Hardware Management - Deploying and Managing a Cloud Infrastructure - page 236

Hybrid Cloud Management
Hybrid clouds are a mixture of the two previous types, so therefore, they also require a
mixture of both management styles. The management for the public cloud portion should
be stringent, with emphasis on proper usage and limitations, while for the private side,
which is usually deployed in-house, the management policies can be more open.
Management Styles and Policies
There are no management styles and policies set in stone for cloud computing yet, though
there are organizations and people trying to standardize the field But since the standards
are not yet in place, each organization must find the management style and policies that
would best suit its situation. An organization must assess its capabilities and then match
that with its needs. For example, if your organization requires a lot of computing power for
your virtual machine instances and also requires that your users are able to provision as
much as they need, then it seems obvious that the management style should be less strict.
If you impose thriftiness here, it might just have a negative impact on the workflow and
the quality of the results. It would also mean that you are better off getting or deploying a
private cloud in the first place.
Tiering
We discussed the different disk types and the benefits of each earlier in this chapter, and
now you understand that storing specific types of data onto the appropriate kinds of disks
can increase performance as well as decrease costs for storage. This flexibility in storing data
is another reason cloud computing should be considered by most organizations, especially
data-driven ones.
Tiering refers to a storage infrastructure that has a simple two-tier architecture, such
as one consisting of both SCSI disks and tape drives. It can also refer to a more-complex
architecture, where there are three, four, or more tiers, each tier differing in performance
and purpose.
By using tiered storage, an organization can control exactly where their data is going
to be stored based on the performance, cost, availability, and recovery requirements of a
specific application. For instance, if you have data that needs to be recovered quickly, such
as transaction and user records, you would want them to be stored in fast disks or SSDs,
while data required for compliance and regulatory purposes may be stored in slower and
cheaper tape storage. This helps an organization plan its data and information life cycle
management properly, and proper data management helps to reduce costs and increase
overall efficiency.