eBOOK

A Journey Through Hybrid
IT and the Cloudby Keith Townsend

A JOURNEY THROUGH HYBRID IT AND THE CLOUD

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION

4

1

DEFINING HYBRID IT

52

THE HYBRID NETWORK7

The Public Network

7

VPN

9

Dedicated Connection

10

Cloud Aggregator 

11

HYBRID DATA

12Data Gravity12

Where’s the Center 

13

Data Protection

13

COMPUTE

16

Home Lab vs. Public Cloud16

Application Analysis 

17

Decision Factors 

18

The Truth From the Field

19

MONITORING

20

Application Monitoring

20

SaaS Monitoring 

21

Don’t Forget Capacity Management 

22

3

4

5

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Table of Contents-Continued
6

ORGANIZATION

23

Step 1: Talk to the Business

23

Step 2: Talk to the Community

24

Step 3: Learn the Platforms

25

A Word on Budgets 

25

CONCLUSION

26

SOLARWINDS PRODUCTS FOR HYBRID IT

27

ABOUT THE AUTHOR28

REFERENCES

29

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Introduction
The public cloud allows end-users to consume mission-critical services without involving traditional IT. At some point, though, end-users realize that the public cloud still requires IT skills
or integration with on-premises IT systems.
The public cloud has had a definitive impact on enterprise IT operations. If your organization
hasn’t fully migrated to the public cloud, you may experience challenges. Whether the need is
to integrate Infastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings, such as AWS® or Software as a Service(SaaS) offerings, such as Workforce, the resulting environment complicates IT operations.
Therefore, you’ve been “voluntold” to embrace cloud at some level. Some aspects of your infrastructure remain in a traditional infrastructure while another part runs on cloud infrastructure.
Or, you are proactive and want to help ensure that your organization prepares for digital transformation. The result? You must embrace hybrid IT. What does that mean for the network, storage,
compute, monitoring, and staff? This eBook tackles each of these areas.
The desire is to give you, the reader, real-world examples of these challenges. Further, the goal
is to tell you what worked and didn’t work. So, you’ll get a lot of first person references referringto the author.

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Chapter 1: Defining Hybrid IT
It’s critical for infrastructure teams to develop a hybrid IT strategy. If you doubt your environment
has a hybrid IT infrastructure, chances are you are wrong. Hybrid IT isn’t limited to the vision ofa single pane of glass that allows you to seamlessly move workloads from your data center intoa public cloud service. Commonly referred to as hybrid cloud or cloud bursting, this vision is a
bit of a unicorn. The cloud-bursting idea originates from the way infrastructure teams design
and manage data centers.
Hybrid IT is the integration of on-premises IT services and cloud-based services. Hybrid IT
includes any combination of SaaS, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), or Platform as a Service(PaaS), with traditional IT infrastructure. Think of something as simple as internet access. At
one point in history, an internet outage remained an inconvience to operating a business. Thinkof how many business processes and services depend on cloud-based applications today. If
you lost access to the internet, what business processes suffer as a result?
Do you find that when a service outage occurs, you spend more time figuring out the source ofthe outage instead of the steps to resolve the issue? For example, an end-user calls complaining
about the inability to log into Saleforce®. Is the issue with Salesforce or is it your on-premises
Active Directory® service?
Infrastructure professionals may first consider their needs when thinking of cloud solutions.
The first service to come to mind is IaaS vs. PaaS and SaaS. Amazon EC2® popularized theconcept of virtual machine (VM) instances running in someone else’s data center. However,
the impacting growth is happening outside of the virtual machine construct. Business users
are beginning to consume cloud-based services directly. Cloud services operated and paid for
directly by business entities is the new shadow IT.

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Figure 1.1 – Areas IT Infrastructure has migrated application. Source: IT Trends Index 2017: Portrait of aHybrid IT Organization.

From a simple perspective, end-users just want to get their jobs done. According to a survey
conducted by SolarWinds, 74% of respondents migrated applications to the cloud. While theSolarWinds research is an impressive stat by itself, my experience bears out some of the driversof the migration of applications to the cloud. From my experience, the key shift is the focus on
the application. Public cloud offerings allow end-users to deploy applications and processes
that allow them to compete within their industry.
The simple way to consume cloud is via SaaS and PaaS solutions. Look no further than Salesforce as an example. Salesforce has spawned an ecosystem that competes with Oracle® and
SAP® business applications. Andreessen Horowitz® (A16) calls SaaS and PaaS the great equalizers. These services allow relatively small companies to leverage complex business processes,
such as cash-to-order, logistics, and payment technologies, without the incredible startup costs
and time associated with traditional infrastructure. Small startups disrupt previously entrenched
incumbents, using the capability of the public cloud.
It’s this simple consumption combined with a significant business value that has driven theend-users to adopt SaaS and PaaS. These applications soon become mission critical. It’s notuncommon for an IT organization to discover they have a hybrid IT environment via a priority-1(P1) ticket opened due to a cloud provider outage. While IT hadn’t offered the service directly,
end-users see cloud services as an extension of services provided by IT.
Welcome to hybrid IT. Regardless if a measured deployment is forced upon you by the business,
your environment is hybrid.
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Chapter 2: The Hybrid Network
Networking is the foundation of a successful hybrid IT infrastructure. There are three options
for connecting to a cloud provider’s infrastructure.
1. Public internet
2. VPN
3. Dedicated connection
I’ll provide an overview and example of each of the three, as well as some lessons learned.

