It goes beyond simply lifting workloads into the cloud and managing them as clouds. Considering the growing trend of enterprises adapting to hybrid and multi cloud environment, this ecosystem has become multi facet and complex to administrate . These types of environments offer the level of resilience and elasticity that firms are looking for, but they also come with certain challenges to overcome with such as optimization, security, and cost management. For those of you looking for techniques on how to cope with the day to day hybrid or multi cloud environments , this is the correct page for you.

One of these challenges is managing these large concentrations of cloud providers and technologies that have emerged out of the growing trend of cloud. Such worry pushes the search for the best practices to mitigate risk, save money and maintain all the public cloud vendors and infrastructure. In this paper, we look at a few best practices you may want to be aware of for large scale cloud management.

What is Hybrid and Multi-cloud?

Prior to looking into management strategies, it is necessary to provide clarity on some of the terms use in the paper: hybrid and multi cloud.

Hybrid Cloud:

A hybrid cloud is between public and private cloud types allowing data to be shared and services to be used across multiple cloud settings. The purpose is to have more flexibility and deployment alternatives. Sensitive information can be stored in a private cloud while allowing less important workloads to be processed in public clouds.

Multi Cloud :

This approach refers to the model where more than one cloud services provider is used to meet the business requirements. In other words, instead of just one, organizations can select a number of providers in order to utilize some unique features, for cost advantages or better performance.

Both models have their merits but increase the complexity of managing the cloud. Having multiple environments to manage increases the risk of some mismanagement or inefficiency which in turn leads to bottlenecks. This is where advanced cloud management techniques come in.

There are some reasons as Table 1 shows, that contributed to the interest in cloud management:

• Cost control model:

The cloud model is flexible, but without control cloud services costs can run out of hand. Proper management of the system where any cost is incurred can cut down on the waste of resources while improving efficiency.

• Security:

In a multi-cloud environment some sensitive information may be spanned across many clouds in a hybrid setup. If these systems are not effectively and properly managed the security of the information will be put at risk.

• Load balancing:

Correctly adjusting the amount of cloud resources available is needed to ensure that applications and workloads work. When not well managed resources on the cloud become bottlenecks for performance.

• Polices / legal matters:

Insurers of cloud resources have considerable variance in compliance. But with a focused and specific cloud management compliance can be achieved throughout.

How to Make Hybrid or Multi-cloud Management More Effective

So let’s look at some of the cutting-edge strategies that can assist you optimally run certain cloud environments that are a hybrid or multi-cloud setup ensuring a seamless experience.

Cloud Management Platforms (CMP)

Centralized cloud management platforms (CMP) are one of the best ways of accelerating the process of cloud management. A CMP allows you to control a multitude of cloud services using a single interface and see how all resources deployed work. Hence, all the activities of surveillance, resources, and governance of a single or many cloud servers are accessible easily making it efficient across the hybrid or multi-clouds. Some well-known CMPs include VMware vRealize, Microsoft Azure Arc, and Google Anthos.

Here’s what these platforms will enable you to do:

• Manage and maintain assets in real-time

• Measure performance even over different clouds

• Implement controls on spending

• Limit management of security policies bringing harmonization

Auto Scaling And Load Balancing

Cloud resources should dynamically scale by themselves to fit the work load placed. Automatic scaling allows changes in allocated assets to help balance cost and performance levels while removing the chance of excessive or insufficient provisioning of cloud resources.

Cloud services can be paired with auto scaling features, which means there is always enough capacity available for applications to function smoothly. For example, load balancing helps to equally spread the processing & storage needs across multiple cloud vendors or even across geographical regions of the same vendor. This ensures that no single resource gets overburdened and that your services remain operational during peak hours.

Cloud Cost Management Platforms

One of the key challenges that organizations face while using a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy is Costing. The cloud’s pay-per-use structure makes costs easily spiraling out of control without proper monitoring in place.

Costing monitoring solutions are meant to solve this challenge while making the governance easier by keeping track of cloud spending in real time. CloudHealth by VMware, Cost Explorer and Azure Cost Management Tools enables an organization to manage unnecessary costs. Some of these ways can be:

• Detect Inefficient or Dormant Resources Usage

• Showing a cost visualization of all multi-cloud providers

• Recommending strategies related to optimization including rightsizing the instances for use or transitioning towards reserved instances

Governance refers to the policies and strategies that you have in place for the management and control of your cloud infrastructure. In case of hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments, it is important to have governance not just to protect and ensure compliance but also to optimize the allocation of resources.

Remember to bring out a pen and paper, because this is going to be a whole lot to take in. That being said, here are 3 steps to establishing a framework in the cloud.

• Assigning responsibilities to different teams for better collaboration and team work.

• Implementing policies for identity management and access control, via Okta or AWS IAM (or tools like them)

• Making sure compliance audits are done on a regular basis.

Tools such as Cloud Health and Cloud Checker can assist in automating compliance governance frameworks as they can help automate a lot of processes that ensure consistency across the cloud platforms being used.

Unified Security Management

The setup above can be particularly beneficial for an organization that has hybrid or multi cloud set up as that tends to give them an edge on the security side of things. Given the fact that sensitive information can be spread out across various locations, unified security management comes in clutch by giving organizations a single pane that allows them to manage the security of multiple clouds at once.

To ensure that security is manageable and unified throughout, an organization can stick to the following unification techniques:

• To avoid confusion, user identity across all clouds should be managed from a single source. Management of users can be made easy by using Azure Active Directory or Okta.

• No matter where the information resides, encryption facilities should always be used to protect information while it is transmit and when it is stored.

• The use of network segmentation is recommended as that helps to restrict breaches from traveling from one cloud to another.

It is additionally imperative to convey how the runs developed due to a responding challenge with volume depressions, piggy via some utility to articulate the fact. To make the most of these environments, one and all need to have in place a DRP.

A proper DRP consists of:

• Redundant copies of the data are created at regular intervals across multiple locations.

• Disaster management for other suppliers is determined.

• Some Switching Mechanism: An automatic system which reallocates active processes to other cyberspaces in case of an interruption.

The other ways in which data management could be enhanced are:

• Data Backup: Critical data sets from cores are backed up in multiple clouds.

• Data Migration: Persistent replication of data transfers and availability of sync software such as NetApp or CloudEndure.

• Data Centers: Data is kept where it is required the most to reduce latency.

Conclusion

Hybrid and multi-cloud environments are often managed with sophisticated strategies to maximize performance, minimize costs, and ensure security. Centralized management platforms, automated scaling, cost optimization tools, and solid governance go a long way toward maximizing cloud investments.

Initially, handling cloud management may feel intimidating, but with suitable tools and processes in place, you can tap into the power of a hybrid or multi-cloud setting without falling into the usual traps. With a focus on efficiency, security, and continuous optimization, you’ll see the pathway to success in cloud management.