With all the cloud options at our hands, every hybrid cloud is designed differently to meet your exact needs. You are required to have an in-depth understanding of the business and the networking options available to make the accurate hybrid cloud of your liking.
Let us look at some of the design considerations for developing or expanding your already existing hybrid cloud.
Types Of WAN Connectivity Options
The first and most important thing to decide is what type of WAN network you require for your private or even public cloud service. The most commonly used type of WAN is the site-to-site VPN tunnel over the internet. VPNs are easy to configure and come at affordable rates. However, they come with some drawbacks. One drawback is having no control over the throughput and latency because of the lack of quality of service (QOS) over a public network.
If you require dedicated bandwidth and low delay, a more feasible option would be to choose from many specialized cloud connectivity options offered by majority cloud service providers.
You can even try multiple combinations of VPN tunnels, using two or more direct connection link, or its combination, to your advantage. Modern software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) platforms are used to provide a multi-link connection to improve performance and uptime.
Routing OR Switching?
You would need to choose either routing or switching based on the WAN connectivity of your Infrastructure. Both of them have their pros and cons.
Switching between public/private clouds can offer you to extend your VLANs to data centers. You can leverage the high availability (HA), and business growth and disaster recovery (BC/DR) perspective. You can support network overlays by creating bridges between WAN links. This is why many people opt for routing between data centers to develop isolated IP subnets. The benefits offered by routing is the improved security protocols due to the L3 separation and natural expansion.
Virtual Network Choices
The most obvious option that people opt for when it comes to virtual networking is to use the tool provided by your cloud service provider. However, if the default ones aren’t working for your private network, you can always integrate your system with your virtual switches, routers, firewalls, etc.
When using third-party tools and Network Security Software, you can easily extend your private-side of the network to multiple clouds. The advantage of doing so is that you can expand the application and apply the same security policies to your private and public networks without them recreated.
Having these network security software can be a costly option, but the reduced management and labor costs can quickly balance the amount for medium-to-large hybrid deployments.
Design A Multi-Cloud Hybrid Architecture
If you are planning to extend your application to a multi-cloud architecture, then you need to consider pre-planning. While most of the widespread, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), providers use techniques and proprietary process across their virtual networks. To integrate an end-to-end multi-cloud architecture, you have two options. The first is to use third-party network security software and virtual tools, as described in detail above.
The second option is to use any multi-cloud management system to offer you many networking capabilities across public and private cloud networks. I guess the only question you need to ask yourself is whether you need the additional tools by the multi-cloud management software.