PUBLIC INTERNET
In the public internet-based connectivity option, SaaS and PaaS application traffic traverses the
public internet. Browser-based SSL encryption is used to provide a secure encrypted connection
to the hosted data and applications.
One of my first experiences with hybrid IT involved a web-based leasing application. At the time,
I worked for a large global bank. The real estate investment division managed approximately
110-properties thoughout the United States. From a pure legacy perspective, the environment
offered a common operational challenge.

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Figure 2.1: SaaS routed via corporate VPN

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Standard (Unencrypted)
Internet Connection

Saas Service

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The company acquired and divested an average of five properties a month. Provisioning a secureconnection back to the bank’s infrastructure in a timely manner was a challenge given traditional
carrier options. Therefore, we settled on a meshed VPN solution that leveraged commodity
broadband connectivity. In a global financial organization, security is the top consideration.
Therefore, local site internet browsing flowed through the VPN tunnel. The flow is represented
in Figure 2.1.
The design proved effective for traditional web browsing. However, the latency from the rental
property office back to the enterprise data proved too great for the application. Ultimately, my
team had to file a security policy exception and route traffic out of the property’s local internet
connection for the SaaS application. The change in flow is represented in Figure 2.2. While thisapproach worked for a single application, it didn’t scale for multiple SaaS applications.

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Standard (Unencrypted)
Internet Connection

Saas Service

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Figure 2.2: SaaS via direct internet access

Looking at services such as Google® Docs and Office 365®, the industry has begun to address
the challenge of SaaS applications accessed over the web. Vendors offer hardware and software-based acceleration services to provide higher levels of compression and file caching to
reduce the impact of latency for SaaS applications

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VPN
A site-to-site VPN offers a higher level of flow control and security between the local data centerand public cloud. It’s common to have application landscapes spread across the private data
center and public cloud. A common example is having a development environment in the public
cloud and production in the private data center. VPN is an ideal connectivity option to allow
seamless access via the corporate network.

A note on IP addressing
Tempted to skip this section?
Don’t underestimate theimportance of IP addressing.

In the hybrid IT infrastructure, VPN inherits many of the same limitations as traditional IT WAN.
Some of the challenges include the inability to guarantee class of service, unpredictable latencies, and bandwidth contention brought by a shared medium. Adding to these challenges is alimited amount of bandwidth. For example, as of this writing, Azure® limits VPN connections
to 1.25 Gbps.

It’s important to understandthe network, addressing
options of each of the
major cloud providers. A
better plan is to have an IP
address scheme ready foreach major cloud provider.
Chances are, someone

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has a public cloud projectin-flight or already deployed.
Don’t get caught flat-footed
without a plan on how to

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Data Center

Saas Service
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SaaS User

Figure 2.3: Site-to-Site Cloud VPN

If VPN remains an option, many of the traditional remedies apply to VPN-based cloud connectivity. IaaS cloud providers offer WAN acceleration instances and SD-WAN products via theirmarketplace. Coupled with virtual appliances on the private side, these solutions offer a reduction of the impact of internet-based VPN.

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DEDICATED CONNECTION
I could write a small eBook on dedicated connection options for public cloud. I’ll keep this at ahigh-level that applies across each of the major cloud providers.
It’s important to understand that cloud providers don’t provide direct connectivity. Cloud providers rely on carriers and carrier-neutral facility (CNF) co-locations (colo) to provide high bandwidth, dedicated connections. Customers are responsible for provisioning access to the CNF
colo. From that point, the cloud provider arranges the cross connection to the carrier facilities
in the colo.

CNF

10GbpsAWS

SalesForce

Azure

O365

GoogleComputeOraclePRIVATE DATA CENTER

Figure 2.4: CNF

Connection options from the cloud providers infrastructure to the carrier facilities range between sub-1Gbps and 10Gps. Latency from the cloud provider to your data center depends onthe connection between the colo and the customer data center. Some applications may requireco-locating servers at the colo to ensure overall application performance.
I’ve experienced challenges even with dedicated connectivity. A typical challenge of large WANs
complicates hybrid infrastructures. In a private data center, network managers create physicalnetworks with multiple entry points. In my earlier example of 110-sites, in addition to the VPN
mesh for smaller sites, the network included MPLS connectivity for larger sites. The largest ofsites received dedicated point-to-point connections.
I’ve found a wide range of options for cloud connectivity. The most common challenge remains
latency. As is typical with corporate WAN, a combination of available bandwith and latency determines application performance. It’s important to investigate options with your network carriers.
Many carriers provide services, such as MPLS connectivity to a cloud provider. The public cloudprovider’s infrastructure becomes another site within the MPLS network. Also, carriers simplify
the connectivity options. Instead of a fixed 1Gpbs of 10Gbps connection, carriers offer wider
bandwidth options ranging from sub-1Gbps to 10Gbps.

