“The whole concept of hybrid cloud being a thing is probably not right. It’s really more about an architecture, about a deployment model or a data center model, than it is to say, ‘This cloud is hybrid.’ That doesn’t make any sense.”
Lori Macvittie gave us some of her valuable insights into the issue of hybrid clouds on cloudchasers a few weeks ago. She writes a lot about hybrid clouds in her blog on F5 Networks, so we were all excited to hear what she had to say regarding hybrid models. On this episode, called “The Hybrid Cloud: Hero or Half-Measure?”, cloudchasers wanted to find out is hybrid cloud models were a better, safer way for enterprises to extend to the cloud.
The argument in favor of hybrid clouds is that this particular model is the best of both worlds; it merges public cloud services and private cloud services into one ideal structure that provides the right level of benefit to the business while excluding risks that could be engendered by wholesales adoption of a generic model. The reasoning behind this is that the most important information and processes remain in the data center and stay on premise, remaining basically untouched. It retains its existing structure and isn’t extended outside the perimeter. The organization then works with their cloud provider to host those services that can, and perhaps are better suited, to live outside the perimeter in the public cloud space.
I have always asserted that “good cloud” architecture is precisely aligned to the needs of the business. In essence, what you are really doing is playing a matching game, combining different elements from alternate service providers until you get exactly what you need. Your own capacity and capability is likely to be one of those service providers. Hey, isn’t the definition of hybrid really a merging of different things? So, can we logically deduce from this argument that a good cloud is a hybrid cloud?
Another issue brought up during the conversation was the possibility that hybrid cloud really isn’t a concept at all. Lori suggests that clouds are always hybrid, and I suggested that the term hybrid is just a label. We both toyed with this idea that hybrid is not just a theory but the way that all clouds are laid out in the end because most companies won’t rely on just one provider for all services. Different providers will give you different solutions, some that will work for you and some that will work for other companies out there, again bringing in this concept of mixing and matching.
The more we talked, the more Lori’s first words resonated with me; “it’s really more about an architecture.” As I said on the show, not everything is cloud ready. We have to build or tune particular architectures to be cloud compatible. Unfortunately, most data center applications, software appliances, and workloads were built before cloud, without the cloud concept in mind. The particular workload you designed may not fit with the cloud service that your provider offers.
If you want to hear the rest of the conversation, the episode is available for free download.
Posted
Aug 13 2010, 10:28 AM
by
RossChevalier