How to remove the complexity from managing Hybrid Cloud

ACCORDING TO A RECENT 2014 Ovum report, more than 40% of European enterprises expect to manage a hybrid, multi-cloud environment within the next two years.1 Often chosen because it enables public and private clouds to work together seamlessly, it also can provide the extra sense of security by keeping business data away from public cloud. The adoption will continue to grow as businesses become ever more reliant on mobile devices, social media tools and enterprise applications to support remote, responsive and collaborative teams across the globe. However, like many new innovations in technology, it is taking time to get to grips with managing a hybrid cloud environment and businesses are finding it complex to manage.

Here are five essential tips that will help remove the complexity when managing and monitoring a hybrid environment.

Adapt how the hybrid environment is monitored
Typically, on-site IT focus has predominantly been applied to manage and monitor individual components and systems such as networks, applications, storage and servers to make sure they are accessible and performing at optimum levels. If this is not the case, the issue is highlighted so that the IT team can find the source of the problem and swiftly resolve it. However, with a hybrid cloud environment, the principal purpose of the monitoring and management system often changes.
The change is largely due to the cloud portion of a hybrid system where the responsibility for the application itself and the underlying infrastructure are split between the cloud consumer and provider, respectively. This means that the first step in troubleshooting a problem is to quickly and conclusively determining who owns the problem, as opposed to identifying whereand what the problem is. To verify that all parties are aware of how the hybrid platform works, IT teams will be required to change their view of how monitoring should be executed. Discrete data monitoring is required that can differentiate between an application software or database problem versus an infrastructure performance or capacity problem.

Therefore, different ways of operating these systems will need to be implemented, including instigating clearly defined boundaries of accountability to avoid confusion.

Implement a cloud management strategy
To best ensure that business services, such as IT, are managed appropriately and problems are effectively resolved, it is essential that a cloud management strategy is introduced to clearly define and outline the points of demarcation. Businesses should work backwards to determine what is required to deliver each business service, including outlining a system to identify the correct person to resolve problems when services and infrastructures are provided by both on-site IT and off-site cloud providers. Teams should be able to predict a system failure before it occurs and have prepared thorough troubleshooting plans in advance, ready to roll out speedily when needed. Anomalies are subsequently detected, assigned and resolved before causing any interruption to client-facing services.

Ensure a mutual agreement is reached on the cloud provider’s needs and expectations from the business
Cloud services vary, so regardless of whether it is Software as a Service (SaaS) or simply providing the infrastructure used to run various applications, it is vital to initiate a clear service level agreement (SLA) prior to committing to your chosen provider.
If you are looking to implement SaaS, you simply need to identify and explain what a failure would look like and develop a metrics based SLA that both you and your cloud provider agree with. However, in situations where the cloud provider is delivering infrastructure and you are installing and running software on top of it, it’s a little more difficult.

If an error occurs, you will be the one who needs to determine if it’s your configuration or software that is causing an issue or whether it is the cloud provider that is failing to deliver adequately. To avoid arguments and efficiently resolve problems, you will need to provide concrete evidence of any performance glitches by utilising a thorough monitoring system to accurately establish where a problem has originated. Finger pointing without evidence is unlikely to coerce your cloud provider into taking action.

Distinguish the difference between on-site and hybrid solutions
Traditionally, IT has been responsible for repairs to a broken or faulty on-site infrastructure. When it comes to the cloud, if there is a fault with a cloud component, instead of being fixed, it can simply be eradicated and re-provisioned in just a matter of minutes.

While there are obvious businesses benefits to this arrangement, the IT team needs to remain aware that, at any second, an entire component can be erased and replaced – an entirely new concept with on-site IT. Therefore, applications need to be designed appropriately so business services provided by the application are not affected when it is replaced.

Keep the development team out of the dark
The customary on-site monitoring arrangement has meant that IT development and operations would have to cooperate in order to manage the ownership of the hardware their applications would eventually run on. But when deciding to create a hybrid environment, the core monitoring decisions must instead be settled from the outset, because cloud resources enable developers with access to a credit card or purchase order to immediately invest in the infrastructure that they want personally.
Consequently, operations can end up taking responsibility for applications that are not designed for use in the cloud, with the potential to wreak havoc due to a lack of proper coordination. This brings us right back to the need to ensure that we are monitoring for whothe problem belongs to, not just what the problem is.

But, as is often the case, the simplest solution is easy to overlook. Instead, once a hybrid environment is launched, immediately reach out and involve the development teams to ensure that the monitoring system being implemented make sense and has been agreed across the board.
Putting hybrid management techniques in place will allow a business to pre-empt difficulties and prepare for them, side-stepping any potentially disastrous scenarios. This should particularly hold them in good stead as the cloud market continues to grow.

By proactively adapting monitoring systems, ensuring the points of demarcation have been clarified and checking that the operations team is in sync with the wider business, the IT team can successfully simplify how they manage a hybrid system, removing complexity and avoiding disruptions to their business.

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Reference
1. http://www.ovum.com/research/cloud-network-orchestration-the-rising-priority-in-enterprise-purchasing/