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CLOUD AGGREGATOR
What if you want dedicated connectivity to not only SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS solutions, but a mixof these solutions from multiple providers? Some carriers offer cloud aggregation solutions.
The provider will host equipment in a CNF and aggregate several cloud providers. The carrier
advertises the public IP of the services sitting behind their network. If a user requests a Salesforce application, the traffic routes via the dedicated connection. In theory, the connection ismuch faster or lower in latency than accessing the application over the public internet. Smaller
SaaS providers may prove an exception.
SaaS proves a consistent challenge thoughout my cloud journey. Smaller SaaS providers may
host their services in private data centers or a small colo facility. You may find connecting toa CNF provides coverage for the majority of SaaS providers. However, smaller SaaS providers
may not use a major CNF. You must work with that provider directly to secure a dedicated highspeed network connection.

A NOTE ON DESIGN
I find myself constantly reorienting for hybrid design. A pitfall I’ve consistently experienced occurs when a public cloud network inherits a private data center’s design. Public cloud networks
don’t have the same limitations as the private data center. Think about instance connectivity. If
I have a web-facing server in the private data center, I need to concern myself with the available
bandwidth entering and leaving my data center. As a result, I may artificially limit the bandwidthof the server. Internet bandwidth isn’t a bottleneck in the public cloud. At least it’s not a problem
for most applications the typical enterprise may build. Most public cloud providers give as muchinternet bandwidth you are willing to purchase and consume.
The ample availability of bandwidth on the public cloud side and the lack of bandwidth on theprivate data center results in capacity planning and performance issues. Again, a topic too big
for just one chapter in an eBook, but important enough that I felt compelled to mention it. You
can find more on this and similar topics on my YouTube® channel or the well-produced SolarWinds Lab™.

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Chapter 3: Hybrid Data
Public cloud storage is cheap, deep, and performant. It is the honey that brings users to theservice. I talked with an executive who said that his company now has more data in Amazon S3™
than it generated in its first three years of operation. The company hasn’t grown that fast; thedata has grown. In the case of AWS, it’s cheaper to store the data in S3 than on enterprise-grade
storage within the data center. The explosion of data within both the private data center and the
public cloud presents a unique challenge to hybrid IT operations.

DATA GRAVITY
As data grows in the private data center, we’ve become accustomed to moving the compute
closer to the data vs. moving the data to the compute. Public cloud adds a layer of complexity
to the data gravity equation. In talking to a researcher using AWS for high performance compute(HPC) workloads, I asked him how could AWS be any better. He gave careful thought to myquestion. The return answer – a faster connection to AWS to move more data to the service.
Cloud service providers offer impressive compute capability against large data sets. Cloud based
machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence standout as services not easily recreated in theprivate data center due to the amount of compute required.
Cloud services make it possible for you to rent physical media, ranging from portable mini-storage arrays to mobile data centers, and have it delivered via semi-trucks into the public cloud.
The cost to import and store the data is the honey to entice the use of cloud services. Datatransfer via the internet or a dedicated connection does not usually add any costs except thosefor physical connectivity. As of this writing, the rental fee for a 50TB Snowball™ is only $200.
Conversely, moving data out of the cloud is quite expensive.

Figure 3.1: AWS offers the SNOWMobile to inject PBs of data

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Moving data is one of the most frustrating aspects of hybrid IT. Other challenges involve thecloud provider. Each cloud provider develops a variation of the strategy to charge for moving
data. You may also find that there is a lack of maturity regarding tools for data replication andsynchronization. I’ve found that when employing a multi-cloud strategy, it helps to consider thedata’s center of gravity.

WHERE IS THE CENTER?
The cheapest and fastest data transfers are the ones that don’t happen. Data portability starts
with understanding when not to transfer data. Conceptually, the best logical approach is to establish a center of gravity for data. That center may be a specific cloud provider’s object store.
When an enterprise application residing in the data center needs access, only the bits of datathat are needed to conduct a transaction are transmitted.
That’s the idea, at least. Even the best ideas break at scale. I’ve discovered that the center ofgravity for data lies in the nature of the individual application. Many organizations deploy dozens
of critical applications. In my research example, the center of gravity for the research data lived
in object storage in the cloud provider. The inverse is true for the file system that stores SAP
data in Oracle. The enterprise data center may continue as the center of gravity. In the hybrid
IT world, cloud-based workloads require access to SAP data, and the inverse use case applies.
Moving SAP data to the public cloud presents, in most cases, an insurmountable challenge. SAP
and ERP, in general, is heavy. The tentacles of ERP reach throughout many data center apps.
Simply moving SAP data to another data center creates a chain effect on other data center applications. In the example of the research data and SAP data, we’ve established two significant
centers of gravity for data. One leverages the object storage of a cloud provider, and the otherleverages the block storage of a traditional storage array.
Point solutions are available to solve problems in specific use cases. I haven’t come across a
product or design that supports the full complexity of hybrid IT. Most solutions I’ve encountered
leverage appropriately sized bandwidth and workload to provide access to data without having tomove it. When it’s impractical to move the compute to the data, hybrid IT organizations limit thecost of data copy by leveraging direct connections. Cloud providers offer reduced data transfer
rates when customers purchase direct connections.

