Hybrid infrastructure is a mix of on-premises data centers, private clouds and/or public clouds. There are several reasons why you should choose hybrid infrastructure over a private cloud.
These include:
- On-premises data center (or server room)
- Private cloud (virtualized public cloud or dedicated public cloud)
- Public cloud (cloud-native public or private clouds)
- PaaS (platform as a service)
- IaaS (infrastructure as a service)
Platform-as-a-service, PaaS and IaaS are not hybrid infrastructures. They use different infrastructures as well as different software. While they all have the same software stack, they may use different versions of it such as Java, PHP, Rails, etc. Since Windows Server 2012 R2 is a part of the hybrid stack and can be used with just about any other software, it is often considered part of the hybrid stack in the same way Linux is here. This makes it particularly useful for cross-platform and cross-infrastructure development & deployment since you can deploy any version of Java on your main data center while having a fully functional Linux server on your private data center — hence why I have called it pure PaaS.
Additionally, because Windows Server 2012 R2 is made for hybrid computing environments it has a built-in capability to communicate with any other software or hardware platform you might use in your organization. This includes Unreal Engine 4 and NodeJS which are both best practices for building high-performance/scale web applications with high levels of autonomy from external systems too. I would argue that we should also consider this part of the hybrid stack since it allows us to deploy our own applications with ease (and with no third-party dependencies). Thus, if you already have an application written in Java or PHP then you can deploy that application using some version of the classic PaaS model without the need for adding any new applications to your IT infrastructure. These days there are many tools available for deploying Java applications that make deploying PaaS models much simpler than ever before.
What is hybrid infrastructure?
Hybrid infrastructure is a term that covers any combination of a public and private cloud, on-premises and/or off-premises servers, software and infrastructure. Hybrid infrastructure includes both infrastructure (data centers) and virtualization software.
The data center is the physical building you are in that is used to house all your business applications. The exchange or network within this building is called the network. In many cases, this network spans multiple buildings. You need to make sure each part of your data center does what it needs to do for you, which means you need to ensure your networking hardware has the correct functionality for what your applications will need it for (the more layers of redundancy, the better).
Depending on your requirements, you can use one or more public clouds as well as hybrid clouds that combine a public cloud with private or on-premises servers.
A public cloud refers to any data center that is used by many customers at once rather than just one customer at a time. This could be large companies with multiple data centers providing services to many other large companies at once or even individual users looking to connect over the internet without needing an entire datacenter for their connections.
Private clouds are hardware designed for running specific applications (some of which may run on shared hardware). Thus they are often referred to as “hybrid” clouds because they combine some shared hardware with private hardware (such as behind an access door).
The best example of a hybrid cloud is Amazon Web Services (“AWS”). It has three distinct parts: The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which allows customers to rent computing power; Amazon Web Services Platforms (“AWS PaaS”), which offer pre-built software; and AWS Marketplace (“AWSM”) which provides application integration tools and services like “AWS Marketplace” products such as “EC2 Instance Manager”. All three components together form what is known as a hybrid cloud environment.
It’s important to note that hybrid environments do not only involve physical servers; other components such as storage, application management tools or virtualization platforms can be considered part of the same hybrid environment if they interact with servers in some way while still interacting with applications running on these servers. For example, Oracle’s VirtualBox takes advantage of shared storage resources, but it interacts directly with its application software – Oracle Database – using VMware’s VMWare Player. Similarly, VMware Fusion usually interacts directly.
Advantages of hybrid infrastructure
- All data centers can be managed by a single administrator if needed.
- No need to add servers.
- Data centers can be scaled up and down quickly, based on demand.
- No need to pay for extra storage capacity when there is no need for it in the data center itself; the software infrastructure can handle it all centrally, without any additional fees or support costs caused by capacity issues, etc.
- Data centers are easily accessible via public networks such as the Internet, allowing for very rapid deployment and increased uptime of applications running in them (via remote access).
- How does hybrid infrastructure work?
There are two general models which have been used to describe the way data centers will be deployed in the future. The first one is a fully virtualized model, where all services are hosted on dedicated servers. The second model is a fully shared-nothing model, where different workloads are run on different, dedicated servers.
There is nothing wrong with either of these models (or each one for that matter), but you may need to choose between them depending on your business objectives and budget.
