Cloud First: Hybrid Cloud BCDR for MSPs
As the landscape of business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) evolves, hybrid cloud infrastructure is emerging as the future for MSPs and your SMB clients. Combining the strengths of both private and public clouds, the hybrid cloud offers MSPs greater flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency in BCDR strategies. Leveraging hybrid cloud, MSPs can customize solutions with oversight to ensure data integrity, rapid disaster recovery, and minimal downtime for clients.
Keep reading to get an overview of hybrid cloud environments for MSPs and see why they’re more than a trend—they’re a necessity for MSPs aiming to deliver top-tier BCDR services.
Table of Contents
When To Use What: Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud
When deciding between public, private, or hybrid cloud deployments, MSPs must consider their clients’ unique needs. While public and private clouds offer distinct advantages, hybrid cloud deployments provide the best of both worlds. By combining the scale and cost-effectiveness of public clouds with the control and security of private clouds, hybrid clouds enable MSPs to deliver custom solutions. This approach allows MSPs to optimize performance, meet diverse client requirements, and adapt to changing demands, making the hybrid cloud an ideal opportunity for BCDR resilience.
Public Cloud
Public cloud services offered by leading providers such as AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Rackspace enable MSPs to rent shared servers and resources for their clients. This model, known for its significant versatility, allows MSPs and their clients to pay only for the resources they actually use, making it a financially savvy solution. With the cloud providers managing the underlying infrastructure, MSPs can enjoy fast, reliable, and scalable services without the overhead of managing physical hardware.
The public cloud is a powerful tool for MSPs, especially when dealing with clients who require scalable solutions for non-sensitive workloads. It’s ideal for web-based email, CRM software, human resources management, and accounting applications. These use cases often demand scalability, variation, and ease of access, which the public cloud readily provides, empowering MSPs to meet their clients’ needs.
A common mistake MSPs make in the public cloud is putting all their data into one basket. Production and backup data should not be stored on the same server for fear that the public cloud will experience an outage and that backups will be unavailable for business continuity. The result can be significant and costly downtime, damage to client relationships, and loss of reputation in the channel.
To avoid this catastrophe, MSPs should virtualize public cloud VMs with targeted BCDR solutions like x360Recover Direct-to-Cloud for Microsoft Azure. Within this extension of x360Recover, Axcient offers native support for Azure VM backups using Virtual Office with runbooks and a virtual disk format for immediate failback. Now, even if Microsoft is experiencing an issue, backups are safe and secure in the Axcient cloud, ready for near-instant recovery. Third-party backup – recommended by most public cloud providers – protects data regardless of what the public cloud is managing.
>>>Get a Trial of x360Recover Direct-to-Cloud for Microsoft Azure
Private Cloud
Private cloud solutions offer MSPs and their clients complete control over their cloud infrastructure. In a private cloud, either the MSP or the client owns all aspects of the infrastructure, making them the sole tenant with full authority to customize and manage the environment to meet specific needs. This exclusive access provides a high level of security, control, and customization that is particularly beneficial for supporting core business applications.
Private clouds are ideal for use cases that require stringent security and performance standards, such as research, manufacturing, supply chain management, big data analytics, and mission-critical business functions. By offering the usability of a public cloud but in a controlled, isolated environment, private clouds allow MSPs to deliver tailored solutions that meet their clients’ exact needs.
With that said, the benefits of private cloud infrastructure come at a higher cost. The MSP or client is responsible for the entire hosting environment, including servers, infrastructure, and security measures. Despite the cost, however, the enhanced security, reliability, and customization options make private clouds a valuable asset for MSPs managing sensitive or critical workloads. At the same time, private cloud environments can be dangerous for the same reason as public cloud environments – you’re still keeping all your data and backup eggs in one basket.
Hybrid Cloud
A hybrid cloud is a versatile and increasingly attractive solution that combines two or more different types of infrastructure. It typically involves public cloud services alongside private cloud or on-premise infrastructure. This approach allows MSPs to harness the scalability and efficiency of public clouds while maintaining the oversight and cybersecurity of private infrastructures.
The fluidity of hybrid cloud architectures is a key benefit for MSPs. These deployments can vary widely, from combining a single public cloud with a private cloud to integrating multiple public clouds, private clouds, and on-prem systems. This level of adaptability makes the hybrid cloud ideal for SMBs looking to optimize IT strategies by leveraging the strengths of various environments.
Critical components of hybrid cloud architecture include the following:
- Robust network connections link private clouds, legacy infrastructure, and public clouds via VPN, WAN (with an encrypted VPN), or API, ensuring seamless data transfer in hybrid environments. MSPs are only truly running a hybrid cloud if these connections are complete. Instead, they’re running several clouds in parallel with each other, so the data may not be aligned across all clouds.
- Data integration involves synchronizing data across different infrastructures, often requiring specialized tools to maintain consistency.
- Unified management tools are crucial for efficiently overseeing the entire hybrid cloud environment and simplifying the management of disparate systems with different APIs, SLAs, and capabilities.
