Delivering a consistent user experience on hybrid cloud infrastructure

December 2, 2021

As virtualisation and automation technologies have matured, attention has shifted to how businesses can scale systems to meet changing demand. The ability to access resources on demand has made cloud platforms a natural choice for scalable operations.

Read on to learn more, or download our latest white paper to find out how you can gain full control over your data.

Organisations have been able to realise additional flexibility and agility by selecting best in class services from multiple cloud vendors. This new hybrid multicloud experience brings together the best of the private and public clouds for a consistent user experience.

Making hybrid multicloud work

With multiple competing vendors and a broad range of available hyperscale cloud platforms, customers can simply pick and choose the services that best meet their needs. However, to properly balance functionality and cost, customers must be able to move workloads between clouds – and on-premises data centers where appropriate.

The use of commoditised compute has helped somewhat to simplify the process of moving systems. Kubernetes and applications can be lifted, migrated and run from virtually anywhere. With the option to run workloads from the platform that delivers the best performance, businesses gain a significant operational advantage. It also helps you to better control cloud costs.

NetApp Data Fabric has been designed specifically for this purpose: to help your organisation unleash the power of data to meet business demands and gain a competitive edge. But more than simply relocating workloads, hybrid multicloud must turn data into something usable and useful.

NetApp Data Fabric simplifies multicloud management

NetApp Data Fabric represents the ability to do anything, anywhere in a consistent, repeatable, predictable way — reducing costs and simplifying business processes. This gives you the freedom to choose your cloud and build it as your own.

No matter where your data and workloads live today – some in the cloud and some on prem in your data centre – NetApp can make the hybrid approach deliver at peak performance. It will also allow you to manage your entire multicloud with ease, security, agility and compliance. And deliver a consistent user experience, even as workloads are moved and reconfigured.

This focus on multicloud operations has helped establish NetApp OnTap as the number one storage operating system for the past seven years. And they have maintained that position by expanding their multicloud portfolio to meet demands for future consumption models.

Successful hybrid cloud operations

Using their extensive experience in the industry, NetApp has identified four pillars of hybrid cloud success:

1.Unified infrastructure

The ability to deploy a common storage layer across services is essential. This layer will need to cross public and private clouds and the local data centre to create truly unified, seamless infrastructure.

2. Simplified management

You will need tools that simplify the process of accessing and managing data services both on premises and in the cloud. Using a single pane of glass will help to reduce confusion and consolidate the various tools usually associated with managing multicloud operations. You will also gain greater visibility and understanding of your infrastructure, allowing you to make informed strategic decisions for future developments.

3. “As a Service” flexibility

The as-a-service model is a hugely compelling reason behind cloud adoption, allowing you to choose and use resources as and when required. Under the NetApp Data Fabric approach, this flexibility can be applied across all your storage, regardless of where it is physically hosted.

4. Expert data services

Optimising multicloud operations is a specialist discipline. It makes sense to source expert assistance to ensure you not only build the storage platform you need, but that it is optimised for both price and performance according to your workloads.

Going beyond storage

Your technology use cases will continue to change over time – you do not want to be trapped using infrastructure that has been built to work in one specific way. In the hybrid multicloud, the way your data is managed – and the consistency of those operations – will be more important than how you actually consume physical storage.

Using NetApp, any business can embrace multicloud operations – including those who are still heavily reliant on legacy systems. But by establishing a common storage layer now, they are able to extend infrastructure in any direction they want – on-premises, public cloud, private cloud and various SaaS platforms.

Avoiding setbacks with a hybrid multicloud partner

Q Associates are a long-established NetApp Star Partner qualified to the highest level, with technical specialisations in FlexPod and Hybrid Cloud. Our qualified team has the individual skills, experience and certifications required to design and build a cloud solution tailored to your needs and budget.

Our similarly qualified cloud migration team specialises in migrating, modernising and transforming workloads into well-architected cloud solutions. This allows us to offer significant value to clients across all sectors as they transform their business through cloud enablement.

Ready to learn more about how we can help you? Please give us a call on 01635 248181.