Cloud bursting What is cloud bursting?
Cloud bursting is a hybrid cloud deployment model in which an application primarily runs in a private cloud or on-premises data center and bursts into a public cloud when the demand for computing capacity spikes. This model allows organizations to handle workload surges without overspending on infrastructure that may only be needed during business peaks.
- How does cloud bursting work?
- What are the benefits of cloud bursting?
- What are the challenges in cloud bursting?
- When do organizations need cloud bursting?
- What are HPE solutions and services for cloud bursting?
How does cloud bursting work?
Cloud bursting is a strategy used to manage varying workloads by leveraging both private and public cloud resources. When workload demand reaches a certain threshold then cloud burst is triggered, the application switches into the public cloud. When the traffic spike is over, it returns into the private cloud or on-premises data center. It ensures optimal performance and cost efficiency. Here are the key techniques in cloud bursting:
- Manual cloud bursting involves managers monitoring resource utilization and manually scaling resources as needed. Administrators deploy public cloud resources when demand exceeds the capacity of private cloud or on-premises data center infrastructure. This technique offers fine-tuned control over resource allocation, but requires human intervention to activate scaling, which may delay reaction times.
- Automated cloud bursting leverages monitoring tools and predetermined policies to scale resources based on specific thresholds. These thresholds might be based on CPU utilization, network traffic, or other performance indicators. Automated systems can quickly and effectively allocate public cloud resources to meet changing demands, enabling dynamic scalability without the need for manual intervention.
- Distributed load balancing bursting highly recommended for load balancing to optimize resource usage across private and public clouds. Load balancing algorithms distribute requests or tasks across available resources to ensure no single component becomes a bottleneck. This distributed architecture automatically manages the workload across on-premises and cloud resources, maintaining optimal performance during demand surges.
What are the benefits of cloud bursting?
Cloud bursting significantly enhances the efficiency, flexibility, and performance of IT infrastructure. Here are the key benefits:
- Cost: Cloud bursting offers cost savings by allowing enterprises to scale resources as needed. Additional public cloud resources can be automatically integrated during peak demand, preventing the need for permanent overprovisioning. This approach enables businesses to pay only for the resources they consume, optimizing overall expenditure.
- Control: Organizations gain greater control over their IT infrastructure with cloud bursting. Administrators can automate scaling by dynamically setting policies and thresholds to allocate resources according to demand criteria. This automation improves operational management and reduces the need for manual intervention.
- Flexibility: Cloud bursting enhances flexibility by enabling workloads to transition seamlessly between on-premises and public cloud infrastructure. This capability allows organizations to optimize resource utilization and handle varying workloads without compromising performance.
- Continuity: To ensure business continuity, cloud bursting maintains the availability and responsiveness of applications and services during demand surges. Dynamic resource scaling ensures that, despite unforeseen spikes in demand, service continuity and performance are consistently maintained.
- Efficiency: Cloud bursting offers resource usage efficiency as a primary benefit. Organizations can maximize performance without retaining surplus capacity during periods of regular demand by utilizing public cloud resources as needed. This leads to a more efficient and cost-effective IT infrastructure.
By leveraging these benefits, organizations can ensure their IT infrastructure is robust, adaptable, and capable of meeting dynamic business needs.
What are the challenges in cloud bursting?
Cloud bursting presents several challenges that organizations need to address for successful implementation:
- Compatibility and integration: Ensuring that applications and workloads are compatible with both private and public cloud environments can be complex. Integration between different cloud platforms may require significant effort and specialized tools.
- Data Security and compliance: Transferring data between private and public clouds can expose sensitive information to security risks. Ensuring compliance with regulations and maintaining data privacy during these transfers is a critical challenge.
- Latency and performance: Latency issues can arise when data and applications are split between private and public clouds, potentially impacting performance, especially for real-time applications.
- Cost management: While cloud bursting can be cost-effective, managing and predicting costs associated with dynamic scaling in public clouds can be difficult. Unexpected spikes in resource usage can lead to higher-than-anticipated expenses.
- Complexity in monitoring and management: Managing a hybrid environment with cloud bursting requires advanced monitoring tools and robust management practices. Keeping track of resource utilization, performance metrics, and system health across both private and public clouds can be challenging.
- Network bandwidth: Sufficient network bandwidth is essential to support the transfer of data and workloads between private and public clouds. Insufficient bandwidth can lead to bottlenecks and degraded performance.
- Licensing and compliance: Certain software licenses may not permit running in a cloud-bursting scenario or may require additional licenses, complicating deployment and increasing costs.
- Disaster recovery: Ensuring consistent and reliable disaster recovery plans that encompass both private and public cloud environments adds another layer of complexity.
Addressing these challenges requires careful planning, robust architecture, and the use of advanced tools and technologies to ensure seamless operation and security in a cloud bursting.