>>>Learn More: Get the Cloud vs. Appliance: BDR Deployment Playbook
Hybrid Cloud Deployments for MSPs
From losing resources to cloud complexity…
Hybrid cloud solutions are gaining traction in the channel because of their efficiency over BCDR management, and more MSPs have opted to provide hybrid and multi-cloud solutions over the past years. With that said, implementing a hybrid cloud can be difficult. One of the primary issues threatening operational overhead and resource allocation is managing the complexity of diverse client environments. Cloud service needs vary depending on business needs and existing infrastructure capabilities, making ensuring data integrity and accuracy challenging. These lapses can threaten compliance and data security or require regular upkeep to meet long-term retention.
Scalability is another challenge, especially when dealing with fluctuating client demands. With each new cloud service request, tech teams are distracted from daily tasks and required to learn new technologies, contributing significantly to tech debt. As complexity increases, so does cost management, making it impossible to boost margins, profits, or revenue.
…To customize environments with flexibility.
MSPs can create a hybrid cloud BCDR service by choosing different cloud types to support each layer’s necessary protection and management requirements. For example, if a client already has a private cloud infrastructure, they may want an additional on-prem environment for redundancy.
Equally as familiar, a client has on-prem BDR but lacks backup storage in the cloud. With a hybrid cloud, that client can back up in one of the public clouds or their vendor’s private cloud if those services are available. Utilizing private and public cloud services gives MSPs and your SMB clients maximum flexibility and usability.
>>>Learn More: How Axcient protects Microsoft Azure data
Constructing a Hybrid Cloud BCDR Environment
When selecting a cloud, MSPs have two options to consider:
- Store business-critical information on a private cloud.
- Use cost-effective alternatives like public cloud services for layers of data that are sensitive or utilized less frequently.
Based on existing infrastructure, cybersecurity threats, industry, and the client’s data, MSPs can help guide clients toward the most effective and efficient deployment available. Without an established private cloud, most deployments will use the division of layers available with public cloud services. This level of insight is also favorable for MSPs, enabling greater command and oversight of how data is stored, managed, and secured for uninterrupted business continuity.
Moving forward with a public cloud/hybrid cloud environment, MSPs must consider how each layer is managed according to individual factors and the demands of the client’s business. Consider the following infrastructure layers as you allocate resources across the infrastructure.
- User applications and services
- Application development and management tools
- Cloud infrastructure management services
- Networking
- Storage
- Servers and virtualizations
- Datacenter
Hybrid Cloud Benefits for MSPs
Now that you know the difference between public, private, and hybrid cloud environments and have a deeper understanding of hybrid cloud specifically, these are the overall benefits:
- Store data faster and cheaper in a hybrid cloud rather than trusting unsecured personal computers, which are constantly at risk from public Wi-Fi connections, accidental loss, and catastrophic damage that can cause permanent data loss.
- Anywhere access, productivity, and the economic promise of the cloud versus relying on legacy on-prem hardware, which inhibits output and puts data at risk with manual interventions that prevent operational efficiency.
- Get two benefits in one environment: the cost-effective computation power of a public cloud with the cybersecurity oversight of a private cloud.
- Enable client flexibility by allowing SMBs to leverage an MSP while using existing IT infrastructure to house critical data, meeting privacy, compliance, and BCDR requirements without breaking the bank.
- Only pay for extra computing when needed by “cloud bursting” in and out of different infrastructures based on varying day-to-day needs. Because the hybrid cloud allows businesses to move between private and public clouds, you could run an application in a private cloud or data center and move (or “bust”) into a public cloud when computing demand spikes.
>>>Learn More: BCDR Consolidation Guide for MSPs – When to Think Cloud First
Axcient x360Recover for Hybrid Cloud BCDR
Axcient x360Recover enables hybrid cloud efficiency by offering MSPs a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solution that integrates seamlessly with both on-prem and cloud environments through appliance and cloud-based deployment. Here’s how we’re doing it…
- Consolidated efficiency: The single sign-on, easy-to-use platform manages backups, disaster recovery, and business continuity across on-prem infrastructures and within cloud environments, simplifying management and reducing the need to oversee separate systems.
- Direct-to-Cloud backup: Back up client data directly to the cloud without needing local appliances to efficiently use cloud resources while minimizing on-prem hardware requirements and costs.
- Cloud failover: Instant cloud-based failover with runbooks for Virtual Office quickly initiates recovery operations in the cloud when on-prem infrastructure fails – ensuring minimal downtime and reinforcing business continuity.
- Automatic data replication: Automate data replication between on-premises and cloud environments to ensure that critical data is always available, accurate, and up to date across the hybrid cloud – reducing complexity and the need for manual data synchronization.
- Scalability: Scale resources on the x360 Platform according to client needs, leveraging the hybrid cloud’s ability to combine cost-effective public cloud resources with secure private cloud infrastructure.
Next Steps Toward Hybrid Cloud Efficiency
Overall, Axcient x360Recover streamlines hybrid cloud management enhances data protection, and ensures rapid recovery, making it a valuable tool for MSPs looking to optimize hybrid cloud efficiency. See how quickly and easily you can provide hybrid cloud services to stay competitive with clients, providing the ultimate protection against today’s cyber threats and barriers to profitability.
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