July 19, 2018

4 Key Things to Know About Hybrid Data Centers

by: Align

2018-09-Data-Center-Blog-Header-Image-v2

Hybrid data centers have been a recent evolution in the marketplace – and organizations are investigating how they can leverage this new infrastructure model to find efficiencies, lower costs and improve agility.  

Hybrid IS THE "FLEXIBLE" future

With the increase in global data center traffic, hybrid infrastructure can help enterprises prepare for surges in traffic levels, and allow for storage and compute to flex on demand. A hybrid data center enables speedy prototyping of applications and services, as resources can be provisioned on the fly. Depending on organizational needs, business objectives and workload requirements, hybrid infrastructure can enable businesses to manage varying types of workloads across hundreds of thousands of services, all managed by a fraction of the professionals required for legacy data center environments.

There are Many Flavors of
Hybrid Data Centers

4 Hybrid Data Centers Facts

Hybrid data centers can offer a centralized cloud which has immense amounts of computing power and storage at its disposal, combined with regional and local edge data centers that are closer in proximity to where the data is actually consumed. Some companies use a hybrid model for email hosting and data archival, while retaining critical services in owned or on-premises data centers. Organizations that handle sensitive or personal information are challenged to determine the best infrastructure to meet consumer or regulatory requirements – and hybrid offers an excellent option to balance agility with security.

Keeping an Eye on your Network

Hybrid infrastructure is inherently complex, and it can pose a challenge to an organization’s overall network. Software-defined networking (SDN) underpins hybrid infrastructure, and it is essential that organizations have the right resources and subject matter experts to properly design and operate these cutting edge technologies.

Standardize Security Controls 

Data centers that span the private and public
clouds inevitably have a broader technical
requirement – which also increases the size and scope of threat vectors. A mix of legacy and hybrid infrastructure requires firms to take additional steps to
 ensure the security of their environments.
Roles and access management will become more complex as employees, third-party business partners, vendors and possibly customers interact with data served from various infrastructure sources. In addition to the users who interact with your environment, firms also need to maintain visibility into where workloads reside and relationships between applications – which is especially true to ensure regional compliance and regulatory requirements are met.

While the transition to hybrid infrastructure may be an eventuality, it is still a challenge to find the right balance. If you think that your data center is in need of an update or you’d like to explore Align's hybrid solutions, reach out to our data center or cloud experts today for a free consultation. 

Contact Us ➜

 

Data Center. Image Credit: Align

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