This article will cover what hybrid infrastructure is, what its advantages are, and how your organisation can migrate to a hybrid infrastructure.
A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment that combines on-premise — private cloud, and third-party—public cloud services with orchestration. This usually entails establishing a secure link between an on-premise data centre and a public cloud..
What Is Hybrid Data Center Infrastructure?
A hybrid cloud model allows businesses to deploy their company data in either private or public clouds and even switch back and forth as their computing demands and costs vary. This provides a company with more flexibility and data deployment alternatives. An application’s network, hosting, and web service features are all included in a hybrid cloud workload.
With the emergence and availability of best-of-breed SaaS apps, even the most traditional of businesses have shown a tendency to adopt SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS, as software solutions. On the other hand, a vast majority of medium-to-large businesses have found it extremely difficult to deploy all of their systems in the public cloud.
A balanced solution for most businesses is that they require a hybrid infrastructure. Given the importance of enterprise integration in bringing all of these systems together, any integration solution chosen by a corporation must operate in all of the contexts.
What Are the Benefits of Hybrid Infrastructure?
Hybrid cloud computing allows a company to run its sensitive workloads on its own servers while hosting secondary resources on a public cloud. This method enables businesses to benefit from both private and public cloud models. There are a host of advantages of migrating to Hybrid Computing
Advantages of adapting to Hybrid Infrastructure
- Cost Management:
- Security and Risk Management
- Operational Reliability
- Flexibility
- Bandwidth and Scalability
How to Migrate to a Hybrid Infrastructure?
It’s common for businesses to use a hybrid paradigm in which private and public infrastructures coexist. The hybrid methodology looks more appealing in a world where even millisecond differences are increasingly important. But now, the question arises, what methodology one shall adapt to colocate their organisation’s data securely?
Ideal Strategy for The Migration Process
While adaptation to hybrid infrastructure is a relatively new trend, not many brands have hopped on the wagon yet. When a company considers the option to migrate, the very first question that is asked is; “What is the process for data migration?” The number of questions that follow is infinite, but we’ve got you if you are planning to migrate your data to a colocated data centre.
Shifting your data from an on-premise or private data centre to a colocated data centre in a secure manner is a difficult undertaking. Two critical things that concern every organisation are:
- Finding an ideal service partner, and
- How long does the colocation process take?
To make the data colocation process easier for you, we have mapped out a strategy from an expert’s guidance. This smart colocation technique will simplify the migration process and make it more efficient, quick and of course, hassle-free.
You can break your data colocation procedure into a systematic five-step strategy, as mentioned below for hassle-free and effortless data migration:
Strategy
When planning your migration strategy, keep the following crucial criteria in mind:
- Evaluate Rack and Power Density Requirements
- Understand your data centre requirements
- Define a clear colocation process by identifying the risks and data dependencies.
Establishing cloud migration key performance indicators (KPIs) such as page load speeds, response times, availability, and CPU utilisation will be easier if you have a baseline understanding of where you are. These indicators will allow measurement across a variety of areas.
In hybrid cloud strategies, rack and power density is an important factor to consider. For archiving, take advantage of cloud storage tiers.
Strategy formulation should be done early and in a manner that prioritises business objectives over technology.
Explore
Before requesting a potential service provider quote, go through these four steps to speed up the process and save time.
- Finalize the SOR (System of Record)
- Select the Service Providers
- Release your RFI
- Shortlist the Service Providers
Selecting a cloud provider who can lead the cloud migration process during the shift and afterward is an important component of optimization. It is not easy to migrate to the cloud.
Request For Proposal (RFP)
After you’ve shared your proposal request with your shortlisted providers, you can move on to the next step:
- Review Service Providers
- Evaluate RFP Responses
- Perform Technical Due Diligence
- Shortlist the top 2-3 service providers.
In your RFP, you should ask your cloud provider the following questions:
- What tools, including third-party ones, does it have at its disposal to make the process go more smoothly?
- What is the company’s level of expertise?
- Is it scalable enough to serve public, private, and multi-cloud environments?
- How can it assist you in dealing with complicated interdependencies, rigid designs, or obsolete and redundant technology?
- What level of assistance can it offer during the migration process?
You can shortlist 2-3 top service providers by properly evaluating RFP responses. This will assist you in determining which partner is the best match for your company.
Negotiation
Following the shortlisting of service providers, the subsequent step is to negotiate specific terms so that all parties are on the same page.
- Carry out technological, commercial negotiations
- Finalise contract terms
- Define scope
- Fix certain timelines
Before commencing negotiations, you must first understand the terms of your provider’s agreement. The size and type of service determine terms.
Closure
Once both parties have agreed on conditions and you have decided on a service provider, you can proceed to the next steps to complete the transaction.
- Organize and prepare legal documents
- Complete the Measurement System Analysis (MSA) and the statement of work (SOW)
- Document Signing
- Data migration
The MSA establishes the fundamental terms that will govern future client-agency agreements. It contains the most comprehensive terms possible and expedites the contracting procedure.
A statement of work (SOW), on the other hand, is a contract between the client and the agency that details the products and services to be provided. It often serves as a project agreement that establishes expectations. The parties frequently sign an SOW in addition to an MSA.
This final step should be pretty simple if you followed the previous steps attentively. However, the complexity and architecture of your application(s), as well as the architecture of your data will play a significant role in how you migrate to the cloud.
Why Is Hybrid the Future of Data Centres?
With the explosion in global data traffic, the need to have a central data repository and processor arises. Hybrid architecture can help businesses prepare for spikes in traffic by allowing storage and computers to scale up and down as and when needed.
Hybrid infrastructure, depending on organisational demands, business objectives, and workload requirements, can enable enterprises to manage a wide range of workloads spanning hundreds of thousands of services.
Conclusion
The benefits of infrastructure optimization, such as faster adoption, lower costs, and scalability, will aid corporate innovation and digital transformation. Companies may achieve these benefits without disrupting company operations by taking a staged approach to colocation, carefully selecting which applications and workloads to shift.