DATA PROTECTION
While performing a disaster recovery (DR) assessment for a large enterprise, I discovered thatthe organization used hundreds of SaaS providers. SaaS both simplifies and complicates DR.
Premium SaaS providers offer DR options as part of their service level agreement (SLA). In ahybrid IT environment, architects must consider the availability of data from a variety of services.
SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and private data centers may all require different backup solutions.

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Data backup is a fundamental offering of any IT organization. Traditional on-premises solutions
may prove too limited for the hybrid IT infrastructure. A simple challenge is IaaS-based data.
While it’s possible to point a backup tool to a cloud-based VM, the limited bandwidth and datatransfer charges add complexity to the requirements.
Traditional backup solutions focus on block and file system-based data sources. The source systems consist of a combination of arrays, VMs, and bare metal servers. Advancements such as
block-based replication have enabled impressive long-distance disaster recovery. Once an initial
data set is replicated from one data center to another, only the blocks that change replicate overa distance. Workloads consisting of TBs of data benefit from the protection of storage-based
replication. Recovery point objectives (RPO) of close to zero become achievable, while translating
the capability across a hybrid infrastructure tends to be challenging.
When considering backup tools, it’s important to look to tools that are cloud aware. For instance,data deduplication (dedupe) before backup proves a critical feature. The cheapest and fastest
data transfer is the data that doesn’t require a transfer. If you maintain a copy of data on-premises, you don’t need to back up the same data. Your data protection tool should account for
redundant data. This approach mimics the intent of traditional enterprise solutions, which is toshrink the amount of data needed to hydrate DR in case of failure.
Another option for backup is inter-region replication or backup. Public cloud providers offer
reduced transfer rates to replicate data to a different region of the service. You can manuallyscript the replication, use tooling available in the cloud provider, or leverage a product in themarketplace of the cloud provider. Some backup vendors integrate on-premises backup solutions with cloud-based appliances to allow seamless operations and a consistent backup policy
across IaaS regions and private data centers.
SaaS-based applications are a bit more complicated. Some SaaS providers build applications on
IaaS instances delivered in a customer’s public cloud portal. The object storage or block storage
is directly accessible by backup tools. Most SaaS providers hide the underlying infrastructurefrom their customers. Without access to the raw storage infrastructure, customers must rely
on APIs, data exports, and approved third-party backup services.

SaaS Application Servers

Backup Server

S3 Object Storage/Raw Application Data
Figure 3.2: SaaS applications that leverage S3 storage

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A more fundamental question surrounding SaaS data is, “What do you do with raw data exports?”
The market for SaaS backup remains immature. I’ve not come across solutions that work universally across every SaaS provider. Even solutions that support multiple SaaS providers encounternatural limits imposed by differing SaaS architectures. The backup needs of a cloud-based ERP
stand in contrast to the backup needs of a SaaS-based cloud management portal.
Data portability remains a challenge, as well. A SaaS product may enable Salesforce.com databases to be backed up. However, Salesforce is the only provider of its CRM solution. While
CRM data is exportable to an XML format, and a backup application maintains several versions,targets for data restoration remains limited. If Salesforce were to go out of business, a datatransformation accompanied by a business process refactoring would occur as your organization transitioned to a new CRM platform.

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Chapter 4: Compute
One of the largest challenges in the hybrid infrastructure is the placement of workloads. Before
discussing workload placement, it’s worthwhile to discuss the appeal of public cloud computebeyond the obvious elastic attributes.
From a pure cost perspective, it’s difficult to justify the cost of a single public cloud instancewhen comparing it to internal resources. The fixed cost associated with an existing private cloudseemingly counters the appeal of public cloud workloads. A single Windows® 2012 R2 instancecan cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars a month to a few thousand dollars a month in
the public cloud. If you have an existing KVM environment, the cost of the same Windows 2012
R2 server is negligible.
Most enterprise IT organizations don’t charge back for VM instances. Even with the actual cost
exposed, business users select public cloud over traditional data center workloads. The key
is identifying the appeal of public cloud and appropriately placing the workload in the service
that best fulfills the requirements. For some insight, I thought it would be helpful to look at a
micro-use case.

