www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki
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cloudstrategymag.com
August 22, 2016
Where does your data center end?
It
might seem like an odd question as you can probably point out the
physical building or buildings that house your data center(s). But does
that physical installation line up with the logic concept of the “data
center” held by your business?
Most
businesses today have started to extend their IT footprint into the
public cloud. Cloud service providers (CSPs) like AWS, Microsoft Azure,
and the Google Cloud Platform have brought public cloud computing to the
mainstream.
The
benefits are considerable, such as shifting expenses to operating
expenses (OPEX), accurately tying expenses to projects, immediate
fulfillment, complete automation, and others; however, the public cloud
also brings significant challenges to your overall IT strategy.
The biggest IT question facing today’s business is, “How can you secure and manage assets effectively in a hybrid environment?”
Hybrid is the New Normal
You
might be tempted to dismiss a hybrid environment — where you have
assets in your own data center and in the public cloud — as a temporary
issue. Maybe you believe that teams within the business are simply
experimenting with this technology. Or that it’s only for development
and test workloads. Perhaps you’ve even set out an “all in” strategy and
expect to get rid of your existing data center footprint.
The
fastest hybrid case for these scenarios, “all in,” will still take at
least 12 to 18 months if your migration goes as planned. But as we know,
when was the last project you delivered that went according to plan?
You
will be dealing with the challenges of a hybrid environment for the
foreseeable future. It’s time to develop a strong strategy and body of
knowledge in dealing with them.
Stark Differences
At
first glance, the challenges presented by a hybrid environment don’t
appear to be too different when compared to a multi-data center
deployment. This is a problem set that is well understood. As soon as
businesses started to use multiple data centers and regional
deployments, workflows and procedures were adjusted to handle multiple
locations.
The
real challenge of a hybrid environment lies in the fact that the data
center and the cloud are fundamentally different environments. It’s very
much a case of apples and oranges.
Without
hands-on experience, it can be hard to truly grasp how substantial the
difference is. Apples and oranges might not do it justice. A horse and
buggy compared to a modern automobile might be a more apt analogy. Both
will get you somewhere, but the automobile will do it faster and in more
comfort.
The reason for this difference is code.
Everything
in the public cloud is addressable via code. This not only reduces
delivery times through heavy automation, but it has started a change in
the culture of solution delivery.
When
everything can be written in code, teams start to approach solution
delivery like modern software development. This is the core of the
“DevOps” (development + operations) model. Despite the name, all teams
involved with solution delivery are involved, but DevSecProjBizOps was
too cumbersome an acronym to catch on.
The
DevOps approach to solution delivery mirrors the agile software
development process. Teams work together in a collaborative manner.
Changes are made in small increments, tested, validated with the
business and rolled out constantly. This lies in stark contrast to
traditional, waterfall methods.
In
the waterfall approach, each team hands off their work to the next in
line. Development creates the application, security evaluates it,
operations deploys it, and the business uses it. Rarely do all players
in the solution collaborate on solving problems or improving the end
result.
This
disconnect results in long delivery times, misaligned goals, tensions
between teams, and other problems. In the context of approaching a
hybrid data center, it means that one team (typically operations) has a
disproportionate influence on technology and processes around the
infrastructure.
It’s
that undue influence that can hobble teams and innovation. That’s not
to say that operations is doing a poor job. It’s just that the problem
set (how to deliver modern IT solutions) is only being seen from one
particular angle. That lack of diversity leads to short-sighted
solutions.
When
teams work together to regularly deliver incremental improvements to a
solution, a different view of the infrastructure is created. Traditional
maintenance windows and fallback scenarios are no longer the best way
forward.
Deploying
small incremental changes — even to critical systems — with strong
tests and a fail forward mentality is a more effective way for teams to
work together to meet business goals.
Avoiding Split Processes
It’s
simple to write out how DevOps models should work, but in reality, this
is a difficult culture change. It takes time to work towards a new way
of working. However, you can make it easier by taking a data center out
approach.
Since
the public cloud is new, or relatively new, territory you can establish
new workflows and processes. In the data center, you have an existing
set and software to implement it all. This is where the majority of
change is going to happen, so it makes sense to start there.
The
goal is to avoid creating a set of processes and workflows for each
environment. This means that the tools chosen by the various teams are
going to have to support both traditional data center and cloud
workflows. That in and of itself can be a challenge. When it’s not
possible to find tools that natively support both environments, make
sure that you can at least get data in and out of the tool, and automate
it with little difficulty.
