility and control over the infrastructure that is owned by the public cloud service provider.
Additional complexity: Integrating your private cloud with the public cloud additional infrastructure is a bit complex. It involves effort, time, and complexity to maintain as we have 2 different types of clouds as the organization needs change.
Compliance and legal risks: As with hybrid, we don’t have that much visibility and control over the public cloud infrastructure, we are relying on the cloud service provider to protect our sensitive data and adhere to local and international regulations. Your company may still be liable, if the cloud service provider, fails to live up to the task and if there is a data breach.
Cost concerns: In a Hybrid cloud, if you use the public cloud resources for a long period of time, then the overall price tag may be higher than what you expected.
When to use a Hybrid Cloud?
The Hybrid cloud provides the best of both i.e. private and public clouds. For example, you have an IT company and you provide services to 2 different sets of clients.
For, one set of clients, security is not a massive concern. They just want to scale up and down based on the spike in demand or subsidies in their business. For these clients, you can use public cloud resources.
For the other set of clients, security is the most important thing and they want to have full control over the cloud infrastructure. For these set of clients, you can use the private cloud resources.
The point that you need to understand is, a hybrid cloud allows you to switch between the different delivery models depending on your client’s security and scalability requirements.
In the next article, I am going to discuss the difference between Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud in Cloud Computing. Here, in this article, I try to explain the Hybrid Cloud Computing in detail. I hope you enjoy this article.