HOME LAB VS. PUBLIC CLOUD
I have to admit that public cloud computing is addictive. I have a pretty respectable lab at homethat has three VMware vSphere® hosts, six physical cores, and a total of 96GB of RAM. It’s large
enough to run a VMware® vSAN storage cluster. However, I find myself consuming public cloudbased resources when I want to learn new technologies such as Docker®, Kubernetes®, or test
features in Windows Server®. Public cloud is void of virtually any friction.
The ability to go to a portal, select an instance type and size, hit deploy, and receive an instanceisolated from my production lab is powerful. I may use a couple of large instances the size of mylab for a few hours for less than $20USD. While the workloads are ephemeral, I save the golden
image to my image catalog and leverage the progress during a later lab. It’s simply quicker forme to spin it up and tear it down in the cloud vs. my home lab.
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Figure 4.1: AWS to Home Lab Network

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I do find certain labs best match my home lab. Specifically, the attributes of infrastructure labs
match the capabilities of my home lab infrastructure. Hypervisor testing is best suited for physical hardware. The ability to take a USB drive and install KVM on bare metal hardware is a very
different experience than simply consuming a virtualized infrastructure. Another home lab use
case involves a legacy application that relies on infrastructure for redundancy.
Legacy applications rely on redundant storage, network, and compute subsystems. It’s difficult
to replicate the redundancy of legacy infrastructure in the public cloud. If I want to test the
impact of a live VM migration on an Oracle application, I’m hard pressed to find a public cloud
option to perform that level of testing. It’s the legacy app use case that factors into the decisionof where to place a workload.

APPLICATION ANALYSIS
I need to quantify the difference between application analysis and application rationalization. Application rationalization is a business process, while application analysis is a technical process.
In application rationalization projects, business analysts help to identify overlapping business
functions between enterprise applications, as well as other business value indicators. The goalof an application rationalization project focuses on reducing the number of applications within an
organization. Application analysis is focused on determining the most appropriate environment
to host an application. Application rationalization is a business-driven activity and carries theinternal politics of any budget impacting exercise. The technical team drives application analysis.
Data collection for application analysis looks similar to application rationalization data. Treadcarefully in launching such a review. First make sure you communicate the intent of the interview
and data collection is to determine if a target application qualifies for public cloud vs. private
data center infrastructure.
This eBook focuses on the infrastructure portions of hybrid infrastructure. I make assumptions
that the application development and business teams determine the application requirements
and architecture. The application team feeds these requirements to the infrastructure team,and the infrastructure team determines the best platform to run the application. Of course, insome instances, a business decision to consume a SaaS solution occurs before a conversation with the infrastructure team. Again, this is an ideal state. Sometimes you are faced with abrownfield scenario where you inherent a pre-existing IaaS-based application. For the sake ofscope, I’ll focus on the ideal workflow. There are important takeaways for the brownfield in thegreenfield workflow.
For the reasons highlighted in the previous chapters, running a single application across multiple
clouds is difficult if not impractical. Most environments I’ve witnessed deploy applications in asingle platform rather than across multiple platforms. With that said, a critical first step begins
with application analysis.

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Application analysis reviews the technical attributes and dependencies of each application.
There are tools available to perform the analysis. While tools are available, I don’t want to undercommunicate the complexity or effort required to identify the appropriate environment for eachapplication.

DECISION FACTORS
From a high level perspective, there are several factors in determining the proper environment
for an application. The weight applied to each factor depends on the organization. The following
list represents the most critical factors I’ve noted in my journeys.
»» Cost• Based on infrastructure requirements, which application host is the mostcost-effective? Some organizations place a monetary value on risk. If risk translates into monetary value, it should be factored into cost.
»» Architecture• Is the application design appropriate for the targeted platform? An obvious
example is a stateful application, such as a Microsoft® SQL-based application
designed for redundant infrastructures. The inverse plays into the consideration
as well. If the application leverages Functions as a Service (FaaS), the private
infrastructure must provide a FaaS platform.
»» Dependencies• Are there any latency or application dependencies that marry the application
to the private data center or the cloud? See my repeated SAP example. If low
latency to SAP data is a requirement of a web-based transactional application,
public cloud may prove to be the least desirable environment.
»» Data sovereignty• Are there regulatory, legal, or administrative reasons to keep the data and processing of the data within a specific region?
»» Agility/Friction• Similar to my lab use case, friction and agility are factors. The ability to quickly
spin up and spin down (fail fast) workloads represent tangible business value.
The needs of the developer in many times outweigh the other attributes of theapplication analysis.

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THE TRUTH FROM THE FIELD

I’ve attempted to take a logical approach to determining where to run workloads. What’s the truth
from the field? Sometimes senior leadership gives the cloud-first command. In the cloud-firstcommand, it doesn’t matter the appropriate platform for the target workload. The result includes
dealing with imbalances in budgets, performance, and operations. The best advice, keep thesefactors at the ready. You’ll need them during the eventual application analysis that follows after
the impact of these imbalances rises to the top of the hill of challenges.

