Whenever I teach my various on-premises courses and even
when I teach my Cloud based courses, I always get reminded by my Cloud trainer
colleagues that in the future “everyone will be running all of their services
in the cloud”.
I then ask my delegates and attendees the questions:
“In the future will you run all of your IT services purely
from a public cloud?” Usually the answer is “No, we won’t”
“Are any of you running services in just one cloud solution?”
These answers vary from “No, Yes, and we actually use multiple clouds”.
As we move forward and more of our services move towards
modernisation, questions are being asked, obstacles are appearing, and as
different departments perhaps decide to take their services into their own
hands, we find that silos are created, and eventually it will come back into
the IT departments hands.
The challenge becomes managing these multi-cloud environments
in a cohesive and transparent (for the user) way.
Some of the questions that I get asked:
What is the difference between a hybrid-cloud and
multi-cloud scenario?
I always think of hybrid cloud as a mix between a private on-premises
cloud and a public cloud solution, I have to focus on a management method that
allows consistency of management across a common infrastructure layer. Such as
having VMware on-premises and then running VMware via VMC on AWS for my public
cloud offering.
Mult-Cloud for me is a bit more complex, I may have VMware
on-premises, AWS running my website, and web interfacing services, and then running
perhaps Azure with Office 365 for productivity, and Intune for my device
management, they all have their own management tools, and potentially 100s of separate
accounts that I need to now coordinate and manage consistently.
The challenges for organisations starting or continuing
their journey to the multi-cloud
·
Multiple systems that require management
·
Unpredictable costs, due to pay as you go
models.
·
Not knowing 100% which clouds are in use, as
developers and departments create their own workloads, leading to inconsistency
and perhaps duplication of solutions.
·
Protection of workloads from a high availability,
scalability, and business continuity view.
·
Backing up workloads.
·
Governance.
·
Automation.
·
Prioritisation.
·
Service Level agreements
·
Delivering applications, on any cloud, on any
device, and making this transparent to the end user
Why use a multi-cloud strategy for your Organisation
· Unique Services: Organizations have the freedom
to choose from different cloud providers to best fit specific application and
computation requirements to their own unique business needs.
· Scalable: An organisation can quickly scale up
to use more resources during peak periods and then scale down when demand
lessens, or fewer virtual data centres, depending on demand.
· Speed: Global organizations can get services
faster in multiple regions by choosing local public cloud vendors at all of
their office locations. The closer the data centre, the lower the latency.
Using a local public cloud computing provider also decreases response time for
higher priority tasks.
· Compliance with governmental regulation: Some
organizations may need to use multiple cloud storage providers to adhere to
government regulations and data sovereignty laws that require certain types of
data to reside within the company’s country.
· Saving time, money and physical space: Most
organizations that employ multi-cloud capabilities use the public cloud for
IaaS, avoiding the need to build and maintain their own datacentre. The advantage
of using public cloud for IaaS is that users can build a virtual data centre in
the cloud without needing a physical piece of hardware. This saves money and
physical space, because the company does not have to invest in or store their
own hardware. It also saves time, because the public cloud service provider
manages, maintains and updates the data centre.
·
Future-proof and flexible: Opting for multiple
cloud services provides benefits beyond spreading the risk of failure across
several vendors. By adopting a multi-cloud strategy, businesses can get
everything they want, or might want tomorrow, without being limited to the
services that one vendor provides.
There has to be a way to better manage all of these
clouds, whether they be on-premises, hybrid, or public clouds
As I work with VMware products and have done for 20 years,
my focus will be on how VMware can help me manage the diversity in solutions
and clouds that I may have in use now and in the future.
Can VMware help manage operations when I have
applications and services on AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, Oracle, and so on?
The simple answer is YES. VMware multi-cloud solutions are designed
to help manage workloads that run on the native infrastructure of public clouds.
Not only that VMware can help me to manage a multi-cloud and hybrid scenarios
that include, consistent infrastructure based on VMware technologies that run
alongside workloads that run natively in the cloud.
VMware solutions for the multi-cloud
VMware’s building block for cloud solutions is VMware Cloud
Foundation, this product suite contains a number of solutions. It consists of:
·
VMware vSphere
·
VMware NSX-T
·
VMware vSAN
·
VMware vRealize suite
VMware also have solutions to help analyse and manage your
cloud solutions such as CloudHealth
by VMware, that allows companies to Analyse and manage cloud cost, usage,
security and governance in one place with a cloud management platform.
Also, VMware have Cloud
Health Secure State that allows companies to Gain real-time visibility
across clouds. Build a unified security monitoring approach for AWS, Azure, and
Google Clouds to understand how a minor configuration change can elevate risk
across all connected objects. Monitor ephemeral cloud resources and detect
security events within minutes without excessive API calls to cloud. Visualize
cloud resource relationships and associated misconfigurations, threats,
metadata, and change activity. Explore inventory with typeahead search and
investigate risks with powerful visualization capabilities for navigating cloud
topology. Audit configuration changes and track progress developers are making
in resolving security violations.
VMware Cloud Partners and solutions
VMware’s original partnership started with AWS and as such,
my first foray into hybrid cloud was VMware
Cloud on AWS
But VMware has expanded and also provide:
·
Azure
VMware Solution
·
Google
Cloud VMware Engine
·
IBM Cloud
VMware Solutions
·
Oracle Cloud VMware Solution
As we move forward, I am sure that most companies will
embrace some form of multi-cloud solution, and this area will grow rapidly,
what’s important is that all companies research and then select the service
that works best for them.
