Read on:
Virtualization Trends Series: A Brief History of Virtualization: Part 1
Virtualization Trends Series: The Evolution and Future of Hypervisors: Part 2
Introduction
Welcome to episode 3 of our Virtualization Trends series. After discussing the history of virtualization and hypervisors in general, we are moving on to cloud computing and multi-cloud more specifically.
Multi-cloud is a rapidly growing trend in the IT landscape, as more and more organizations are turning to multiple cloud computing services from different cloud providers instead of relying on a single provider. This approach offers a number of benefits and has been proving increasingly popular among strategies adopted by companies looking to optimize their cloud infrastructure.
In this article, we will discuss the rise of cloud computing, the challenges of cloud computing, why multi-cloud is needed, and how to manage a multi-cloud environment. We will also explore VMware’s Cross-cloud services and use cases for multi-cloud as this series somewhat has a VMware twist to it. If you have been following VMware and the announcements of the last few VMworld and VMware Explore events, you will know that multi-cloud is at the heart of their business strategy.
Before we start, note that multi-cloud does not necessarily relate to public cloud such as AWS or Azure but it can also include private cloud environments like VMware Cloud Director, vSphere, OpenStack and the likes.
The Rise of Cloud computing and Cloud native
Cloud computing has become increasingly popular in recent years, and it is easy to understand why. With cloud computing, organizations can scale their resources up and down as needed, reducing costs and improving efficiency. Instead of investing massive amounts of cash upfront to build a datacenter and all the infrastructure that is involved, cloud services let you pay for what you consume.
I purposefully didn’t mention cost saving on operations personnel as this is usually a data used to discredit on-premise implementations which often doesn’t prove that straightforward as running cloud service doesn’t mean that you don’t need an IT department or specialist crew. However, it is clear that a small company or startup running a simple online service will benefit from relying solely on cloud services and the cloud provider’s technical support (but this is a discussion for another time).
However, an example of successful cloud implementation includes Netflix, the streaming service provider you probably pay for every month, which uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to handle massive amounts of traffic and data requests during peak hours and scale down during off-peak hours, thus reducing costs.
Additionally, cloud native technologies, such as containers and Kubernetes, make it easier to deploy and manage applications in the cloud. While the complexity of the platform means there is a fairly big technical barrier to entry, the flexibility offered by it made it the industry standard across the board in the mid-2010s’. These technologies are designed to be cloud-agnostic and can be deployed on any cloud platform.
Challenges of cloud computing and migrations difficulty
Although cloud computing offers many benefits, it also comes with its own set of challenges. One of the biggest challenges is data and applications migration. Moving data from on-premises systems to the cloud can be a difficult and time-consuming process, especially for large amounts of data. For instance, a large retail organization might have petabytes of data stored in their on-premises data centers, migrating this data to the cloud can take months and require specialized expertise.
Additionally, once data is in the cloud, it can be difficult to move it back on-premises or to a different cloud provider. Furthermore, different cloud providers have different service levels and costs, which can make it difficult to compare and choose the best option for an organization.
What about lift-and-shift scenarios
While data migration projects are time consuming and complicated, many organizations out there don’t exactly understand the point and use cases for cloud computing. It is sometimes due to IT department heads looking to market a modernized approach to their IT system and just want their workloads to run in the cloud. In such cases, the customer will simply migrate their virtual machines to a cloud provider and run them there.
While this does technically qualify as cloud computing, this is not optimized in terms of costs and scalability. The only difference between this and an on-premise deployment is that the hypervisors run on hardware located in datacenters managed by a cloud provider so your IT department doesn’t have to perform upgrade campaigns and such (unless you use Oracle cloud, in which case you will even do the upgrades yourself).
Don’t get me wrong on this point, there is a solid market for virtual machines running in the cloud and VMware offers a powerful product called VMware HCX to perform migrations between datacenters. However, in my opinion, proper use cases around running virtual machines in the cloud revolve around data protection and disaster recovery with tools like VMware DRaaS or BDRSuite which offers DR and backup capabilities in the cloud.