When do organizations need cloud bursting?
Organizational needs for cloud bursting:
- Software development:
- Variable workloads: During software development, organizations often experience fluctuating demands for computing resources. Cloud bursting allows them to scale up resources when intensive tasks such as code compilation, testing, or deployment require additional capacity.
- Resource optimization: Developers can benefit from on-demand access to additional computing power from the public cloud, ensuring efficient resource utilization without needing a permanently expanded on-premises infrastructure.
- Marketing campaigns:
- Bursts of traffic: Marketing campaigns, especially those involving online promotions or product launches, can lead to sudden spikes in website traffic. Cloud bursting enables organizations to expand their server capacity seamlessly to handle increased web traffic during these campaign peaks.
- Cost-Efficient Scaling: Rather than maintaining excess capacity year-round, organizations can leverage the public cloud for burst scaling during specific marketing initiatives, optimizing costs while ensuring a responsive online presence.
- Extensive data modeling and queries:
- Compute-intensive tasks: Big data analytics often involves computationally intensive tasks like complex modeling and queries, machine learning, or simulations, video rendering or transcoding. Cloud bursting allows organizations to access additional computing resources on demand, ensuring the timely processing of large datasets without overwhelming local infrastructure.
- Scalable processing power: Public cloud resources provide scalable processing power for big data workloads, allowing organizations to handle peak demands and derive insights from large datasets efficiently.
- Seasonal businesses:
- Fluctuating demand: Seasonal businesses, like retail during holidays or outdoor activities during specific weather conditions, experience fluctuating demand for IT resources. Cloud bursting is instrumental in dynamically scaling infrastructure to accommodate increased demand during peak seasons.
- Cost savings: Rather than investing in and maintaining infrastructure for the highest seasonal demand, organizations can use cloud bursting to scale resources as needed, optimizing costs while ensuring a seamless customer experience.
What are HPE solutions and services for cloud bursting?
- HPE GreenLake, a suite of cloud services from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, provides a flexible 'as-a-service' solution with a pay-per-use infrastructure model, making it ideal for implementing cloud bursting. On-demand scalability allows organizations to quickly provision additional resources as needed, handling sudden spikes in demand without over-provisioning. Its hybrid cloud integration supports seamless transitions between on-premises and public cloud services, ensuring efficient workload distribution. The pay-per-use model further aligns costs with actual usage, preventing unnecessary expenditure on idle infrastructure. Advanced monitoring and management tools maintain visibility and control, automatically triggering resource provisioning when predefined thresholds are reached, thus facilitating automated cloud bursting. HPE GreenLake also ensures robust data security and compliance with industry standards, protecting data as it moves between private and public clouds. These capabilities enable organizations to effectively implement cloud bursting, ensuring scalability, cost-efficiency, and robust IT operation performance.
- HPE ProLiant Server provide a robust and scalable foundation for hybrid cloud environments, making them well-suited for cloud bursting strategies. These servers deliver high performance and reliability, ensuring that critical applications run smoothly and efficiently even during periods of peak demand. By integrating HPE ProLiant Servers with cloud management tools and software-defined solutions, organizations can seamlessly extend their on-premises infrastructure to public clouds. This integration enables dynamic scaling, allowing workloads to burst into the cloud during demand surges. Advanced automation and orchestration capabilities further enhance resource provisioning and workload distribution, ensuring efficient and dynamic allocation of resources based on preset policies and thresholds. By leveraging the high performance, seamless integration, advanced automation, robust security, and scalability of HPE ProLiant Servers, organizations can effectively implement cloud bursting strategies to enhance their hybrid cloud environments, ensuring cost-efficiency and consistent service levels.
- HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric enhances cloud bursting by providing a unified, scalable, and high-performance data platform that integrates data across on-premises, edge, and cloud environments. This platform ensures a consistent data environment, allowing applications to access and process data seamlessly, regardless of its location, thus maintaining high performance and reliability. Designed for scalability and flexibility, HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric dynamically allocates resources and distributes workloads to public clouds during periods of high demand, efficiently managing peak loads. HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric includes robust security features such as encryption, access controls, and data governance, ensuring data security and regulatory compliance as data moves between private and public clouds. It simplifies data management with advanced tools that automate data placement, replication, and synchronization, ensuring data availability without manual intervention. It provides consistent data experience across different environments, reducing the complexity and cost of adapting applications for cloud bursting.
- HPE Services (Advisory and Professional) play a crucial role in designing and provisioning cloud architectures and the surrounding security environment. This begins with analyzing application workloads and resource requirements to determine which applications are best suited for cloud bursting based on their resource needs and fluctuating demand patterns. HPE Services’ comprehensive approach ensures that organizations can effectively leverage cloud bursting while maintaining high standards of security and regulatory compliance.
