According to data, the cloud hosts 60% of the world’s corporate data. Furthermore, the data stored in the cloud is expected to reach 200 ZB by 2025.
Interestingly, such data only offers a small glimpse of the growth and potential of cloud storage. One of the reasons that organizations are embracing the cloud is that it enables them to become nimble and competitive. However, due to regulatory and security issues moving all workloads and data to the public cloud is a big risk.
As a result, many businesses are adopting a hybrid cloud environment to take advantage of the cloud’s flexibility and scalability while keeping sensitive data on-premises. However, hybrid cloud management is challenging as your IT team must manage security, compliance, and cost.
This is where Microsoft Azure comes into play. It offers many services to help organizations manage their hybrid cloud environment and helps unify your IT infrastructure, simplifying hybrid cloud management.
Benefits of Microsoft Azure for Hybrid Cloud Management
Microsoft Azure offers tools and services to streamline hybrid cloud architecture, boost security, and save costs. Here are some of the ways it enhances hybrid cloud management:
1. Simplifies Hybrid Cloud Management
Microsoft Azure simplifies infrastructure management for Hybrid Cloud Management. It achieves this by enabling IT teams to manage on-premises and cloud resources from a single console with Azure.
Moreover, organizations may simplify multi-environment administration with this centralized method. It gives a complete picture of the hybrid cloud infrastructure and improves resource management.
Azure also offers administration tools to help automate and simplify hybrid cloud management. These include Azure Arc, Policy, and Resource Management:
- Azure Arc manages on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge settings. As a result, IT teams can manage servers, Kubernetes clusters, and apps across environments from one control plane.
- Azure Policy enforces hybrid cloud compliance and governance. It creates, assigns, and implements policies to deploy resources compliantly.
- Azure Resource Manager provides a single interface for developing, deploying, and managing resources across environments.
2. Boosts Security and Compliance
If you have a hybrid cloud, your data is scattered across different environments, which poses security and regulatory issues. Microsoft Azure offers services and solutions to protect hybrid cloud environments and comply with industry requirements.
Some of the security features you’ll enjoy include:
- Azure Security Center- Prevents, detects, and responds to attacks in hybrid cloud settings. In addition, IT teams can monitor and manage security for virtual machines, networks, and applications from a central dashboard.
- Azure Active Directory– Controls resource access in hybrid cloud environments. It supports multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, and integration with Microsoft and third-party apps.
- Azure Policy- Enforces hybrid cloud compliance and governance. It creates, assigns, and enforces policies to deploy resources compliantly.
- Azure Key Vault- Protects cryptographic keys and other secrets used by cloud apps and services. It centralizes keys and secrets and secures application and service access.
As you can see, Microsoft Azure offers a variety of security and compliance tools and services to safeguard hybrid cloud environments and comply with industry requirements. These technologies safeguard sensitive data and workloads against security breaches and compliance violations.
3. Optimizes Costs
One challenge that frustrates the efforts of setting up, managing, and scaling hybrid cloud infrastructures is how costs can soar easily. This forces companies to weigh cloud advantages against infrastructure costs. Fortunately, Microsoft Azure offers tools and services to optimize hybrid cloud expenses.
These include:
- Azure Cost Management + Billing- Lets companies track and manage cloud expenditures across environments. As a result, IT teams can manage cloud usage and spending on a single dashboard and find cost-saving opportunities.
- Azure Hybrid Benefit- Helps companies save money by using their on-premises subscriptions. For example, applying on-premises licensing to Azure reduces virtual machine prices by 40%.
- Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances- Prepaying saves companies money. It allows reservation changes and saves 72% compared to pay-as-you-go pricing.
- Azure Spot VMs- Helps companies execute workloads on excess computational resources at low cost. It handles interruptions and workload surges and saves up to 90% compared to on-demand pricing.
With these tools, companies can track cloud expenditures, apply licenses to Azure, and save money.
4. Increased Flexibility While Reducing Complexity
With numerous vendors and technologies, managing hybrid clouds is challenging. Microsoft Azure simplifies hybrid cloud vendor administration and complexity through services such as:
- Azure Arc- Manages resources across on-premises, cloud, and edge settings. It simplifies resource management for IT teams utilizing Azure tools and services.
- Azure Stack- Enables companies to operate Azure services on-premises. It offers consistent application deployment and development across hybrid cloud environments.
