Multi-cloud, hybrid environments offer many benefits for organisations, particularly in terms of removing the need to rely on a single cloud vendor, which can be expensive and unreliable. As competition between cloud providers is rife, a company is spoilt for choice of platforms from a technical as well as cost perspective.
Moreover, because various vendors will innovate in different areas, any organisation leveraging multi-cloud can exploit developments the moment they become available. This ability to ‘fail fast’, test intensively and gradually develop new services, supports organisations who need to roll out new services quickly to remain ahead of the curve.
With all these benefits, many enterprises find themselves having to manage a slew of cloud providers, which isn’t always easy, so they need to understand these environments to avoid being bogged down with complexity.
The backup data can be used to put the workloads through their paces. Test, test, test.
Trent Odgers, Veeam
When it comes to where organisations are going wrong in implementing a multi-cloud strategy, Trent Odgers, cloud and hosting manager at Veeam Software, says they often find themselves two feet in, but without understanding all the dependencies and total cost of ownership that is often only seen in later months. This is due to connectivity from anywhere, ingress, egress, security, access control, MFA, application dependencies, re-architecture, as well as many other hidden factors.
There are also several pain points that can be avoided, Odgers says. “Many organisations move their biggest pain or mission critical workloads, when less critical and test workloads should be tested and put through many different scenarios. That process will educate the teams and allow for a billing benchmark for future projects.”
He says a better plan is to send backup data to the cloud, as it enables the business to start the journey with little to no impact on production. “The backup data can be used to put the workloads through their paces. Test, test, test. Once the workload has been migrated, assume that it is not backed up. It might be replicated, but that is not a restore point for if you need to roll back to a previously working state.”
Offering one piece of advice when it comes to implementing multi-cloud, Odgers says to be very specific about the partner that is selected to help the business navigate this new hybrid world. “Ask the partner about their hybrid cloud experience and what other projects they have successfully taken customers through. Experience and knowledge is a good start to ensure that the project stays within budget and timelines. If there are obstacles, experience teaches us to raise them before the project starts, to reduce risk and impact.”
Odgers will be presenting on ‘Demystifying and managing multi-cloud environments' during a webinar held by ITWeb and sponsored by Veeam Software, on 10 November at 2pm. Delegates attending his talk will hear how hybrid cloud is possible and is successfully being delivered by many partners in South Africa.
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