Making Workload Management Transparent

In the hybrid cloud environment, providing transparency to a set of workloads is important, no matter where they’re physically located and which virtualization technologies are used. So, successful vendors look at workload automation from a holistic perspective. Organizations must also be able to include their on-premises systems as part of the overall workload management environment. As data centers become more streamlined and focused, including those workloads as part of an overall hybrid-distributed computing environment will become easier.

Obviously, there’s a huge value to balancing workloads in a hybrid cloud environment. In a traditional data center, workloads tend to be constructed as complete applications rather than independent workloads. Typically, when an application is complex and expensive to operate, costs are simply spread out across the departments that leverage the application. The criteria for success has been accessibility to that application in the data center that needs to connect to resources located in the hybrid cloud. Now, the criteria for success is a model that combines the need for performance, reliability, and security in a constantly changing world. The challenge is to create a customer experience that is flexible, affordable, and predictable.

Balancing the acceptable level of risk and the acceptable level of service is delicate. So, before you make decisions related to workload management in a hybrid cloud, ask yourself the following questions:

What is the purpose of your workloads and how do they support the business?

What are the legal risks that are unacceptable?

What is the reputation of the public cloud providers?

How well does your internal organization understand the various internal and external workloads that need to be supported?

You need to be practical in how you address these questions. As we have pointed out in this chapter, there are many different types of workloads. If the workloads require real-time performance, you need to keep those workloads as close to the source of the transactions as possible. However, some workloads can run with less stringent performance and can be placed in a less expensive cloud model. However, you shouldn’t compromise the reputation of your company. Therefore, you need to do you homework. You need to work with business leaders in your company that can pinpoint the risks you need to avoid. Part of that risk is selecting a cloud provider that is here today and gone tomorrow. Workload management must be viewed as an overall part of your hybrid cloud management strategy. Therefore, planning for managing workloads goes hand in hand with a strong cloud strategy plan.