Cloud Bursting: A Practical Guide to Hybrid Cloud Automation
Written by Gilad David Maayan
Monday, 06 February 2023
By ensuring that applications have access to the resources they need, when they need them, cloud bursting provides a cost-effecting strategy that takes advantage of the hybrid cloud. Learn more about it.
What Is Hybrid Cloud Automation?
A hybrid cloud is a computing environment that combines a public cloud and a private cloud, allowing organizations to leverage the benefits of both. It enables organizations to run sensitive workloads on-premises or in a private cloud for security and compliance reasons, while also using public cloud services for less critical workloads that can take advantage of the public cloud's scalability and cost-effectiveness.
Hybrid cloud automation refers to the process of automating the deployment, management, and orchestration of workloads and resources across a combination of public and private clouds. It enables organizations to automate repetitive tasks, such as provisioning and scaling of resources, and to manage and monitor their hybrid cloud environment in a consistent and efficient manner.
With hybrid cloud automation, organizations can reduce manual errors, increase operational efficiency, and accelerate the delivery of new services and applications to their customers. This can help organizations to better align their IT resources with their business goals and improve their overall agility and competitiveness.
What Is Cloud Bursting?
Cloud bursting is a hybrid cloud computing strategy in which an application running on a private cloud can "burst" or temporarily spill over to a public cloud to handle periods of increased demand. The idea is to use the private cloud for normal or baseline workloads, and to move additional workloads to the public cloud when additional capacity is needed.
This allows organizations to take advantage of the cost-effectiveness and scalability of the public cloud, while maintaining the security and control of the private cloud. Cloud bursting enables organizations to dynamically adjust their computing resources to meet changing business needs, ensuring that applications have access to the resources they need, when they need them, and without overprovisioning or incurring unnecessary costs.
How Does Cloud Bursting Work?
Cloud bursting works by dynamically distributing workloads between a private cloud and a public cloud, depending on the current resource demands of the application. There are three main approaches to cloud bursting:
Distributed Load Balancing: This approach uses a load balancing mechanism, such as a load balancer or a content delivery network, to distribute incoming traffic between the private and public clouds. When the private cloud reaches its capacity limit, additional traffic is redirected to the public cloud to maintain application performance.
Automated Bursting: This approach uses automated mechanisms, such as scripts or APIs, to monitor the resource utilization of the private cloud and automatically move workloads to the public cloud when capacity limits are reached. This ensures that the application can continue to operate smoothly even during periods of increased demand. When the demand decreases, the workloads automatically switch back to the lower-capacity system.
Manual Bursting: This approach requires manual intervention to move workloads between the private and public clouds. This option is typically used when an organization needs to maintain more control over the workloads and resources that are moved to the public cloud.
Cloud Bursting and Hybrid Cloud Automation
Cloud bursting for hybrid cloud automation is a strategy that combines the benefits of both public and private clouds. It allows an organization to run applications on a private cloud and "burst" to a public cloud when additional computing resources are needed, such as during peak usage periods. The automation of this process is key to achieving seamless, scalable, and efficient operation across both private and public clouds.
With hybrid cloud automation, the orchestration and management of the bursting process can be automated, allowing the application to dynamically access resources in the public cloud as needed, without manual intervention. This provides organizations with the ability to manage their resources in an optimal and cost-effective way, balancing the trade-off between security, performance, and cost.
Best Practices for Cloud Bursting and Hybrid Cloud Automation
Here are some best practices for using cloud bursting for hybrid cloud automation:
Automate resource management: Automate the provisioning and de-provisioning of resources to ensure that the public cloud can quickly respond to the needs of the private cloud. This can include automating the management of storage, networking, and security resources.
Monitor performance and usage: Monitoring the performance and usage of both the private and public cloud environments is crucial in order to identify any potential bottlenecks and optimize the resource utilization.
Test and validate your setup: Test and validate your cloud bursting setup thoroughly before deploying it in a production environment. This includes testing the integration of the private and public clouds, the performance of the bursting process, and the security and compliance requirements.
Regularly review and optimize: Regularly review and optimize your cloud bursting setup to ensure that it continues to meet the changing needs of your organization. This may involve adjusting the resource allocation, performance requirements, and security and compliance requirements.
Choose the right cloud provider: Choose a cloud provider that offers the necessary features, tools, and support for hybrid cloud automation and cloud bursting. This includes support for API-driven automation, flexible and scalable resource allocation, and robust security and compliance features.
Conclusion
Cloud bursting is a powerful approach to hybrid cloud automation that enables organizations to dynamically distribute workloads between a private and public cloud to handle periods of increased demand. By combining the benefits of a private cloud, such as security and control, with the scalability and cost-effectiveness of a public cloud, cloud bursting provides organizations with a flexible and scalable solution for managing their computing resources.
However, to ensure the success of a cloud bursting implementation, it is important to carefully plan the architecture of the hybrid cloud environment, automate resource management, monitor usage and performance, periodically test and review the setup, and choose the right provider for the public cloud component.
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