Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/549869
4 | THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL www.datacenterjournal.com t his article will define hybrid cloud in terms that address the concerns of IT looking to es- tablish successful, cost-effective disaster-recovery (DR) systems. In particular, we will look at how one cus- tomer is successfully using hybrid cloud to establish a cloud-based DR system that grows with its business at a fraction of the cost and complexity of traditional DR. NIST defines hybrid cloud as "a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or pro- prietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud burst- ing for load balancing between clouds)." e main point here is that hybrid cloud requires commonality—otherwise you just have multiple clouds, not hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud allows for the exten- sion of traditional IT beyond the four walls of the on-premises data center, allowing IT to retain their existing applications, gover- nance and control, productivity, and staff, while also offering flexibility and greater reliability. In the 2012 Gartner special report Hybrid IT: How Internal and External Cloud Services are Transforming IT, ana- lysts explained that hybrid IT relies on new technologies to connect clouds, sophisti- cated approaches to data classification and identity, and service-oriented architecture, and it heralds significant change for IT practitioners. "Many organizations have now passed the definitional stage of cloud computing and are testing cloud architec- tures inside and outside the enterprise, and over time, the cloud will simply become one of the ways that we 'do' computing, and workloads will move around in hybrid internal/external IT environments," said Chris Howard, managing vice president at Gartner. "As a result, the traditional role of the enterprise IT professional is chang- ing and becoming multifaceted. A hybrid IT model requires internal and external IT professionals to support the business capabilities of the enterprise." Benefits to extending what you have today When you build an extendable cloud-based failover environment you can dramatically simplify DR for virtualized applications at a fraction of the cost of tra- ditional DR approaches. Using soware- based replication, you create warm standby copies of your applications and data, which are ready to start in the event of a disaster. You can run tests at any time and only pay for the resources you use during a test or actual disaster. All of this can be done with zero changes to your existing applica- tions and no requirement to port, move or convert anything. When using traditional DR solu- tions, businesses must figure out what their budgets can support and make difficult choices about which applications will and will not be covered. e virtualization of IT resources and the advent of cloud-based DR offerings simplify the process. Now, DR solutions both are easy to deploy without requiring extensive professional services and come at very low entry-level prices. In addition, they are less error prone because there is no need for physical exact dupli- cates—the DR service automatically repli- cates the virtual-machine environment. successful implementation By avondale, arizona "Aspiring. Achieving. Accelerating." at is the motto of Avondale, Arizona, a city of about 80,000 residents in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Known for its recreation and sports, Avondale is home to Phoenix International Raceway, where thousands of visitors congregate to watch NASCAR races twice a year, as well as Avondale Sports Complex, which serves as a popular site for regional and national amateur sports competitions. Avondale is also known for its responsive and progressive municipal services. e community has won several awards, ranking in the top 10 for Digital City of America in the last four years, placing as the #1 Digital City in the nation for midsize communities for the past two years and receiving a digital government achievement award from the Center for Digital Government. e city had already shied to a hybrid cloud model and had a hypervisor- based environment when it decided to move from DR to true business resump- tion. Like all medium-size organizations, Avondale's IT Department sought a responsive, easily accessible cloud-based solution that would fit its existing technol- ogy environment and budget. . Aer exploring different solutions, the City of Avondale was able to settle on one that allowed it to achieve several criti- cal goals: 1. Build an extendable cloud-based failover environment. With its new disaster-recovery solu- tion, Avondale's IT team is able to expand its DR services as the city's needs grow and change. "We're going to build around lon- gevity and sustainability and making sure that all the services we buy and put out there have a lifespan that we can assure," said Rob Lloyd, CIO for the city. NIST defines hybrid cloud as "a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds)." The main point here is that hybrid cloud requires commonality— otherwise you just have multiple clouds, not hybrid cloud.