CloudOps : 6 Ways to Manage Hybrid Cloud Performance
David Linthicum
As we focus more on CloudOps and production-quality systems that exist on hybrid clouds , performance management needs to be a core part of the deployment strategy .
The software industry has been building hybrid clouds for more than a decade now , and we ’ ve gotten pretty good at it . Today , strategies and best practices have started to crystallize for how to manage them . The industry is no longer just playing with cloudbased applications ; we ’ re forming best practices for cloud operations , or CloudOps .
For the purposes of this article , let ’ s break the concept of a hybrid cloud down to its component parts and discuss how best to manage a hybrid cloud in terms of performance . Once we do that , we can combine the parts into a complete hybrid cloud architecture and analyze the holistic performance management features . Then we ’ ll look at how all of this fits into CloudOps , which is a bit more strategic .
The Power of Distribution is Key
Today ’ s hybrid clouds are not the same as the ones we deployed just a few years ago . At one time , workloads were statically bound to a private cloud or public clouds . These days , workloads can be moved between private and public clouds pretty much at will . We can do this dynamically in near real time or as a manual process , such as moving raw code and data .
The ability to move workloads between private and public clouds is a key feature .
Consider that performance is about finding ways to make the components in an application architecture run in optimal ways . If you bundle these components into workloads ( e . g ., database , program , user interface ), it ’ s easier to optimize applications because they are grouped in a way that ’ s easier to work with .
There are different ways to create workloads , including virtual machines , containers , or applications that are bound together . A detailed discussion about how to move these types of workloads is beyond the scope of this article , but it ’ s helpful to walk through the process of moving containers .
Containers are self-contained bundles of components that can include application code , databases , middleware , security services , or all of the above . You can have multiple containers that form a single application , or you can have a single container that includes the entire system . Either way , the containers can run on public and private clouds .
The idea we ’ re attempting to get across here is that there are many options for balancing workloads across private and public clouds . The ways you distribute the workloads between private and public clouds are basically limitless .
When it comes to managing performance , you have the power of distribution on your side . So make sure to leverage it .
22 | THE DOPPLER | SUMMER 2016