The cloud has completely changed the way businesses operate, allowing them to be more agile and dynamic with their strategies, offerings and resources. It is almost impossible to imagine an organization that does not use some form of cloud technologies or services.
According to Gartner, 85% of organizations will move to the cloud by 2025. Companies are shifting their focus from on-premises hardware infrastructure to leveraging managed services offered in the cloud. Organizations now benefit from a lower total cost of ownership, easier access to new services, faster deployment, and better scalability and availability.
What is a multi-cloud architecture?
A multi-cloud architecture is a cloud computing strategy that involves the use of multiple cloud services from different vendors to meet different needs and requirements. This gives companies the ability to control where data, applications, and workloads reside.
A multi-cloud configuration can increase availability and redundancy as well as improve performance by allowing enterprises to distribute their workloads across different providers. It also allows organizations to switch between service providers based on their offerings.
With a multicloud architecture, companies can mix and match storage, networking, analytics, and application platforms from multiple vendors instead of getting all their resources from a single vendor that may not be right for their workloads.
VIEW: Multicloud Explained: Cheat Sheet (TechRepublic)
Why use a multi-cloud environment?
There are many reasons why you should consider using a multi-cloud environment. Cloud computing has helped change the way business is done, providing access to computing power that was once only available in data centers and owned by large corporations.
But to reap the benefits of the cloud, organizations need to develop an infrastructure strategy that spans various aspects of IT: storage, data backup, and network bandwidth.
A multi-cloud strategy provides increased availability and resiliency by spreading workloads across multiple cloud providers. This can improve productivity by allowing companies to choose the best vendor for each workload, or even specific tasks within that workload.
In addition, a multi-cloud approach also provides more choice of features, licensing models, and migration strategies when considering the needs of an organization over time. It also offers more options for the final implementation of infrastructure and applications, which ultimately provides more control over costs and performance.
What is the basic pattern of a multi-cloud architecture?
A multi-cloud network architecture can improve availability and redundancy, as well as improve performance and security. The multi-cloud architecture patterns are divided into distributed and redundant deployments.
Distributed Deployment Patterns
Distributed deployment architectures distribute workloads across multiple providers to improve availability, increase scalability, and reduce costs. These patterns are especially effective when using the features or capabilities of a cloud service provider.
Distributed deployment patterns include:
- Layered hybrid template: This layer usually consists of front-end and back-end applications.
- Split multicloud template: This allows users to move workloads as needed and maintain portability.
- Cloud Analytics Template: This template puts analytical tasks in the cloud and returns data as needed.
- Frontier Hybrid: This pattern solves connectivity issues by running business and time-critical tasks locally at the edge of the network and leveraging the cloud for other workloads.
Redundant Deployment Templates
At the same time, redundant deployment provides fault tolerance by running two or more copies of the same system in parallel. Users can also set up a redundant deployment with automatic failover, which transitions one instance to a standby role if the primary instance fails or becomes unavailable.
Finally, multi-region deployment provides resilience in the event of a disaster in a single region, ensuring proximity and access to resources.
Redundant deployment templates include:
- Active-Active: The application is hosted by various cloud providers in an active-active multicloud. Each application will have a load balancer in front of it to manage traffic.
- Active passive: An alternative cloud provider is used only in the event of a server failure or service interruption; it can failover to the backup server when traffic triggers are set, and traffic is automatically sent to the secondary provider instead of the primary server.
- Public-private: This architecture includes public and private cloud servers. Private clouds are often equipped with a firewall and more comprehensive security to limit access to what is required to be shared with the private cloud.
Types of multi-cloud architecture?
Cloudiness
In this architecture, application components are hosted on-premises, and after migrating to the public cloud, they continue to work as before. The cloud environment allows applications hosted on-premises to consume cloud services from different cloud platforms for increased performance and flexibility.
VIEW: Recruitment Kit: Cloud Engineer (TechRepublic Premium)
Multi-cloud move
This type of architecture allows organizations to move data and applications to different cloud providers based on their needs. This can be done for a variety of reasons such as cost savings, performance improvements, or the use of new features.
When moving to multiple clouds, an on-premises application can be moved to the cloud and configured to use a service provided by a different cloud provider.
Multicloud refactoring
The multi-cloud refactoring aims to take advantage of the cloud computing, high availability, and resiliency offered by multiple clouds. This requires re-architecting the applications so that they can be deployed in a multi-cloud environment. When moving to a multi-cloud environment, applications may not require modification to be deployed on more than one platform.
But refactoring multi-cloud environments will require redesigning applications to work in environments with different requirements. Here the individual components can be scaled independently of each other. High load components can then be easily provisioned independently of low usage components.
Multicloud rebinding
Relinking a multi-cloud environment also includes re-architecting applications to migrate to a multi-cloud architecture. Multicloud relinking can be used to create highly available and resilient systems. It can also improve performance by distributing workloads across multiple clouds.
In this architecture, there is a separation between on-premises and cloud resources, with some components remaining on-premises while others are moved to the cloud.
Multi-cloud rebinding with a cloud broker
In a multi-cloud rebinding with a cloud broker scenario, the cloud broker service is used to assist in the process of connecting multiple cloud services. This architecture type allows you to partially deploy a re-architected application in a multi-cloud infrastructure. This can improve availability by ensuring that there is no single point of failure for any part of the application.
Multifunctional Upgrade
Modernizing multiple applications requires re-architecting multiple applications as a portfolio and then deploying them to a multi-cloud network architecture, rather than simply rebuilding a single application for a multi-cloud deployment.
Benefits of a multi-cloud architecture
Using a multi-cloud architecture has many benefits. This environment allows enterprises to efficiently use all available resources without being tied to a vendor, be more flexible in their IT investments, and reduce overall operating costs.
SEE: What You Need to Know About Multicloud Adoption (TechRepublic)
Avoid vendor lock-in
Avoiding vendor lock-in means not being limited to just one vendor. This will allow an organization to use multiple providers that may offer different services. Companies will also have the option to choose which provider best suits their needs.
Increase flexibility and agility
Using a multi-cloud architecture, enterprises can increase their flexibility and agility. With this setup, companies can switch between cloud platforms to meet their changing requirements.
Improved Disaster Recovery
By applying this type of setup, companies can improve their disaster recovery capabilities as they can distribute their workloads across different cloud providers.
Cloud Cost Optimization
With a multi-cloud architecture, you can save money by hosting applications in the most appropriate type of cloud that fits your organization’s needs.
There is no need to pay for the services of each provider to keep everything up and running. Companies only pay for what they use. Plus, organizations can easily scale up or down as needed based on their needs at any given time.
Multicloud vs Hybrid Cloud: What’s the difference?
Multicloud and hybrid cloud can be confusing because they involve more than one cloud environment. The main difference is that a multi-cloud strategy uses multiple cloud providers for different purposes, while a hybrid cloud combines on-premises and cloud resources.
Multi-cloud architecture refers to the use of multiple cloud computing services in one heterogeneous IT environment. In contrast, a hybrid cloud architecture combines on-premises, private, and public cloud services into a single, integrated infrastructure.
The choice between these two approaches depends mainly on what level of abstraction is required from the IT environment. A multi-cloud computing strategy allows companies to choose the most appropriate solutions for different workloads, while a hybrid approach provides greater control over workload placement and customization options.