1. Select your cloud provider

We begin building our hybrid cloud by selecting a cloud provider. For example, By visiting vcloud.vmware.com you can view a list of Service Providers that participate in either the vCloud Powered or vCloud Data Center program(shown above). This allows you to purchase resources from a provider that is adhering to a single standard, and guarantees to provide you with a cloud environment backed by VMware vSphere. This is the single most important aspect when determining your cloud provider.
The key areas that need to be considered when looking at which cloud providers to use are;

• Criteria

o Dedicated Cloud

o Virtual Private Cloud

• Cost
• Security
• Compliance
• Capability

These are critical to selecting the right cloud provider. For example, lets look at compliance. If you select a provider that is based in the UK, but are required by the US federal government to keep all your data in the US, you will not be compliant with those requirements. All of the businesses requirements must be considered when choosing a provider.

 

2. Determine Public Cloud Sizing

Once you have chosen your cloud provider, you will need to determine the size of the cloud you will require. Some of these considerations are listed below:

• How many VMs
• Which Operating Systems will I use?

• Licensing Impact

• How many Catalogs will I have

• Do I have lots of templates I want in the cloud?

• Will I utilize Service Provider templates?

For example, if you look at how many templates you will have in a cloud, consider whether you will be uploading your own templates into the cloud, or will you utilize the service provider templates? If you are storing your own templates in the cloud, what is the impact on storage? If you are going to use the service provider templates, what is the impact on costs due to licensing?

 

3. Sign the deal

Once you have chosen your provider, it is time to sign the deal. This is done by either paying with a credit card, or by signing a minimum term contract. This will depend on the type of cloud you are purchasing, and the amount of resources you want to have available to you, and the type of SLA you require.

 

4. Design the cloud networks

There are a number of considerations when designing your cloud networks. These can be based on a number of requirements, which have been listed below.

• How many routed networks?

• Create multiple networks for different services

• Interfaces to utilize

• VPN Configuration

• Network Settings considerations

• Firewall Rules

• Firewall rules are always reciprocal

• Impact on my current environment
• Backup

5. Infrastructure deployment in the cloud

One of the key requirements for a hybrid cloud is deploying infrastructure in the public cloud. The list below shows some of the basic infrastructure requirements for building out a cloud environment.

• DNS

• Always need DNS

• Active Directory

• Local Authentication for services

• DHCP
• Backup

 

6. Workload migrations

Once you have the hybrid cloud configured and setup, it is time to look at migrating workloads. And there you have it, your very own Hybrid cloud.