Hybrid Cloud has struck a chord with many companies that work with both on-premise and off-premise data. Given this we thought it would be useful for us to hilight the key points that we see when companies are managing data in a hybrid cloud environment:
Go Virtual:
Many companies will try and sell a hardware appliance for dealing with hybrid data but virtualisation delivers compelling cost savings compared to the hardware alternative. It is key however to have a backup /snapshot strategy for the virtualized deployments. The Storage Made Easy Enterprise File Share and Sync Fabric solution can be deployed on Hyper-V, XEN, KVM, VMWare (ESXi), OpenStack Compute, or alternatively anything that supports the interoperable OVF standard.
Be Highly Available:
Ensure the hybrid service you are deploying can be deployed in a highly available topology if needed. Even if this is not needed immediately ensure product choices have HA capabilities.
The Storage Made Easy service can easily be deployed in an n-tier highly available manner – see the HA white paper for more details.
Understand Data:
It is important to understand the different types of data that lives within a business or enterprise, where that data resides, and what archive and backup strategies are in place. Also, understanding (and perhaps creating) data classifications is critical to understanding how and where data is placed.
Document and understand data, storage, and Application services that are used internally and that may be used on cloud and categorize who has access to access / store information and what types of information may be stored.
Storage Made Easy enables data to be classified and be accessed and managed from a single file manager and dashboard effectively providing a ‘single pane of glass’ for company data, whether on-cloud or on-premise.
Understand Policy:
Policy and Governance of data is becoming more important to business, particularly in the light of recent security breaches. Policy should be set that encompasses all data, not just silo’d data and controls and policies should be put in place that enable companies to be confident of this.
Any policy implemented should not be to complex and be as transparent as possible to the users or you will find they will not use it and may actively seek to go around it.
The Storage Made Easy solution has built in policy controls (including BYOD) to enable companies to set not only governance controls but also file sharing controls with regards to time expiry and encryption of data on remote data clouds. You can read more about this in our white paper on Cloud Sprawl and Corporate Governance.
Understand Security:
There is little doubt that storing and accessing business data across on-premise and geographically dispersed cloud computing environments are likely to present control challenges, and ever-increasingly, regulatory challenges.
It stands to reason therefore that implanting a defined security strategy is a necessary process for any business that has both both physical and digital records, that span on-premise and cloud environments. This should include, identity management in place for each service and whether these can be integrated into corporate identity management systems which would include access controls, permissions, roles etc. Administrators should also ensure they have ability to use audit information, set audit watches on sensitive data, have the ability to implement GEO locking and IP restrictions, as well as other controls to track and protect data.
Companies should also document exactly which data services are used within the organisation both public and private and grade each service with regards to security and access.
Summary:
These are just some of the requirements that companies should assess when implementing a hybrid cloud strategy. Storage Made Easy can help in the process so please feel free to contact us. In the meantime if you would like to read more about Hybrid Cloud check out our white paper on Enterprise File Share and Sync for Hybrid Cloud Control.
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