You're headed to the cloud but there is still a dependence for onsite data center resources, welcome to your hybrid network architecture.
For a lot of businesses today, it seems far more cost effective to run some of their systems on local servers in onsite data centers at the “HQ” office. Yet, some cloud services like Microsoft Office 365 and others are becoming the standard for everyone.
What is Hybrid Network Infrastructure?
A hybrid infrastructure is an IT infrastructure design and environment that consists of a mix of on-premises data centers, private cloud and public cloud. Operating systems and applications can be deployed on any part of this environment, depending on the business needs and requirements.
Benefits of Hybrid network
SD-WAN is the new WAN and great for connecting multiple on-site locations but not ideal when you need to include cloud software and cloud storage. A SASE network is created for the purpose of including cloud services in a centralized security stack but not at connecting multiple on-site locations. So if you company, like most companies, are using both cloud services and on-site services in multiple locations, then a hybrid network is most likely what you need, in order to create the fast, secure, and stabile network that supports the entire organization, including remote work stations.
Hybrid Infrastructure, The New Norm
Avoid Big-Bang and Migrate in Phases
When it comes to extending on-premises environments to public clouds, a key consideration is migrating in phases to avoid a big bang event. Of course, this means there will be a hybrid network architecture during the transition phases at least. But, perhaps this hybrid infrastructure is the new norm and has advantages of its own.
Send User Traffic Through The Central Cloud-based Security Stack
Consider this, since we're headed to the cloud anyway, why not just scrub a lot of the user traffic through a centralized cloud-based security stack along the way thereby leveraging all the benefits of FWaaS, VPNaaS, DLP, CASB, etc. Not only does this free up the user to be located anywhere and still be secured, it frees up the business costs of replicating security appliances at every remote site.
This strategy could be leveraged to intelligently dumb down the remote sites to little more than wired and wireless layer 2 connections providing and a path to the SD-WAN/Internet. Simple and less expensive. However, sometimes you should keep your data center on-premise and sometimes you should migrate to a cloud-based solution, here’s a few examples to consider.
The Advantages Of The Old-School Local Data Center!
The Local Data Center Is Often Cheaper
Cheaper, especially if you are someone who has large data requirements, large bandwidth and/or low latency requirements. To move everything to the cloud can be both impractical and very expensive.
Cheaper, again! If you have unusual needs like 1000 seasonal temp workers that need a company email and ONLY a company email. Run your full time employees on O365 and your temp ones on your local Exchange to avoid the huge costs of the per user O365 pricing.
Maybe not everything can move to the cloud and we need to embrace hybrid IT. Therefore, let’s also embrace the hybrid network infrastructure needed to enable it.
5 Considerations For Your Hybrid Cloud Architecture
When considering the hybrid cloud architectures that dot today's IT networking landscape, some obvious similarities come into play. These 5 commonalities are seen across all market sectors and business demographics and will provide good inspiration for many future state considerations.
1. Managed Endpoint Security
Managed Endpoint Security solution in place so that all end devices are protected regardless of location or network connectivity path. Real talk, these systems can be an absolute beast that will quickly turn into alert cannons that get ignored by internal staff. 24/7/365 Managed security offerings are the right choice for just about every business these days. The best ones are anomaly-based systems that collect data from endpoint agents and then correlate, grade, and respond to security events.
2. SD-WAN At All Remote Sites
SDWAN at all remote sites, data centers and cloud-edge dynamically running traffic flows based on Application and User intelligence as well as network performance indicators like latency and/or instability. If you are still running MPLS and P2P circuits, it may be time to consider dropping those expensive options and running SD-WAN over a pair of large bandwidth, inexpensive direct internet circuits.
3. SASE For All Cloud Based Services
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) for all users so that every user traverses a centralized cloud-based and managed security stack and has direct access to cloud-based services and onsite data center resources.
4. Redundant ISP
Onsite data centers with no single points of failure. This normally means redundant equipment and Internet circuits. For those businesses providing Internet accessible services, we recommend redundant ISP’s running a dual-homed BGP architecture to ensure automatic failover between ISP’s and business public IP space autonomy.
5. Next Generation Firewall (NGFW)
Network segmentation for detection and response onsite. For many businesses, Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW) are leveraged to provide zone-based network segmentation and a centralized onsite security stack for East-West traffic flows, IoT protection and WiFi SSID segmentation. Put simply, the firewalls replace the core switches and become the layer 3 routing for all local VLANs.
HOW VALENTURE CAN HELP
Unbeatable Cybersecurity With Hybrid Network
Valenture help you achieve the highest level of cyber security for your business systems, data, and eliminate imminent risk of negative impact on your business operations as a consequence of cyber crime and hacking.
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