Hybrid Cloud Deployment Structures and Methods

Think you’re ready to move to a hybrid cloud environment but unsure of exactly where to begin?

Step One: Conduct a Hybrid Cloud Proof-of-Concept

A proof of concept (POC) is the first step toward developing an effective hybrid cloud deployment strategy. Follow these recommendations to ensure a POC project covers all bases.

• Evaluate how hardware changes will affect the public cloud migration. Public cloud providers run their infrastructure on more advanced hardware than on-premises infrastructure. Consider memory, solid-state drive performance, and network bandwidth differences. Select and optimize public cloud compute instances in a sandbox environment.
• Get rid of unnecessary files and decide whether each data set should be hosted on-premises, in the public cloud, or across both. For the actual migration, choose between the piecemeal method, which happens in phases without downtime, or the all-at-once approach, which requires downtime.
• Configure cloud bursting and networking for your POC. Building scripts for virtual networks in the public cloud can be difficult without cross-cloud standards. For a smoother transition, use a translation tool.
• Test resiliency and failover. Check each process multiple times to ensure it operates properly and that those operations can continue during a disaster.

Step Two: Prepare Applications for Hybrid Cloud Deployment

You must decide which hosting environment, either public or private cloud, is best for which applications. Base those decisions on cost, performance, and other factors.

You can now design the API communication workflow between public and private clouds since many IT teams choose to host their application front ends in the public cloud and backends in the private cloud.

Then assign IP subnets to users and applications dynamically to control the virtual private network (VPN) address space. Learn how your cloud provider handles public cloud IP addresses and map them consistently into your VPN and directory.

Remember, you need a load balancer that works in the cloud and the data center, and you must test it for hybrid cloud operation.

Step Three: Develop Hybrid Cloud Security Best Practices

Establish solid security plans in the initial design of your hybrid cloud deployment to avoid lapses in protection.

Understanding your cloud provider's shared responsibility model is crucial. Make sure you keep an open line of communication to determine where the provider's security responsibilities end and yours begin.

Implement a zero-trust security model and data encryption as well. Make sure DevSecOps automates security checks across production, development, and test environments.

Step Four: Employ Hybrid Cloud Orchestration

Managing consistency across hybrid cloud environments requires an effective orchestration platform. Orchestration facilitates IT provisioning, enhances security and minimizes troubleshooting when coupled with automation.

Hybrid cloud deployments require orchestration tools that determine whether virtual machine instances will run more efficiently in a public or private cloud. 

Step Five: Boost Hybrid Cloud Monitoring

Maintaining a successful hybrid cloud deployment requires monitoring. Some best practices can help, including: 

• Collect monitoring data from various cloud platforms into a centralized monitoring tier. This way, monitoring practices can be standardized, and alerts can be sent to the right person promptly.
• Identify key performance indicators to monitor and reevaluate them continuously to prioritize the most vital. Establish a balanced alert threshold as well. Too many alerts lead to alert fatigue, while too few fail to flag problems.
• Use monitoring tools in conjunction with communication apps, such as Slack and PagerDuty. You can then see how frequently IT teams address specific issues. To resolve the same issue more quickly, refer to previous communications.

More chip makers are embracing hybrid cloud architecture, particularly those that rely on private clouds for legacy infrastructure and mission-critical apps. For chip design and verification, hybrid clouds provide a scalable, elastic environment with unlimited compute cycles and storage.

You can use the public cloud for burst workloads or high-demand phases, like final validation. Your engineering team can instantly access computing, storage, and analytics. Instead of maintaining idle servers until the next surge, your organization can return capacity to the cloud service provider after peak usage.

Synopsys is the industry’s largest provider of electronic design automation (EDA) technology used in the design and verification of semiconductor devices, or chips. With Synopsys Cloud, we’re taking EDA to new heights, combining the availability of advanced compute and storage infrastructure with unlimited access to EDA software licenses on-demand so you can focus on what you do best – designing chips, faster. Delivering cloud-native EDA tools and pre-optimized hardware platforms, an extremely flexible business model, and a modern customer experience, Synopsys has reimagined the future of chip design on the cloud, without disrupting proven workflows.

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