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Chapter 5: Monitoring
Configuring networks, moving data, and deploying services in the hybrid infrastructure is relatively straightforward. Successful Day-2 operations separate successful hybrid IT operations fromunsuccessful operations. Service monitoring continues to be one of the most critical responsibilities of an infrastructure team. Some portions of the hybrid cloud looks like traditional enterprise resources. However, the public cloud doesn’t offer insight into the physical infrastructure.
In the private data center, monitoring agents and integration provides detailed information fromthe hardware to the hypervisor up to the guest and the application. Organizations spend years
mapping and perfecting system dependencies. The signs of a mature operations team include
failure correlation. For example, a hardware failure results in the failure of a Windows host. The
Windows server hosts an Oracle database. While three failures occur, the mature operations
process identifies a single event with two impacted services.
Mature monitoring enables a reduced mean time to repair (MTTR) for services impacted byinfrastructure failure. Every layer of abstraction reduces the ability to correlate physical hardware
failure with service availability. Adding data center clustering solutions, including Docker andKubernetes, results in additional layers of abstraction.
Application
Kuberbetes, Mesophere, Docker/Containers
Guest Operating System

Monitoring/Alerting

Virtualization Platform
Physical Hardware Layer
Figure 5.1: Monitoring & Abstraction

The challenges presented by public cloud don’t result in the inability to reduce the MTTR. There’s
just a lot of work involved to achieve the same level of maturity as the private data center.

APPLICATION MONITORING
It’s difficult to take a monitoring tool designed for the private data center and point it acrosshybrid infrastructure and gain the same level of insights. I wrote earlier that application rationalization is a loaded term and project. Application rationalization examines the business impact
and overlap of applications. Likewise, a tools rationalization project must take place to examine
the overlap and applicability of tools for a hybrid infrastructure.
If existing tools lack hybrid infrastructure features, operations teams must weigh the value thatthe tool adds to MTTR. It’s critical that the ability to understand event correlation survives thetools selection process.
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IT tool engineers and architects must start at the application when evaluating tools. Monitoring tools require application awareness. The concept of application awareness demonstrates
a mature approach to monitoring. For example, it’s not enough to determine if an OS or evenapplication is responding. Application response time adds value to infrastructure monitoring.
Operation teams should make a habit of baselining application response times via snapshotsof operations. A solid monitoring solution creates alerts when baseline deviations occur. In
turn, operations teams investigate the underlying services against SLAs of the underlying infrastructure. It’s not a surefire method to determine the performance of the underlying system,
but application response time provides a data point.
While the physical infrastructure remains abstracted, operation teams gain insight via baseline
deviations. Noisy neighbor monitoring is an example. In a traditional environment, a VM hostprovides details on I/O bottlenecks, CPU utilization, and memory utilization. Based on the automated performance metrics, manual processes rebalance workloads based on the physicalstresses of the underlying infrastructure. Some tools take a baseline reading of cloud-based OS
instances. By using the baseline, monitoring tools determine the performance of the underlying
infrastructure, potentially identifying noisy neighbors on a VM host. Operation teams leverage
the data for workload placement.

SAAS MONITORING
I need to take a deep breath before launching into this section. SaaS monitoring is another oneof those areas that deserves its own chapter. I will, however, point you to resources provided by
the sponsors of this eBook. SolarWinds gave me complete editorial freedom and didn’t requirethat I mention any of their products. However, they do a great job of providing an overview ofcapability. Check out these resources.
Application Monitoring:https://traceview.solarwinds.com
SaaS Monitoring:https://www.solarwinds.com/pingdom
https://www.solarwinds.com/librato
There are several approaches to take when monitoring SaaS applications. The SaaS ecosystem
is vast. It’s difficult to determine if performance issues are related to large batch processes running in a customer environment, or performance issues experienced within the SaaS provider. I
chose to take a high-level view of this topic. The idea is to focus on tools that monitor baseline
performance.

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Some tools achieve the baseline by leveraging probes across several points of presence (PoP).
Some of these PoPs consist of existing customers with anonymized data. With real data fromreal customers, SaaS monitoring services provide a solid indication of SaaS provider-related
issues vs. a customer-related infrastructure. Other providers leverage synthetic nodes positioned
throughout the world to sample access times to SaaS providers. The benefit of the synthetic
approach includes a consistent sample methodology. Monitoring providers have the flexibilityof placing intrusive tooling on the probs. There is the potential of adding rich analytics as well.
A lack of standards across SaaS providers limits the breadth of providers covered. I’ve performed
infrastructure assessments for small SaaS providers. Some of the SaaS providers I reviewed
lacked the tools to monitor their infrastructure. It is difficult to find a SaaS monitoring provider
that offers customer insights.

DON’T FORGET CAPACITY MANAGEMENT

Performance monitoring bleeds into capacity management. The dream of hybrid IT includes
workload mobility. On paper, workload mobility makes sense. In practice, dependencies and data
gravity results in unrealized expectations. However, monitoring tools prove helpful in re-evaluating the best platform for growing data and applications. Many organizations find that applications originally positioned for public cloud mature and result in a new infrastructure profile.
Workloads originally suited for public cloud based on cost now favor private data centers basedon data from monitoring.
Monitoring tools lead to a better understanding of the underlying infrastructure. Architects dowell to mine monitoring data for capacity planning. Potentially, architects gain the ability to plan
the placement of workloads based on the business growth and a data-driven understanding of
the hybrid infrastructure.

