What are Hybrid Cloud Services?

Everyone has heard the term “hybrid cloud,” but what exactly are hybrid cloud services, and why are they becoming so important to enterprise architectures? And what’s the best way to take advantage of a hybrid cloud computing strategy? The key is leveraging technology that best supports the hybrid cloud infrastructure model, including choosing the right database.

The “hybrid cloud” concept refers to a virtual service that is able to isolate and move processing and storage between private cloud resources and public cloud resources to control costs and realize the best balance of security and privacy, and scale and resilience.

Hybrid cloud is, in essence, the merging of two models: running customer facing applications in the public cloud for scale, elasticity, and flexibility, and running mission-critical applications on-premises or in a private cloud for privacy, security, and control.

Why Use a Hybrid Cloud Strategy?

The main benefits of blending resources from the public and private clouds in a hybrid environment include gaining greater authority over your data and preserving more flexible options for using it. With a hybrid cloud approach, organizations can choose to host and process data where and when it’s most appropriate to meet performance, security or regulatory requirements. 

For example, many organizations will choose to securely host sensitive employee data in an on-prem data center. In contrast, hosting less sensitive applications in the public cloud — online consumer catalogs, for example — for elasticity and scale. 

Another benefit of the hybrid cloud model comes from the concept of creating an environment that spans multiple cloud service providers. For example, an organization might deploy a single database technology with clusters running in public cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure and then replicate data between them. The resulting hybrid cloud environment reduces dependencies on any one provider, enabling flexible disaster recovery and eliminating vendor lock-in.

Additionally, the hybrid cloud model provides organizations greater precision in choosing a physical storage location. Pick the cloud provider and region that best suits your workload, isolating and hosting data locally for highest performance or to meet data sovereignty requirements.

Hybrid cloud solutions also bring greater flexibility in terms of elasticity, as organizations can expand and shrink computing power when they need to, based on their applications’ needs. Consider the accounting firm that turns on public cloud resources only during tax time. Hybrid cloud solutions scale seamlessly, drawing on outside resources only as needed.

Efficiency + Privacy

More than ever, global organizations must ensure that their applications are secure and meet regulatory mandates such as GDPR. But in almost all cases, sensitive data is just a part of the overall data footprint – the rest of it may not be considered private. A hybrid cloud allows an organization to meet regulatory requirements by isolating sensitive data to private resources, and at the same time, take advantage of the computing capabilities of the public cloud, effectively combining the benefits of efficiency, scale, privacy and cost control.

Hybrid Cloud Implications on Your Database Technology

Many organizations embarking on a hybrid cloud initiative face challenges in planning how to store and manage data. In many cases, they may deploy completely separate database instances based on sensitivity – some on private resources, some on public resources. Accordingly, the databases have no awareness of the other data repositories in the ecosystem. 

While this architecture seemingly improves security, it hurts efficiency because the organization has to manage and maintain each repository separately, adding complexity. What’s needed is a single database technology that can span storage, processing, replication across on-premises environments and private and public cloud environments, and even across cloud service providers, allowing for the utmost flexibility and scale to handle current and future application needs.

Maximize the Benefits of Hybrid Cloud Services With Couchbase

Couchbase is a geo-distributed cloud-native database that you can easily deploy and manage on-premises, in a private cloud, and across any public cloud provider, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. With Couchbase, you get native JSON support, SQL queries, aggregation, elastic scalability and a shared-nothing architecture, along with full support for Kubernetes containerization, meaning you can quickly deploy on any cloud infrastructure and manage automatically with Couchbase Autonomous Operator.

The secret to Couchbase’s support for a hybrid cloud architecture is its ability to connect with any other Couchbase cluster using cross datacenter replication (XDCR), a built-in feature that replicates and synchronizes data between clusters, irrespective of where they are deployed. XDCR provides the common link from which you can create a fabric of connected Couchbase clusters, which effectively provides:

  • Resilience and Disaster Recovery – if any replicated cluster fails, another cluster in the ecosystem can instantly take over processing data.
  • Integrity – built-in conflict resolution and tolerance to connection issues means that it can automatically recover and continue from where it left off if any replication is interrupted.
  • Efficiency – only data that is new or changed is replicated.
  • Workload Isolation – clusters can house data where it’s most appropriate for the use case, within a given region for better local performance or to meet privacy requirements.
  • Specificity – filters and one-way or bi-directional replication allow you to govern exactly where and how certain data persists, such as syncing user data across all clusters but leaving locale-specific data within regional clusters.

Couchbase Cloud

Couchbase Cloud is a fully-managed database-as-a-service (DBaaS) for Couchbase Server that offers in-VPC deployment as a primary deployment option. Customers work in their own virtual private cloud where they retain complete control of their costs and data without compromising security or their ability to migrate into and out of the clouds of their choice. 

Couchbase Cloud also leverages XDCR for connecting to and migrating or replicating data from self-managed Couchbase Server instances, allowing you to create a single Couchbase ecosystem that houses data where appropriate for security requirements while also taking advantage of public cloud flexibility and scale.

Gain the Couchbase Advantage

Thanks to its multi-cloud support and XDCR capabilities for hybrid cloud architectures, Couchbase should be your first choice for database technology when implementing digital transformation and a hybrid cloud strategy.

Download and install Couchbase Server today for free, or take advantage of the Couchbase Cloud Self-Service Free Trial. You can also get Couchbase Server and Couchbase Cloud on the AWS Marketplace and Azure Marketplace.

See for yourself how well Couchbase can support your hybrid-cloud journey!

Author

Posted by Mark Gamble, Dir Product & Solutions Mktg, Couchbase

I am a passionate product marketer with a technical and solution consulting background and 20+ years of experience in Enterprise and Open Source technology. I have launched several database and analytic solutions throughout my career, and have worked with customers across a wide variety of industries including Financial Services, Automotive, Hospitality, High-Tech and Healthcare. I have particular expertise in analytics and AI, love all things data, and am an emphatic supporter of data-for-good initiatives.

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