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Cloud Deployment Models

Cloud Deployment Models: Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud

CLOUD COMPUTING

Stefanos Evangelou and ChatGPT

10/18/20247 min read

sea of clouds
sea of clouds

Cloud Deployment Models: Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud

Cloud deployment models define how cloud services are delivered and managed. Depending on the organization’s needs, workloads, and regulatory requirements, businesses can choose from different deployment models: Public Cloud, Private Cloud, and Hybrid Cloud. Each deployment model has its own advantages, trade-offs, and use cases. We will also touch upon the notions of Multicloud, cloud orchestrators and billing orchestrators.

In this post, we will dive into these three primary cloud deployment models, exploring their features, benefits, and popular use cases.

1. Public Cloud

A public cloud is a cloud infrastructure that is owned, managed, and operated by third-party cloud service providers. In this model, resources such as virtual machines, storage, and applications are hosted in the provider’s data centers and shared across multiple organizations, often referred to as a multi-tenant environment. The cloud provider takes full responsibility for managing and maintaining the underlying infrastructure, offering services on a pay-as-you-go model.

Key Features of Public Cloud:

  • Multi-Tenancy: Resources are shared among multiple users (tenants), which reduces costs for individual businesses.

  • Elasticity: Public cloud resources are highly scalable, enabling businesses to scale up or down based on demand.

  • Managed Infrastructure: The cloud provider manages the hardware, networking, storage, and security, allowing users to focus on their applications.

  • Accessibility: Public cloud services are accessible from any internet-connected device, making them ideal for distributed teams and remote workers.

Benefits of Public Cloud:

  • Cost Efficiency: Public cloud is generally the most cost-effective option, as users only pay for the resources they consume. It eliminates the need for upfront capital investments in hardware and infrastructure.

  • Scalability: Public cloud providers offer automatic scaling, ensuring businesses can handle sudden traffic spikes without performance issues.

  • No Maintenance: Since the cloud provider manages the infrastructure, businesses don’t need to worry about hardware maintenance, software updates, or security patches.

Popular Public Cloud Providers:

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS): The leading public cloud provider, offering a wide range of services such as compute (EC2), storage (S3), databases (RDS), and more.

  • Microsoft Azure: A leading cloud platform offering services like Azure Virtual Machines, Azure SQL Database, and Azure Blob Storage.

  • Google Cloud: Google Cloud provides services such as Google Compute Engine, Google Cloud Storage, and BigQuery.

Use Cases for Public Cloud:

  • Startups and Small Businesses: Public cloud offers a low-cost entry point for startups and small businesses looking to deploy applications quickly and scale as they grow.

  • Web Hosting and E-Commerce: Public cloud platforms are ideal for hosting websites, web applications, and e-commerce platforms due to their scalability and global reach.

  • Development and Testing: Developers use public cloud environments to quickly set up development and testing environments without the need for on-premises infrastructure.

2. Private Cloud

A private cloud is a cloud infrastructure that is used exclusively by a single organization. Unlike the public cloud, the private cloud offers dedicated resources, meaning the infrastructure is not shared with other users. Private clouds can be hosted on-premises in the organization’s own data centers or by a third-party provider. In this model, the organization retains control over the cloud environment, including customization, security, and compliance.

Key Features of Private Cloud:

  • Single-Tenancy: The infrastructure is dedicated to one organization, providing greater control over resources and security.

  • Customization: Organizations can customize the private cloud to meet specific business needs, including security, networking, and compliance requirements.

  • High Security and Compliance: Since the infrastructure is not shared with other tenants, private clouds offer higher levels of security, making them suitable for industries with strict regulatory requirements.

Benefits of Private Cloud:

  • Enhanced Security: With dedicated resources, private clouds offer enhanced data security, making them ideal for industries such as healthcare, finance, and government that handle sensitive data.

  • Customization: Private cloud environments can be tailored to meet specific performance, compliance, and operational requirements.

  • Control and Governance: Organizations have full control over the private cloud environment, including software, hardware, and security policies.

Popular Private Cloud Providers:

  • VMware vCloud: VMware offers private cloud solutions that allow businesses to manage their own infrastructure while benefiting from virtualization and automation.

  • Microsoft Azure Stack: Azure Stack allows businesses to extend Azure services to their own data centers, creating a private or hybrid cloud environment.