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Chapter 6: Organization
There’s countless challenges when it comes to hybrid IT. So, where do you start when you’re
about to embark on your hybrid IT journey? I’ve spent a lot of time talking about technology
as well as some time spent discussing processes. What about people? Looking at big analyst
firms, the recommendation suggests breaking the IT organization into two segments. One tofocus on legacy technology, and another to focus on cloud technologies. It is a tempting model.
Challenges associated with a dual speed IT organization include having an extended ecosystem.
While your team posesses the technical skill to execute on hybrid IT, business functions, suchas finance, HR, and compliance, represent a short list of departments that interact with hybrid
IT. This creates a need to educate the entire organization on hybrid IT.
It’s difficult to train existing employees to adopt cloud operations. Throughout this eBook, I’ve
shared my struggles with adapting my mindset to include public cloud as part of daily IT operations. I consume hours of content each week to help me better understand cloud-based
operations and challenges. However, as I’ve noted, hybrid IT impacts organizations outside of
IT. There’s a need to help ensure that your staff understands the whole picture and fully supports the transition. In most cases, organizations simply lack the resources to maintain two
separate teams.
I can share the path I’ve taken and the techniques used by the teams I’ve led who have embraced
hybrid IT. I’ll share three areas of focus for any sized organization in undertaking change for the
hybrid IT infrastructure.

STEP 1: TALK TO THE BUSINESS
I’ve stayed away from the term digital transformation until now. The bottom line of any industry
is competition. Organizations of all sizes know that startups leveraging cloud-based technologies tend to disrupt traditional business models. Ridesharing, digital entertainment, and SaaS
applications are just some examples of startups that have successfully leveraged cloud-based
infrastructures.
Your co-workers understand these challenges. There is a real need to reduce friction related toconsuming the product or services of your organization. These business pressures drive shadow IT and unapproved SaaS solutions. It’s critical for your team to understand the challengesof your business. This seems obvious, but I’ve talked to many network engineers, virtualizationengineers, and storage architects who still believe that their career success solely depends on
perfecting their technology knowledge. For the network administrator, understanding BGP is
the same in manufacturing or retail, for example. While technically true, the drivers for hybrid IT
demonstrate the value of domain knowledge.

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For example, it’s important for the network administrator to both understand BGP and the business value of software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) in a company that frequently turns over retailproperties. In truth, the value of IT hinges on the ability to support the end business.
IT managers must lead the transformation and help introduce their teams to business users andprocesses. Hardcore engineers and engineering managers may benefit by thinking of this step
as a requirement. Hybrid IT enables agility, and its key engineers should understand the end goal.

STEP 2: TALK TO THE COMMUNITY
Reading this eBook is a good first step in looking beyond your walls. In the past, I’ve been criticalof engaging consulting companies because there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to hybrid IT.
Large consulting companies prefer toolboxes that borrow from previous engagements. Thatsaid, there is enough data for consulting companies to use to help you evaluate your infrastructure and create a roadmap for maturity. Receiving insights across your industry and the entire
IT landscape helps you move forward. Large analyst firms also provide similar insights, even if
they are not as tailored to your environment.
Attending conferences is another way to engage the community. Listening to speakers, such as
myself, gives you a high-level understanding of the challenges of hybrid IT. But the relationships
you forge in the hallways of the convention center may prove to be even more productive. If you
participate in social media, here’s a short list of community members to follow.
»» Mark May @cincystorage»» Nigel Poulton @nigelpoulton»» Theresa Miller @24x7ITConnect»» Stuart Miniman @stu»» Alastair Cooke @DemitasseNZ»» Exchange Goddess @ExchangeGoddess
I’ve met network automation engineers from webscale companies in the lunch line of small
conferences. I still benefit from the insights of those conversations. While I don’t have the web
scale challenges of these large enterprises, I’ve taken the lessons from their journey and appliedthem to my environments.
Not every engineer or administrator attends every event. It’s critical to develop an internal forum
for sharing lessons from the extended community. Depending on the size of your organization,
the forum includes options, such as a dedicated Slack® channel, a wiki page, or lunch and learns.
The task of wrapping your organization’s mind around hybrid IT is a major piece of work. It’s
best to break the work into distributable chunks.

