As we move from simple, single data center architectures to complex multicloud environments, it’s easy to breathe a sigh of relief: there’s at least one way in which these multicloud environments simplify our work. Cloud, and particularly multicloud, offers a built-in level of high availability.
That’s certainly true…as far as it goes. The cloud offers high availability with respect to infrastructure. But it doesn’t necessarily offer high availability with respect to your data. And since your data is far less easily replaced than hardware, it’s still necessary to plan for high availability and disaster recovery in the cloud.
Design for Cloud Failures by Considering Data Availability
Cloud failures used to be considered rare, but it’s become increasingly common to read about them in the press, and all the major cloud providers have had outages that impacts customers. Your application and your ability to deliver services to your own customers remains your responsibility, so you need to leverage cloud services to create your own robust environment.
This can include using multiple regions of a single cloud provider, allowing you to continue to operate despite a localized failure. Multicloud solutions provide more extensive protection, as it’s unlikely two independent cloud providers will experience major failures simultaneously.
In either scenario, you need to address data synchronization across sites, either through backup and restore procedures or through real-time replication. It also means you can’t rely on the cloud provider’s own backup and restore procedures; they aren’t going to help you transfer data out as readily as they helped you migrate it in, and certainly not when they’re dealing with their own disaster recovery process.
To protect yourself, then, you need to consider your own data protection issues, including:
• Cloud security. It doesn’t matter if your data is available if it’s been tampered with. Make sure you leverage encryption and cloud access controls to keep data secure.
• Service level agreements. Review the details of your cloud providers’ uptime guarantees. This can help you assess the risk you face by relying on their service.
• Disaster recovery. Know how you’ll cope with both big and small cloud outages. Know when you can rely on the cloud vendor’s technology, but be prepared to take your data and infrastructure back under your own control when necessary. Devise your own strategy for replication and migration of data among your cloud and on premises sites.
Simplify Your Strategy
Because multicloud is complex on its own, don’t let your availability strategy add even more complexity. Leverage tools such as Veeam that support both on premises and cloud systems, providing a uniform, integrated approach to availability across your entire infrastructure. Contact VAST IT Services to learn how you can use Veeam to ensure high availability within your multicloud infrastructure.
Here are some Additional Multicloud Resources:
Making Multi-Cloud Work Starts With Strategy
Track Your Multi-Cloud Resources More Effectively to Bring Spending Under Control
Managing Multicloud Requires Visibility Across All Your Clouds
