A lot of companies are switching to multi-cloud to distribute their resources and reduce reliance on a single provider. Regardless of its benefits, managing all these different clouds is highly complicated – almost like rocket science – since each provider has its own platform-specific tools, billing structures, and security measures. So, how to know whether multi-cloud is the right move for your business?
To better understand the pros and cons of adopting this approach, we interviewed Stepan Slyshov, our seasoned DevOps engineer. He shares his hands-on insights into how operating multiple cloud environments can offer both flexibility and complexity and provides practical tips on managing costs in such a setup effectively.
What is a multi-cloud environment?
A multi-cloud environment, as the term implies, is a setup where your infrastructure uses resources from more than one public cloud provider. For example, a company may use AWS for development and testing purposes and Google Cloud Platform as a production environment. This approach allows businesses to select the most suitable tools for their specific needs.
Why do organizations decide to migrate to a multi-cloud environment?
The first and probably most obvious reason – it improves redundancy and reliability. If one cloud provider experiences an outage or part of your resources goes down, your services can continue running on other providers without disruptions.
Cost savings are another significant factor. By distributing services among different providers, you can select the most budget-friendly services from each provider. For example, you can use one cloud for cheaper computing and networking resources and additionally choose another one because it has better rates for databases and storage.
A multi-cloud strategy also facilitates greater flexibility and helps avoid vendor lock-in. Since you’re spreading your workloads across multiple cloud providers, you’re not tied to any particular vendor’s services and can switch providers or integrate new technologies relatively easily. This freedom can be especially beneficial in rapidly evolving projects.
What are the key risks associated with migrating to a multi-cloud environment?
Moving to a multi-cloud setup can pose several challenges:
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Increased complexity. Working with multiple cloud providers equals dealing with different interfaces, tools, and APIs that are located separately. As each platform has its own management console, monitoring tools, and configurations, it can be difficult to maintain a complete view of your infrastructure. And, of course, Coordinating configurations, deployments, and updates across several cloud providers will require additional effort and specialized knowledge.
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Security challenges. Keeping a multi-cloud infrastructure secure is naturally more complicated than taking care of a single cloud. You must secure and monitor each cloud provider’s endpoints and manage access controls individually to ensure that data is encrypted and protected. Additionally, it is important to address the security of inter-cloud communications, which involves managing networking and authentication/authorization across different services.
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Potential latency. When workloads are distributed across different cloud providers, communication between these locations can introduce latency. For applications that require real-time data exchange or high-speed processing, this added latency can affect performance and user experience. Also, balancing the load and optimizing request routing across various clouds will require careful configuration and optimization to minimize delays and keep everything running smoothly.
What factors should organizations keep in mind when planning a multi-cloud migration?
During the planning phase, it’s important to take into account several main factors:
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Initial cost and time investments. Migrating to several cloud providers may be pricey and time-consuming. You will have to plan where each workload will go, set up connections between different cloud providers, spin up resources in multiple locations, and migrate your data to these new locations. And let’s not forget about handling unified monitoring across all these clouds – it’s a lot of work.
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Staff capacity and expertise. A multi-cloud infrastructure demands more maintenance and attention. Therefore, you’ll need the right people to keep everything working smoothly. It is important to evaluate whether your team has the expertise to deal with such a complex setup, and if not, invest in training or even bring in additional staff.
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Business stage and growth rate. You should analyze where your products or services are currently standing and how quickly they are growing. If your current single-cloud setup or on-premises infrastructure meets your needs and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, a multi-cloud migration might not be worth it. You won’t lose much by staying where you are, but you also are not likely to gain enough to justify the time, resources, and effort spent on migration.
What are the best practices for managing cloud costs in a multi-cloud environment?
Monitoring and managing costs in a multi-cloud environment is a complicated task, but following some of the below recommendations may help you better manage your expenses.
Use cost aggregation tools
Since you’re dealing with various services across different platforms, each with unique billing structures, it’s smart to use cost aggregation tools like DataDog, Densify, or CloudZero. These tools give you a complete picture of your spending across all cloud providers, so you can track and optimize costs.
Understand payment plans early on
Before you dive into a multi-cloud strategy, take a good look at how different cloud providers charge for their services to strategically plan workload placements in ways that optimize costs. Just because you’re using multiple clouds it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically save money, you need to be intentional about it. Additionally, if you’re using a significant amount of cloud resources, consider negotiating discount deals with providers. Sometimes, the fact that you’re using multiple providers can be a bargaining point.
Stick to portable technologies
To maintain flexibility and control costs, use portable and flexible technologies. This way, you will be able to easily switch to a more cost-effective option if your current provider becomes too expensive.
Final thoughts
Even with its challenges, multi-cloud migration can be a smart move for many businesses. Using multiple providers can offer increased flexibility, boost resilience, and minimize the risk of service interruptions. That said, it’s still better to thoroughly analyze your organization’s needs and check whether you have the resources and expertise to manage a multi-cloud environment before making the final decision.