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STEP 3: LEARN THE PLATFORMS
An output of the previous step results in a focus of potential platforms for your infrastructure.
Technology is technology. At the end of the day, engineers should learn the specifics of theplatforms. If you are a leader, you have options for supporting the acquisition of these newtechnology skills.
Formal training is always an option. The AWS Architect is one of the most popular public cloudcertification paths. It is a great start in learning public cloud concepts. Hybrid IT material by AWS
focuses on AWS services. Microsoft offers Azure training. Microsoft has a vested interest in the
success of hybrid IT. The AzureStack platform provides shops vested in Microsoft’s Azure cloud
a way to mix on-premises and public cloud environments. Likewise both Microsoft and Cisco
introduced cloud-focused certification tracks. Microsoft has the Microsoft Certified Systems
Engineer (MCSE) certification focused on cloud platform infrastructure. Cisco offers a Cisco®
Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and Cisco Certified Network Professional cloud tracks.
Providing a lab is fairly frictionless and straightforward. As I noted in the computing chapter,
I use public cloud resources to augment my home lab. Microsoft provides enterprise license
agreement customers with several Azure credits to test or leverage the service. AWS and Google
offer free levels of their services to familiarize your staff with the offerings.

A WORD ON BUDGETSManagers on the cloud journey often tell me that funding hybrid IT is a real challenge. The lion’sshare of IT infrastructure budget is spent on “keeping the lights on” versus spending budget
allotments on transformational projects. Finding the money to fund new monitoring solutions,labs, training, and consulting is difficult.
I advise managers to look at the operations portion of their budget. As I noted earlier, companies
such as Microsoft are embracing public cloud as part of their enterprise license agreement.
Almost every vendor includes some cloud component in their updated license program. It’s
worthwhile to look through these agreements to identify training and service credits. The approach limits your choice of solutions, but provides an opportunity for transformation given
budget restraints.

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Conclusion
Hybrid IT is a real thing. IT organizations can choose to embrace hybrid IT or maintain the statusquo. I don’t believe status quo is an option. Internal customers proactively search out technicalsolutions to real business challenges. We have reached a point where we can add value to ourbusinesses by joining the conversation, or watch from the sidelines and let our businesses moveon without IT support.

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SolarWinds Products for Hybrid IT
Server & Application Monitor is server performance, capacity, and hardware health monitoring
software that allows you to monitor more than 200 applications from a single dashboard. Itfeatures automatic application discovery and dependency mapping. Download your free trial
now at SolarWinds.com.
Storage Resource Monitor is multi-vendor storage performance and capacity monitoring software. It gives users real-time storage visibility into NAS and SAN arrays, including EMC®, NetApp®, Dell®, Hitachi®, and many more. With SRM, you can see all storage layers, including
virtualization and applications.
Virtualization Manager is a performance and monitoring tool, that provides monitoring for both
vSphere® and Hyper-V® environments. Virtualization Manager allows you to be proactive, savetime, and money with a centralized management dashboard.
Pingdom makes your websites faster and more reliable with powerful, easy-to-use uptime andperformance monitoring. With Pingdom, you gain the following features: uptime monitoring,
real user monitoring, transaction monitoring, page speed monitoring, immediate alerts, and API.
Librato helps to easily aggregate cloud metrics into real-time monitoring dashboards for instantvisibility. Key features include: 40+ turnkey integreations, 80+ community integrations, dataprocessing & correlation, amazing data visualization, and alerts.

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A JOURNEY THROUGH HYBRID IT AND THE CLOUDABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keith Townsend is Principle of The CTO Advisor LLC. The
CTO Advisor LLC is an advisory and media creation organization focused on providing education and research forenterprise IT. Keith is a respected analyst with 20 years of
IT experience. You may recognize Keith from his work on
TheCube, as a contributor to Wikibon, or as a frequent Tech
Field Day delegate. Keith also regularly contributes to leading publications, including TechTarget, ZDNet, and Techrepublic. Keith, along with his co-host Mark May, produces
an enterprise technology podcast for Enterprise Architects
who are responsible for IT Infrastructure. You can find the
podcast and Keith’s blog at www.thectoadvisor.com

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References
Here’s a link to other resources you may find useful in your hybrid IT journey.
1. Community-led free technical training online https://vbrownbag.com/
2. Keith’s YouTube channel https://youtube.com/virtualizedgeek
3. Solarwinds Labs YouTube program https://www.youtube.com/user/solarwindsinc
4. Tech Field Day Technology Deep Drive Sessions http://techfieldday.com/events/
5. The CTO Advisor Podcast http://www.thectoadvisor.com/podcast
6. Cloudcast podcast http://www.thecloudcast.net/
7. PacketPusher’s Datanuaghts podcast
http://packetpushers.net/series/datanauts-podcast/
8. Netflix techblog https://medium.com/@NetflixTechBlog
9. Amazon Web Services youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/AmazonWebServices
10. SMB focused IT Blog https://24x7itconnection.com/
11. Virtual Design Master cloud/virtualization community
http://www.virtualdesignmaster.io/
12. VMware User Group http://vmug.com© 2017 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.
The SolarWinds, SolarWinds & Design, Orion, and THWACK trademarks are the exclusive property of SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC
or its affiliates, are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and may be registered or pending registration in othercountries. All other SolarWinds trademarks, service marks, and logos may be common law marks or are registered or pending
registration. All other trademarks mentioned herein are used for identification purposes only and are trademarks of (and may
be registered trademarks) of their respective companies.
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