  • OpenStack: OpenStack is an open-source private cloud platform that provides businesses with the flexibility to build and manage their own cloud infrastructure.

Use Cases for Private Cloud:

  • Highly Regulated Industries: Industries such as healthcare, finance, and government use private clouds to comply with strict security and privacy regulations.

  • Large Enterprises: Large organizations with the resources to maintain their own infrastructure often prefer private clouds to ensure control and customization.

  • Sensitive Data Workloads: Private clouds are ideal for workloads involving sensitive data, such as patient records, financial transactions, and proprietary business information.

3. Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud is a combination of public and private cloud environments, allowing data and applications to be shared between them. The hybrid cloud model offers the flexibility to run certain workloads in the public cloud while keeping sensitive workloads in a private cloud. This approach enables businesses to balance the scalability of the public cloud with the control and security of the private cloud.

Key Features of Hybrid Cloud:

  • Flexibility: Hybrid cloud allows organizations to deploy workloads in both public and private clouds, based on specific business needs.

  • Interoperability: A hybrid cloud environment enables seamless data and application integration between public and private clouds.

  • Cost Optimization: Businesses can take advantage of the cost savings of the public cloud for non-sensitive workloads while maintaining the control and security of private clouds for critical applications.

Benefits of Hybrid Cloud:

  • Scalability and Flexibility: Hybrid cloud allows businesses to scale their operations by leveraging the public cloud’s scalability while keeping sensitive data and critical workloads in the private cloud.

  • Cost Efficiency: Organizations can optimize costs by running non-sensitive, high-demand workloads in the public cloud while keeping sensitive workloads on-premises or in a private cloud.

  • Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: Hybrid cloud models offer robust disaster recovery solutions by replicating data and applications across public and private environments.

Popular Hybrid Cloud Management Services:

Use Cases for Hybrid Cloud:

  • Disaster Recovery and Backup: Businesses use hybrid cloud models to back up data to the public cloud while keeping mission-critical applications on-premises or in a private cloud.

  • Bursting Workloads: Organizations can use hybrid cloud environments to handle temporary spikes in demand by scaling into the public cloud while keeping core workloads in a private cloud.

  • Data Localization: Hybrid cloud is useful for organizations that need to meet data localization requirements by keeping sensitive data on-premises while leveraging the public cloud for other services.

4. Multicloud

With the proliferation of Cloud service providers offering a wide range of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS cloud services, there are many practical examples in enterprises which need to utilize their own private cloud alongside public cloud services from different vendors. The reason to choose multiple different public cloud service providers, i.e. implement a multicloud, is primarily to cut down on costs or monetize the know how of IT staff in specific public cloud platforms while at the same time utilizing specialized cloud services in other providers. There is a handful of cloud service providers available to date. We are providing a least of the most popular ones.

5. Cloud Orchestrators

When managing multiclouds and hybrid clouds, especially in the case of cloud service provider (CSP) or managed service provider (MSP), setting up an infrastructure may entail various physical locations with private and public cloud datacenters and various edge zones. In these scenarios, managing the cloud infrastructure of a service provider requires the usage of a software application called a cloud orchestrator to automate things. Here is a list of the major and most popular cloud orchestrators for managing multicloud, hybrid clouds, and edge zones:

These orchestrators are designed to manage cloud environments, streamline resource allocation, and enable seamless integration across multicloud, hybrid cloud, and edge infrastructures.

6.Billing orchestrators

Here is a list of the most popular and major cloud service provider billing automation platforms, similar to Hostbill, for managing payments, end-user customer-facing portals, invoicing, and backend automation with multiple cloud services:

These platforms streamline the billing and automation processes for cloud service providers by offering solutions such as invoicing, payment processing, customer management, and integration with multiple cloud environments.

Practical Exercises

  1. Exercise 1: Set up a simple web application on AWS or Azure using the public cloud. Explore how you can scale the application to handle different traffic loads.

  2. Exercise 2: Research how Azure Stack or VMware can be used to build a private cloud. What are the key customization options available for managing sensitive data?

  3. Exercise 3: Explore the use of AWS Outposts or Azure Arc to build a hybrid cloud environment. Document how data is shared and synchronized between the public and private clouds.

Further Study Resources