The first model is ideal for enterprise organizations that have the resources and capability to build their private clouds, pay for them out of their own budgets, and use customized software to host their workloads. However, this approach can easily pose challenges if you’re just starting out or if you’re looking at a cheap solution that doesn’t offer everything you need (such as VMware or Microsoft).
The second model can work well for small-scale applications that run on shared-nothing servers but not very well for larger applications running on dedicated servers (such as Google or Amazon Web Services). The main advantage of this model is that many of the benefits of server virtualization such as performance and flexibility in terms of scaling up and down are available without needing specialized hardware.
As for hybrid-infrastructure architectures in general, whether you prefer a fully virtualized environment or a hybrid one depends on your business objectives and requirements:
- Your company wants to be able to take full advantage of all its technology investments without worrying about how much it will cost over time. In other words, it intends to use its budget efficiently. Then go with the fully virtualized environment.
- Your company wants more flexibility in terms of resource consumption due to rising demand from multiple applications. In other words, it wants to use its budget most efficiently. Then go with the fully shared-nothing environment (for example Google’s containerization platform Kubernetes).
These two situations may be similar enough that it makes sense to go with a hybrid implementation if there is any risk involved. However, if resource consumption depends largely on your specific needs then there should be no reason not to stick with one or the other instead of going completely hybrid: remember: if you want high performance then go with full virtualization (server) while if resources or cost are key features then use a shared-nothing architecture. And remember: things can change between now and when your application actually goes live so.
Use cases of hybrid infrastructure
Hybrid infrastructure is the most common IT infrastructure configuration. A hybrid environment can be defined as “a combination of on-premises and private cloud solutions with a mix of network architectures, security and other options.” There are three key terms used in hybrid environments:
We start by defining a hybrid infrastructure as “a combination of on-premises and private cloud solutions with a mix of network architectures, security and other options,” to get a feel for what we are talking about. Both the cloud and on-premise solutions can be thought of as complementary or alternative technologies: one for external applications (cloud) and one for internal applications (on-premise). The data center is where all this happens.
Here is where I want to make two critical points:
1) The fact that these options are separate does not mean they don’t affect each other; they do, but in different ways, it seems.
2) The success or failure of any solution depends on how well the two complement each other. The two technologies together need to produce an optimal solution — which means that you have to look at both layers separately. We might have an application that depends on the data being stored in the cloud but also runs locally on a single CPU core in our data center so that it can utilize only part of the computing power we have available locally (with less power consumption from our redundant networks). When you look at it this way you cannot say there is no impact from either option — if your application requires massive scalability from both sides (e.g., streaming video service or file-sharing service) then there will be a balance between those requirements for your customers; but if your application doesn’t require high scalability but needs local storage so it can maximize battery life then you should consider using local storage technology (e.g., SSDs) instead of relying on cloud storage because local storage has some advantages over cloud storage). If your application needs high performance but also high scalability then use cloud computing; if you need high performance but low scalability then use on-premise computing; etc…
3) Also note that the goal here is to deliver both low latency and increased performance while minimizing resource usage due to network latency by choosing different technologies based upon their respective strengths — more RAM versus faster CPU cores versus more cores per dollar. In addition to what we said about these terms above, we should also note that there are several different ways in which we might.
Challenges of hybrid infrastructure
When an organization wants to increase its investment in its data center and improve the performance of its IT infrastructure, it’s usually a combination of increased capacity and better performance. But what happens when there is a need for a hybrid cloud, where the infrastructure is housed in both on-premises data centers and in public clouds?
The technology of hybrid cloud is growing rapidly, but the implementation challenges are real. The technology and implementation are not well understood.
Conclusion: Hybrid infrastructure is a great solution for data center needs.
HPE Enterprise Cloud Services provides a complete data center solution that enables organizations to move critical applications and services into the public cloud while retaining control over those resources without sacrificing availability or security.
The software-defined infrastructure (SDI) model is the foundation of hybrid cloud computing, and today enterprises are increasingly deploying SDI in order to achieve scalability, agility and cost-effectiveness.
To enable this model, enterprises typically need to upload their on-premises infrastructure assets onto a private cloud infrastructure, which provides assurance that the assets are protected from attack, can be easily accessed by authorized users who have appropriate access rights to the assets, and can be scaled as needed. HPE’s Enterprise Cloud Services enable enterprises to transfer critical applications and services from their on-premises data centers into their public cloud environments without sacrificing availability or security.
