Hybrid environments that include a mix of technology can be complex and difficult to understand and manage. Yet they’re often the best solution to when a business has diverse requirements. In order to implement a hybrid cloud or hybrid IT environment effectively, businesses need to introduce one more technology: technology to manage the environment.
If you’re in the early stages of planning your hybrid environment, you’ve got an advantage. There’s time to develop government and policies to ensure workloads are placed where they fit best. These policies can address important factors such as whether the workload runs in the public or private cloud and meets regulatory requirements. There’s time to assess performance and investigate tools such as load balancers.
Once the hybrid cloud is in place, tools help gain insight and provide management capabilities. Due to their complexity, hybrid environments require more intensive management and deeper visibility than non-hybrid systems. Networks, workloads, security, and costs all need to be controlled.
Pulling all this data together in a single pane of glass application is difficult. Data needs to be accesses via non-standardized APIs. Different vendors have different capabilities and limitations, and businesses can simultaneously suffer from vendor lock-in, the need to add multiple tools to view all aspects and add capabilities such as automation, and the need to build hard-to-support custom tools.
To gain the most from hybrid cloud management tools, first be clear on what your goals are. Tools often go beyond multicloud management to offer automation, optimization, monitoring, and cost-control features. It’s important to take time to test tools in your own environment to fully explore their capabilities and identify gaps.
In addition, simply introducing new management software isn’t enough to ensure your hybrid cloud is properly managed. IT teams need appropriate training. Because you can’t manage a cloud you don’t understand, training isn’t just about the management tool but about developing deep expertise in the cloud. It also requires learning a change of perspective and developing the capability to work in a world of software-defined infrastructure.
With the right tools and training, monitoring and managing a hybrid cloud environment doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly complex. VAST IT Services offers complete support for hybrid cloud architectures. As part of that service, VAST View provides a holistic view over all your technology and helps you build, govern, and optimize your infrastructure. Contact VAST IT Services to learn more about how choosing the right management tool can reduce the challenges of a hybrid cloud environment.
