When you choose to deliberately implement a complex IT architecture such as multicloud, you want to be sure to get it right. Multicloud can bring a number of challenging issues to be addressed.
Multicloud and Vendor Lock-in
For many businesses, multicloud is the solution to vendor lock-in. If one cloud vendor goes away, whether due to a temporary outage or a permanent shutdown, having your workloads deployed on a second cloud minimizes the downtime.
That’s true, as far as it goes, but looked at a different way, multicloud simply multiplies your vendor lock-in. Every cloud vendor’s infrastructure has its quirks, and there’s no common API for managing and deploying workloads. Once you commit to a multicloud architecture, you’re committing to maintaining multiple versions of your systems. Keeping them consistent and in-sync is non-trivial.
Multicloud and Complexity
There’s no way about it: multicloud is multiple times as complex as a single cloud solution. That’s just simple addition. You’ve simply got more cloud instances and cloud applications to track.
Even if each cloud is a nearly perfect duplicate of the others, the environments are all distinct. The challenges of different environments is made even harder if you aren’t using multicloud to provide redundant environments but are using more complicated architectures to leverage “best in class” features of each cloud. That can potentially put your applications and data in different places, leading to difficult integration issues. Integrating multiple clouds with the remaining workloads in your data center is also challenging.
In addition, there’s more security to be concerned about and manage, with the need to keep privileges and permissions consistent across multiple platforms.
Multicloud and Cost
Pretty much by definition, multicloud will cost more than single cloud. You’ve got multiple providers, perhaps multiple environments for each workload. Making your multicloud strategy works means keeping an eye on the money you’re spending for these environments and ensuring you’re getting a significant return on your investment.
Multicloud and Management
Monitoring and management becomes more complex in a multicloud environment, too. There are many more elements to be managed, and pulling together the individual pieces of data to get a comprehensive overview can be complex. Applying policies across environments is difficult because of the different procedures required by each platform. Your team needs to develop skills to work effectively on multiple platforms with multiple tools.
Overcome Multicloud Challenges
Before adopting a multicloud approach, you should give careful thought as to how you’ll address these concerns. VAST IT Services offers multicloud support that leverages our expertise in Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and other top cloud services. Contact us to learn how multicloud support from VAST IT Services can make multicloud challenges manageable.
Multi-Cloud Resources:
6 Key Points to Consider When Implementing Multicloud Infrastructure
Making Multi-Cloud Work Starts With Strategy
