Tips for Implementing Cloud Management Services

By CIOReview | Tuesday, May 23, 2017

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IT enterprises have leveraged cloud management services and monitoring tools for quite some time now to optimize performance and reign in the costs associated with cloud services. In a dynamic world rife with technology challenges, cloud management services allow the IT firms to effectively organize the burgeoning and complicated interconnections within their cloud infrastructure. To keep pace with the continually morphing capacity requirements in a dynamic cloud environment, enterprises need comprehensive cloud management that encompasses monitoring, disaster recovery, and configuration management. With a plethora of IaaS providers to choose from, the implementation of a cloud infrastructure has become easier than ever before. However, before a firm embarks on a cloud journey, they need to zero in on the right tools, cloud model, and applications to find the right cost-benefit balance. Based on the usage requirements the firm must choose the right cloud model and the cloud provider to help them with their cloud server and infrastructure implementation.

Cloud management services providers today must possess a multitude of capabilities to help organizations manage a pool of diverse resources from a single control point. In addition to offering functionalities such as security monitoring, capacity and resource management, options for multi-tenancy, automatic deployment of application code, source control along with version and configuration management. While choosing the right cloud management service, it is crucial to comprehend its use case—making the cloud infrastructure seamless, trackable, and clear.

Best Practices for Private Cloud Implementation

After evaluating the impact of a private cloud structure on their budget and financial flow, an enterprise user can determine their private cloud use case and then build a strategy to migrate applications to the private cloud. For instance, organizations looking for cost-effective hardware or infrastructure for a particular application would rather prefer a public cloud implementation to a private cloud. The next step is to zero in on the platform to implement it. The options for a private cloud platform range from open source options—such as OpenStack—to proprietary cloud provider platforms offered by providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, among others. The configurations must be designed based on the service level the enterprise plans to provide its users while taking into account factors such as load balancing, compute, and storage resources. Also, it is advisable to identify probable points of failure and then design solutions to counter them.

Tips for Hybrid Cloud Implementations

While opting for a hybrid cloud implementation model, it is important for businesses to choose one that offers the flexibility to securely store mission-critical information while relying on third-party cloud providers for other workloads. A balanced mix of on-premise, private cloud and third party cloud services, a hybrid cloud model is a collection of integrated cloud services offered by cloud services providers. A cloud management service offers enterprises with a system that keeps different types of cloud models operational and trackable. By evaluating the existing IT environment along with the services currently being used, enterprises must assess their skill sets that may be required to operate processes during a hybrid cloud transition.

A key element an enterprise should consider before selecting a cloud management service is the quality of access control security offered by the service provider. When trying to balance numerous integrated cloud systems, enterprises need to integrate clouds using APIs by configuring IP addresses, subnets, firewalls, and data functions for storage. A cloud management service not only offers access security but also handles the role changes between systems while tracking usage.