When it comes to cloud, “more” doesn’t make you merrier. More cloud means more complex, more confusing, and more difficult to track, monitor, manage, and control. Getting a grip on this cloud complexity is critical to your success when you have a hybrid or multi-cloud environment.
Sources of Cloud Complexity
The complexity comes from the sheer number of workloads, databases, services, storage, and instances spread over multiple clouds creating an environment where it’s difficult to see what’s going on. It’s common for some applications remain in the data center, which adds to the confusion.
Adding even more complexity, cloud allows resources to be added instantaneously, without going through the usual control and approvals process. As a result, there’s no reliable change calendar when it comes to cloud; your inventory can change at any time.
In addition, knowing what’s going on in your cloud isn’t just about what your employees are doing. With multiple cloud vendors each adhering to their own policies, your cloud resources and cloud spending can change at any time, too.
Managing Cloud Complexity
It isn’t possible to prevent cloud’s constant change; you wouldn’t want to, anyway, because you’d have to give up the agility of cloud that’s its advantage, too. Instead, businesses need a plan to overcome the complexity challenges by using tools to gain visibility into their resource changes and to apply policies that ensure cloud spending is effective.
Because cloud complexity itself is a complex problem, the tools to tackle it need to provide a range of services. They should be able to identify your resources, compare their configurations to best practices for security, apply configuration changes across all your resources, report on utilization and usage patterns, match bills to instances and departments, and suggest spending reduction through consolidation, use of reserved instances, and use of reserved instances.
Plus, it isn’t enough to simply generate reports that tell you what you’ve got and what you should be doing. Those paper plans need to get implemented to have value, and attempting to do it manually is guaranteed to waste time and result in systems that are overlooked or have changes implemented incorrectly. The only way to overcome cloud complexity is through automation, using tools that are cloud-neutral so they can work across all your clouds and on your internal systems as well.
Cloud Complexity Priorities
How do you choose the right tool or tools to help you cut through the complexity? Choosing the wrong tools simply adds additional products, clutter, and complications. Make sure the tools you choose can address these key priorities:
• Multi-cloud visibility. If you can’t see what you have, you can’t tell whether your changes are improving anything. You need a holistic view of your entire infrastructure to understand if you’re really optimizing usage.
• Cloud security. Once you’ve got visibility, security should be your number one priority. The cloud isn’t as insecure as people used to think, but if you’ve got hybrid and multi-cloud environments where data’s moving between clouds as well as between the cloud and end users, there are lots of network links that need protection, along with lots of instances and services that need secure configurations. Your multi-cloud visibility tool can help you tackle security issues, too.
• Cost optimization. Use visibility into your clouds to make sure you’re using them as effectively and efficiently as possible.
VAST View provides the insights into your cloud environment that let you reduce complexity, simplify management, and get better results from your clouds. Contact us to learn more about VAST View and managing your cloud effectively.
