{"id":7389,"date":"2017-04-19T10:00:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T18:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/04\/19\/news-1180\/"},"modified":"2017-04-19T10:00:22","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T18:00:22","slug":"news-1180","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/04\/19\/news-1180\/","title":{"rendered":"Pragmatic Hybrid Cloud Security"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Mark Nunnikhoven (Vice President, Cloud Research)| Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2017 17:48:49 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s easy to get lost in a sea of marketing terms. Recently \u201cHybrid Cloud\u201d has bubbled up more and more. The good news here is that the term is an accurate and useful way to describe the reality that most organizations are facing\u2026and will continue to face for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Unless you started your company today or in the past couple of months, you have a set of IT assets running somewhere. They aren\u2019t running themselves for free. You\u2019ve got an existing investment that you\u2019re going to want to get the most out of that you can . The cloud\u2014a dynamic environment that lets your innovate faster\u2014is the clear future.<\/p>\n

But the reality is that you\u2019re going to have to manage both environments for a while until you can sunset the existing assets. This is the hybrid cloud.<\/b><\/p>\n

Planning For Hybrid<\/h2>\n

The trap most organizations fall into is treating the two environments differently. Setting up unique tooling and processes for each.o make the hybrid cloud work, live by this simple rule, \u201cDo the work once.\u201d <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t as easy as it sounds\u2014is it ever? On-premises environments tend to use a lot of manual processes and are divided into silos. In the cloud, processes are implemented in systems and automated workflows break down traditional silos (see: DevOps<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The goal is to have one workflow regardless of the environment. Unfortunately, the reality is that you\u2019re going to have to make an exception for a few systems and areas on-premises. A lot of existing systems simply weren\u2019t designed with automation and integration in mind.<\/p>\n

Try to have as few exceptions as possible. Deploying and running a web server should work the same way for your teams on-premises and in the cloud, or at least as reasonably close to the same way as possible.<\/p>\n

Tooling<\/h2>\n

One key driver for unification is a strong set of tools. Choosing cloud-first or \u201cborn in the cloud\u201d tools is a great way to start. These tools are typically designed with scalability and flexibility in mind. <\/p>\n

With the end state focused on unified processes, start by prioritizing tools that are going to move the needle the most for your organization. This will also help change your processes and update the skill sets for your teams.<\/p>\n

Start with tools in the following categories:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Orchestration\u2028<\/li>\n
  2. Monitoring & analytics\u2028<\/li>\n
  3. Security\u2028<\/li>\n
  4. Build pipeline (CI\/CD)\u2028<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Orchestration is critical because it can provide a series of quick wins that ease everyone\u2019s workload. Tools like AWS OpsWorks<\/a>, Chef<\/a>, Puppet<\/a>, and Ansible<\/a> are designed to help coordinate the deployment and maintenance of your environment. And they work just as well on-premises as in the cloud.<\/p>\n

    Providing a set of early wins is critical to getting buy-in from on-premises teams. You\u2019re going to be making changes to their day-to-day workflows and eventually changing the structure of their teams. You need them on board.<\/p>\n

    With that credibility established, you can start to move on to monitoring, security and the build pipeline. In each case, you\u2019re going to need a cloud-first tool that:<\/p>\n