Hybrid cloud infrastructure means that organizations don’t have to pick a single lane and stick with it. With this new flexibility comes new opportunities and new challenges — how are organizations integrating, deploying, and maintaining consistency and security in both the cloud and on-prem?
Let’s dig into the hybrid cloud to make sure you’re getting the most out of everything it can do for your infrastructure.
Table of Contents:
- What is Hybrid Cloud?
- How Are Organizations Using the Hybrid Cloud Today?
- Integrating with the Hybrid Cloud
- Deployment + Maintenance Within the Hybrid Cloud
- Hybrid Cloud Security
- Support Your Hybrid Cloud with Puppet
What is Hybrid Cloud?
A hybrid cloud is a mix of public and private cloud computing. It's a way to get the best of both worlds, depending on your needs.
How are Organizations Using the Hybrid Cloud Today?
What do we mean when we describe an organization as using a hybrid cloud infrastructure? Let’s give an example using a company that runs an online property rental platform. Users can browse listings for rooms, entire homes, or apartments and then book the rental using the website service.
This company keeps its property listing and booking data using on-premises servers. The search and pricing algorithms are located within a public cloud. This allows the company to provide an efficient booking service while also scaling and changing its infrastructure to meet user demand.
In this use case, the on-premises servers handle one part of the business that requires fewer pivots than the operations that run on the public cloud. It all depends on the needs of the specific organization.
Why would you start using a hybrid cloud infrastructure?
- Improve Performance + Scalability — Both on-prem and cloud servers have their own unique benefits. The cloud can be reactive to support changing volume or spikes in traffic, while on-prem can securely manage sensitive user data. With both in place, an organization can become resilient to changing needs.
- Reduce Costs — If an organization doesn’t need quite as much storage as a fully on-prem solution might offer, there are pay-as-you-go models for the cloud.
- Enhance Security a Compliance — Different data has different needs. Using cloud storage for less sensitive data is a great way to free up on-prem storage for the data you need to keep close and maintain with stricter security standards.
What is Hybrid Cloud Automation?
How does working within a hybrid cloud differ from strictly on-prem or an entirely cloud environment — and most importantly, how does automation help that process? As complex computing environments grow, automation can ensure that there is consistency across an entire infrastructure.
See how hybrid cloud automation works to save you time, money, and effort. >>
What is DevOps in the Cloud?
DevOps in the cloud is a software development approach that combines best practices and tools to increase the speed and efficiency of software delivery. It breaks down silos between development and operations teams, which enables them to collaborate more effectively. Ideally, DevOps in the cloud helps organizations deliver applications faster, with fewer errors.
Read more to learn why you should consider moving your DevOps in the cloud >>
Integrating with the Hybrid Cloud
There are lots of reasons why you’d want to move pieces of your infrastructure into a hybrid cloud, and an endless number of integrations and combinations that are possible to make your goals happen.
Check out our latest content pieces that support integration and migration to the hybrid cloud to make this process a little easier.
Cloud Infrastructure Provisioning: How to Get Started
Cloud infrastructure provisioning is the process of creating and configuring the resources needed to run an application or service in the cloud. This can include virtual machines, storage, networks, and other cloud resources. Provisioning cloud infrastructure can be a complex and time-consuming process, but it can be streamlined with automation.
Learn how to get started with cloud infrastructure provisioning using Terraform and Bolt >>
How to Do an On-Prem to Cloud Migration (AWS) For Puppet
Looking for a walk-through on migrating your on-premises Puppet infrastructure to AWS? Let’s explore some key points around why you might make the migration along with tips on planning and preparing your organization to move from traditional on-prem to a high-functioning hybrid environment.
Get migrating with AWS for Puppet >>
How to Experiment with Google Cloud LDAP
Leveraging Google Cloud LDAP to secure authentication across an infrastructure can reduce overhead and support your internal security policies — for example, you won’t have to maintain the same user across multiple environments.
Start leveraging Google Cloud LDAP with Puppet >>
Deployment + Maintenance Within the Hybrid Cloud
Deploying applications in the hybrid cloud requires three components: planning, maintenance, and ongoing security. You’ll need to consider the different requirements of your applications and the capabilities of your on-premises and cloud environments. While many of these conversations will happen before you even start a hybrid cloud migration, we have some additional resources you’ll want to consider:
Rein in Cloud Chaos
If you’re already using some form of cloud infrastructure, you don’t have to feel lost with a stack of vendor-specific tools and a challenging learning curve. Automating housekeeping tasks is just one way that you can rein in cloud chaos, and our webinar can help you accomplish just that.
Watch the “Rein in Cloud Chaos” webinar to deploy and maintain, the easy way >>
Use Case: Government Agencies in the Cloud
How does the hybrid cloud infrastructure support different industries, especially highly regulated ones? This includes special considerations like a Zero Trust policy in addition to standard IT compliance regulations. For every industry, there will be special procedures and considerations to think through with the hybrid cloud.
Take a look at one use case example with government agencies in the cloud >>
Multi-Cloud Deployment
Thinking about deploying across multiple cloud environments? Organizations might need to use more than one cloud depending on the resources that a specific cloud provides, like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (Saas). More cloud environments, more hassle, right? That doesn’t have to be the case.
Read on for tips on multi-cloud deployment for consistent infrastructure >>
Hybrid Cloud Security
It’s easy to see the challenges of securing a hybrid cloud infrastructure — sensitive data, multiple environments, and different regulations are all competing for time and attention.
You’ll want to consider some new ways to enhance your current security plan like:
- Implementing a unified security policy that applies to all cloud environments
- Using strong encryption to protect data in transit and at rest
- Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users
- Using a cloud security tool to scan for security vulnerabilities
- Regularly patching and updating cloud-based applications
Read more about how to strengthen your security in the cloud >>
Products offered by Puppet can also support your Hybrid Cloud security needs:
- Puppet Comply and Compliance Enforcement are used to assess and enforce compliant configurations for better infrastructure security, even in hybrid cloud environments
- Continuous Delivery for Puppet Enterprise can test your Puppet code before it goes live in your cloud or hybrid-cloud infrastructure
Support Your Hybrid Cloud with Puppet
Puppet Enterprise can simplify managing a hybrid cloud infrastructure with automation for key tasks around compliance, access management, resource management, and more. Puppet Enterprise can offer:
- Consistent data collection across multiple clouds.
- “Run anywhere” code that can simplify or remove rework for a new cloud
- Vendor-agnostic DSL that works across all operating systems
Get proactive with your hybrid cloud approach — Puppet can support your infrastructure no matter where it is currently, and where you want to be next.