Why is Multi-cloud needed and what are the benefits
Multi-cloud is an approach that addresses the challenges of cloud computing by allowing organizations to take advantage of the best features and services offered by different cloud providers and improve availability by not putting all your eggs in the same basket. By using multiple cloud providers, organizations can avoid vendor lock-in, reduce costs and improve their disaster recovery capabilities.
For instance, an organization might use AWS for compute and storage, and use Microsoft Azure for machine learning and analytics or identity management. This way, the organization can take advantage of the best services offered by each cloud provider. Additionally, multi-cloud allows organizations to use the most suitable cloud services for different workloads, and to avoid the risk of service interruption in case of outage of one cloud provider.
On top of that, open-source projects like Cluster API let you leverage various cloud providers, whether on-premise or public, to deploy and bootstrap kubernetes clusters for production use.
The added complexity of Multi-cloud environments
With that said, managing a multi-cloud environment can be complex and cumbersome from the standpoints of technical operations (including CI/CD, monitoring…) and cost management. Different cloud providers have different service levels, security protocols, costs, offerings and compliance requirements, which can make it difficult to manage and secure data across multiple cloud environments.
Take an organization that has to comply with multiple data regulations when storing data in different cloud providers, this can add complexity to the organization’s compliance efforts. In which case, offerings such as VMware Sovereign Cloud can bring incredible value added to simplify the process by offloading the compliance side of things to VMware’s enforcement of their framework against their certified Sovereign Cloud Providers.
Additionally, managing different cloud environments requires specialized skills and knowledge, which can be difficult to find and retain as these are somewhat (less and less) still niche domains in the industry.
How to Manage a Multi-cloud environment
One of the key strategies for managing a Multi-cloud environment is to use a multi-cloud management platform. These platforms allow organizations to manage and monitor multiple cloud environments from a single dashboard. For example, VMware’s Cross-cloud services provides a multi-cloud management platform that allows organizations to manage, monitor, and secure their multi-cloud environments from a single dashboard. Their offering revolves around:
- Building and deploying cloud-native apps with VMware Tanzu Application Platform.
- Operating and running apps.
- Management of performance and cost across clouds with VMware Aria costs.
- Security and Networking with Carbon Black.
- Deployment and management of edge-native apps with VMware Workspace One and VMware Edge Compute Stack.
Managing an environment doesn’t only mean creating services but it encompasses all the lifecycle of the bricks that makeup the product you are building. This includes:
- Observability at all layers consistently across clouds.
- Security posture with Zero Trust mindset and secure software supply chains.
- Application portability.
- Connectivity across cloud providers network services.
- Auditing and traceability.
- And so on..
Use cases for multi-cloud
Multi-cloud can be used in a variety of different situations. For example, organizations can use multi-cloud for disaster recovery, by storing data in multiple cloud providers in different geographic locations. This way, if one cloud provider experiences an outage, the organization’s data and applications can still be accessed from another location. For instance, VMware DRaaS will copy the VM disks to the cloud provider but will only spin up hypervisors to start the VMs when disaster recovery is invoked, hence saving costs by not running hosts in the cloud that are waiting around for a disaster to happen on-premise.
Other use cases include compliance (sovereignty), where an organization may be required to store data in a specific geographic location or with a specific cloud provider that meets certain compliance regulations. For instance, a financial institution might be required to store data in a specific country or region, in order to comply with local data regulations. Multi-cloud allows organizations to store data in different locations, ensuring compliance and reducing risk.
On top of these scenarios, distributing applications and services to the edge is also an important area of the industry as many logistics, retail and manufacturing customers require to deploy closer to physical devices and users with better automation to improve customer experiences by reducing WAN traffic and reduce latency.
Conclusion
As mentioned, multi-cloud is a rapidly growing trend in the world of technology, as more and more organizations are turning to multiple cloud computing services from different providers, rather than relying on a single provider. Adoption will take time as this is a complex issue to solve which involves a lot of moving parts.
Customers going down that route are looking to reduce operational overhead by managing applications and infrastructure with consistent tool sets across the board rather than relying on each cloud provider’s management framework. This of course brings the question of maintainability and how to track changes to the API but this is where products like VMware Cross-Cloud services can help.
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