Architecting High Availability across Cloud and Hosting Providers/DC
I have seen many articles where people talk about Multi Cloud Provider Deployments for High availability. It is a very complex architecture use case and according to me following are some of the probable reasons why a company might evaluate this HA architecture:
- Large enterprises who already have invested heavily on their existing data centers/providers may want AWS to be their HA/DR cloud partner. Enterprises have Private clouds like Eucalyptus, Open Stack, Cloud Stack or vCloud installed in their existing DC and in event of DC outage, AWS is used as the HA/DR infrastructure. Eucalyptus is the most compatible providers of all these private clouds with AWS because of the API level compatibility. Many workloads can be easily integrated between AWS and Eucalyptus. Example: Let us imagine the enterprise has developed some automation scripts for Amazon EC2 using AWS API’s in Eucalyptus Private cloud infra ; it can be migrated to AWS infrastructure as well easily during HA situation; Whereas if the enterprise is using Open Stack or other Private Cloud providers in their DC they might have to redevelop/test/release this script. This effort might not be cost effective option to develop and maintain for complex systems.
- Companies which find their infrastructure not able to meet the Scalability/Elasticity demands will want AWS to be their primary cloud infra and existing DC/providers as their HA/DR.
- Companies which are not satisfied with the stability and robustness of their existing Public Cloud Providers may want Multi Cloud Provider deployments. This use case occurrence is very rare currently, may become central point when cloud dependencies and common standards emerge and mature in future.
Most of the considerations listed in above section of AWS Multi region HA will also apply in this Multi Cloud HA Architecture as well. In designing High Availability Architectures across Multiple Cloud providers/DC we need to consider the following points closely:
Data Synch: Usually this step will not be a big problem if the Data stores can be installed /deployed on Multiple Cloud Providers. Compatibility of Database software, Tools, utilities will matter a lot and if they can be feasibly installed, then this challenge can be effectively addressed in Multi Cloud High Availability.
Network Flow :
- The switch between Multiple Cloud providers should be usually done on the Managed DNS level – Akamai, Route53, UltraDNS etc. Since these solutions are not Cloud Provider REGION dependent, they can be used to effectively switch user network traffic between Cloud Providers/DC for High Availability.
- Fixed IP address can be provided by DC / Hosting providers whereas many Cloud Providers cannot give a Static Fixed IP address for a VM currently. This might be a major bottleneck while architecting HA between cloud providers.
- Many times VPN tunnel needs to be established between Cloud Providers /DC to migrate and synch sensitive data across clouds. There might be compatibility or feasibility problems on supporting this feature from some Cloud Providers. This needs to be carefully evaluated while architecting Multi Cloud High Availability Architectures.
Workload Migration:
- Amazon Machine Images are not compatible across Cloud providers; New VM images needs to be created again for Multiple Cloud Providers. This might lead to additional efforts and cost
- Complex Automation Scripts using Amazon API’s needs to Redeveloped for Other Cloud Providers using their own API’s. Some Cloud Providers will not even provide API based management, in such cases it will become Maintenance mess.
- OS , Software , NW Compatibility Issues needs to be carefully analyzed for feasibility before taking this Multi-Cloud HA decision
- Unified Management of Infrastructure will be a big problem in Multi Cloud HA scenario unless tools like RightScale are used for management
Related Articles : AWS High Availability Patterns Series
1 comment:
Using only one cloud service is like putting all your eggs in one basket. So when deploying your multi cloud strategy you must make sure that your data is well distributed between different cloud servers. For example you can put your blog on one cloud and services on another one.
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