Being
able to move data through various tools in an automated fashion will
allow you to stitch together the necessary tools. This is a key point
because each new tool has associated overhead. Your teams will have to
learn how to use the tool as well as support it. Each tool you add
should be carefully evaluated for its impact as well as its upside.
The
first step is to do an inventory of your current workflows and
processes. This should include the software and tools that help enable
these processes. The next step is critical to your success. You need to
understand why you have these processes in place.
A
data center is like any other complex system. Over time it will
accumulate processes that are non-essential, and even detrimental, to
efficient operations. This happens frequently with security controls and
mitigations. As data changes and threats evolve, security measures put
in place for one reason are often counter or ineffective in new
circumstances.
Planning
your approach to a hybrid environment is a perfect time to re-evaluate
these items and see if they are still needed or could be improved on.
Automate as Much as Possible
In
the public cloud portion of your hybrid environment, things should be
nearly 100% automated. The goal for modernizing your data center tools
and processes should be as close to total automation as possible. This
will allow for the DevOps cultural change to take effect inside of the
data center as well.
Waiting
hours or days to provision new computing resources or storage won’t cut
it when the same resources can be provisioned in seconds in the public
cloud. Most of the work implementing a unified strategy for hybrid is
going to be in this area.
If
you can’t automate a particular area (capacity planning being a key
piece) work hard to ensure that the workflows and processes are clear,
simple, and not a roadblock for larger works. For most teams this means a
huge reduction in delivery time for various data center services. For
obvious reasons, that’s a big challenge.
The
good news here is that a lot of data centers have the technology and
tools in place to accomplish these improvements. Heavy investments in
virtualization for servers and storage, modern switching and network
infrastructure, and flexible perimeter security defenses all support
this speed of delivery. It is very much a cultural challenge.
The
downside of not addressing these areas is that your data center usage
will decrease as it’s simply easier to deploy to the public cloud side
of the environment. Not maximizing your existing investment in your data
centers is going to sell your business investment short. A
well-organized data center can continue to deliver business value
throughout the current technology life cycle (typically five to seven
years) if you update the processes around it to support a more
collaborative way of working.
Broad Visibility
While
automation may be the weak point on the data center side of the hybrid
environment, visibility tends to be a challenge on the public cloud
side. It’s not that you’ll have a hard time seeing the assets you deploy
in the public cloud — they are after all only an API call away — it’s
that existing tools have a really hard time dealing with the volume of
assets in the cloud and the pace at which they change.
Enterprise
monitoring and discovery tools are based around a simple premise: Most
assets in the data center are deployed and stay relatively static for
three to seven years. In the public cloud, that thinking goes out the
window. Assets now appear for minutes, hours, or longer. If they are no
longer needed, they are terminated and recreated as new assets when
needed again.
This
flexibility is one of the major appeals of the cloud and one of the
biggest monitoring and security challenges. This is the outcome of the
culture shift to DevOps and it requires a software tool change to
properly deal with it.
If
your current monitoring and security tool sets do not have native AWS,
Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform functionality, it’s time to
start evaluating new tools.
A
new wave of cloud-first tools are taking over the enterprise market.
Built with scale and flexibility in mind, they can easily tackle
traditional data center assets as well. These new tools also support
automation as a key pillar, simplifying the efforts to integrate them
into your team’s workflow and reducing their overhead.
Remember: A good tool gives a lot more to your teams than it requires in upkeep.
Hybrid Success
Hybrid
environments are here to stay. Simply trying to forklift your existing
tools, workflows, and processes from the data center into a hybrid data
center/public cloud environment is a recipe for disaster.
Successful
adoption means working hard to enable a more collaborative model for
teams. In the spirit of DevOps, this deep cultural shift means
delivering value to the business in smaller increments, but at a much
faster pace.
This agility not only helps reduce mistakes, but also brings a strong alignment of IT with business goals.
To
accomplish this, you’ll need to start with the data center. Mapping out
existing tools, workflows, and processes then analyzing why they are in
place. Eliminate the excess and focus on automating as many of these
flows as possible. When that’s not possible, make them as efficient as
possible and remove roadblocks often.
As
your public cloud deployment grows, visibility is critical. The volume
of assets and speed at which they change is difficult for existing tools
to maintain. Look at updating monitoring and security tools to ones
that natively support these new environments.
The
road to a successful deployment is difficult. The good news is that
technological challenges are straight forward and there’s a lot of
guidance available. The cultural change is the most difficult part, but
the benefits are significant.
The
investment to create a flexible hybrid environment with a matching IT
culture is worth it. You’ll have teams capable of delivering modern
solutions that support the business and allow you to take things to the
next level.
================================== Good Netiquette And A Green Internet To All! =====================================================================
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