- VMware-certified Azure VMware Solution– Enables enterprises to run VMware workloads natively on Azure. In addition, it lets enterprises utilize VMware tools and procedures in their hybrid cloud and seamlessly migrate VMware workloads to Azure.
These solutions enable unified resource management across environments, thus simplifying hybrid cloud vendor administration.
Managing Servers Across Clouds with Microsoft Azure
As mentioned, managing hybrid cloud environments with Azure is relatively easy. This flexible and scalable solution helps enterprises minimize complexity and suppliers at their own pace. First, however, you need to know how to capitalize on these benefits.
1. Server Migration
Azure Site Recovery replicates on-premises virtual machines and servers to Azure for disaster recovery. It lets enterprises migrate workloads to Azure without lifting and shifting virtual machine tools.
Moreover, Azure Migrate helps enterprises examine, plan, and move on-premises servers to Azure. It offers tools and services for server assessment, migration, and database transfer to Azure.
2. Hybrid Operations
Azure Arc, a multi-cloud and hybrid management solution, lets enterprises manage resources across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments. IT teams may manage servers utilizing Azure tools and services with a single management experience.
Azure Monitor monitors servers and apps in on-premises, cloud, and edge settings. As a result, IT personnel can monitor servers and apps from a single dashboard and spot issues before they affect users.
In addition, Microsoft Azure enables enterprises to administer their servers across clouds without lifting and shifting virtual machine tools. As such, these solutions allow enterprises to seamlessly transfer their workloads to Azure, analyze, plan, and migrate their on-premises servers to Azure, and manage and monitor their servers using Azure tools and services.
Recommendations for Effective Hybrid Cloud Management with Microsoft Azure
A well-planned hybrid cloud management framework unifies business unit access, cost, administration, and supervision. Here are some Microsoft Azure hybrid cloud administration tips:
1. Plan the Structure
Hybrid cloud structures should match business unit access, cost, management, and supervision objectives. Therefore, you should establish security procedures, governance rules, and business unit roles and duties. A well-planned structure helps companies manage their hybrid cloud infrastructure.
2. Start Small
While you may want to transition in one go, it can be challenging. So, moving workloads to the cloud should begin modestly. Start with business-critical services and add additional workloads to the cloud gradually. This strategy reduces risk and keeps essential services functioning.
3. Don’t Wait Until the Last Minute
When migrating cloud environments, your biggest enemy is inadequate planning. It will put the process and, even worse, your data at risk. Therefore, you should not delay cloud migration or perform it hurriedly. To guarantee a seamless move, prepare beforehand.
4. Manage Servers via Azure
Even if you plan to migrate to Azure later, start managing your via Azure early. This simplifies management and lets companies use Azure tools and services. Azure server management reduces complexity and suppliers and prepares enterprises for the cloud.
Hybrid cloud administration involves a well-planned structure, starting small, not waiting to transfer, and operating servers via Azure even if businesses plan to shift later. These tips can aid hybrid cloud management.
Optimizing Hybrid Cloud Costs with Microsoft Azure
Once you start managing your cloud environment with Azure, the next step is maximizing the value you get from it. One key area of focus should be the costs. Here are some of the ways you can optimize your hybrid cloud expenses:
1. Right-size Your Workloads with Azure Cost Management
Azure Cost Management helps companies measure and control cloud costs. It achieves this by providing a platform for tracking cloud consumption and prices, finding inefficiencies, and allocating resources.
As a result, you’ll be able to establish the appropriate resource allocation for each workload, helping you to reduce cloud expenses and waste.
2. Optimize Your Cloud Spending with Azure Advisor
Azure Advisor uses the best practices and patterns to help organizations optimize spend. In so doing, it enables you to cut expenses, boost performance, and secure your hybrid cloud. For example, Azure Adviser may suggest closing underused resources, switching to a cheaper storage tier, or optimizing network bandwidth.
With such insight, companies can improve their hybrid cloud setup for productivity and cost savings by utilizing Azure Cost Management and Azure Advisor.
Unify Your Hybrid Cloud Environment with Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure has many advantages for hybrid cloud administration. These range from simplifying hybrid cloud environments to reducing suppliers and managing servers across clouds. However, it’s crucial to have the right partner to help you achieve this.
