What is Cloud Bursting and Why is it Important?

Cloud bursting is a hybrid cloud configuration that allows you to use both private and public cloud resources to handle fluctuations in IT demand. In this blog post, we will explain what cloud bursting is, how it works, and why it is important for your business.

What is cloud bursting?

Cloud bursting is a technique that enables you to run your applications on a private cloud or an on-premises data center, and then "burst" to a public cloud when you need more capacity or performance. For example, if you have a web application that normally runs on your own servers, but experiences a sudden spike in traffic due to a marketing campaign or a seasonal event, you can use cloud bursting to redirect the excess traffic to a public cloud service, such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. This way, you can avoid service interruption, performance degradation, or costly overprovisioning of your own infrastructure.

How does cloud bursting work?

Cloud bursting works by using a load balancer or a gateway that monitors the utilization of your private cloud resources and automatically redirects the traffic to the public cloud when a predefined threshold is reached. Alternatively, you can manually trigger cloud bursting when you anticipate a high demand for your application. The public cloud resources can be preconfigured and ready to use, or they can be provisioned on-demand using APIs or scripts.

There are different types of cloud bursting scenarios, depending on the architecture and the compatibility of your application. The simplest scenario is when your application is stateless and does not require any data synchronization between the private and the public cloud. In this case, you can easily scale out your application by adding more instances in the public cloud and load balancing the traffic across them.

Another scenario is when your application is stateful and requires access to data that resides on your private cloud or data center. In this case, you need to ensure that the data is replicated or synchronized between the private and the public cloud, which can introduce latency and complexity. You also need to consider the security and compliance requirements of your data when moving it to the public cloud.

A third scenario is when your application consists of multiple components or microservices that communicate with each other. In this case, you need to decide which components can be bursted to the public cloud and which ones need to stay on the private cloud. You also need to ensure that the communication between the components is secure and reliable.

Why is cloud bursting important?

Cloud bursting offers several benefits for your business, such as:

• Cost savings: You only pay for the public cloud resources when you use them, instead of investing in extra capacity that you may not need most of the time. You can also take advantage of the lower prices and discounts offered by some public cloud providers for short-term or spot instances.
• Scalability: You can easily scale up or down your application to meet changing demand patterns and seasonal variations. You can also leverage the global availability and redundancy of the public cloud to improve your application's reliability and availability.
• Flexibility: You can choose the best combination of private and public cloud resources that suits your application's needs and preferences. You can also experiment with different public cloud providers and services without committing to a long-term contract.

Cloud bursting challenges

While cloud bursting offers many advantages, it also comes with some challenges that you need to consider, such as:

• Compatibility: Your application may not be compatible with the public cloud platform or service that you want to use for cloud bursting. You may need to modify your application's code, configuration, or dependencies to make it work on both environments.
• Complexity: Cloud bursting adds more complexity to your application's architecture and management. You need to monitor and control both your private and public cloud resources, as well as their integration and synchronization. You also need to deal with potential issues such as network latency, bandwidth limitations, security risks, or data inconsistency.
• Governance: Cloud bursting may affect your compliance with certain regulations or policies that apply to your data or application. You need to ensure that you follow the best practices and standards for data protection, encryption, auditing, logging, backup, recovery, etc., when using both private and public cloud resources.

Conclusion

Cloud bursting is a powerful technique that allows you to optimize your IT resources and improve your application's performance and availability. However, it also requires careful planning and execution to ensure its success. If you are interested in learning more about cloud bursting or implementing it for your business, contact us today for a free consultation.