Hybrid Cloud Hosting
In cloud hosting, some of the most creative methods are using a hybrid of cloud servers and conventional servers to provide the best of both worlds. Thus there's a new type service called Hybrid cloud hosting which is based on hybrid computing techniques. Today our topic is to discuss this service including how it's setup and the advantages comparing to all other types hosting.
Hybrid Computing Introduction
A hybrid computing platform lets customers connect the packaged small business software applications that they run on their own internal desktops or servers to applications that run in the cloud. A hybrid approach allows an enterprise to maintain a centralized approach to IT governance, while experimenting with cloud computing.
The Hybrid Cloud advantages
The hybrid cloud hosting advantages are mainly from the comparison over traditioal cloud hosting. In general, tradional cloud hosting are mainly configured in two logic
Public Cloud – when a service provider offer services such as application usage, development or storage of data, to anyone on the Internet, it's called public cloud. This is the most popular service type that we can sign up with various providers at relatively affordable price. When shoud we use public cloud? Here're several rules quoted from the web
- Infrastructure requirements are high for your application. If your organization is in SME range, this would be ideal.
- Agility in terms of scaling to meet your application user base/load growth
- Reuse the peak load optimizations and techniques, and you don’t have to re-engineer them every time.
- No maintenance and other administrative tasks involved.
Private Cloud – It's configured within a private infrastructure network. It's extremely useful when you want to set limited access to the network for security purpose. It's more like cluster but more scalable. When should we use private cloud?
- Data security is prime concern
- Corporate governance and proprietary data. For e.g financial institutions, health care services.
- Already have an infrastructure that can be utilized for majority of applications and the investment in resources is high.
- Applications are too complex that require more control and migrating them to the cloud would lead to disruption in service.
- Increased need for ownership and accountability within organization on the processes.
The weakness with public cloud is about security protection. To date there's not a perfect method for public cloud protection over the files. Private cloud solved the security issue but only setup within a limited network behind firewall, however it's very costive and not affordable to every people.
Hybrid cloud actually connects both Public and Private cloud. Besides the improved security configuration, it also ensures the guaranteed resources and preventing applications from conflicting. It's extremely useful when your business need to use some applications in house and some provided by an external provider. This is where the hybrid computing finds itself in a niche position with the applications that require dynamic scaling and faster responses to client demands and adaptability; it can be served via public clouds while the integration can still be done with the sensitive and proprietary data hidden behind the corporate firewalls.
Best hybrid cloud hosting provider
As the understanding from above, hybrid cloud is the way forward and introduced many new techniques. We might find many "hybrid server" providers on the web, but the actual hybrid cloud hosting only available with the industry leading server providers such as softlayer and rackspace. They're not only offering up to date services but also developing their own softwares/platforms for best integration. It's a surprise that the world's biggest cloud hosting Amazon does not have this service yet. If you like to know more about hybrid hosting, you can refer to following article/video.
http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/3-bars-3-questions-hybrid-hosting-video-interview/
http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/hybrid/
