6 Multi-Cloud Architecture Designs to Create an Effective Cloud Strategy

Enterprises are increasingly looking to use the flexibility and variety of cloud options to reduce costs and benefit from the best web development services. The adoption of the cloud has increased at an alarming rate as the enterprise moves towards digital transformation.

Working across multiple clouds on different platforms presents a lot of challenges. CTOs must understand the basics of cloud technology.

This blog is the first in our series of blogs on multi-cloud architecture. This blog will discuss multi-cloud architecture design to meet different organizational needs. In the second blog, we also discussed effective multi-cloud management strategies.

Before you move to multi-cloud architecture, please have a basic understanding of cloud architecture models. PerfectionGeeks is an experienced cloud developer and consulting services provider. We can help you design the best multi-cloud strategy to suit your business. Talk today to reap the benefits of multi-cloud.

What does a basic cloud architecture look like?

The most common cloud architecture on the Internet is the three-tier architecture. The architecture comprises three significant tiers: a load balancer server, an application server, and a database server. Each tier has its own server.

In the cloud architecture diagram, we have used redundant servers at each tier for failover and recovery purposes. In production environments, this architecture is known as "redundant 3-tier architecture." This architecture is non-redundant and only contains one server per tier. It's used to test interactivity between tiers of your application.

This is a virtual server, but you can add additional servers depending on your application. Striped Volume was set at the database tier to enable faster backup functionality for my app.

Let's now take Netflix as an example.

How does Netflix stream such an extensive collection of videos without causing disruptions?

Multi-data centres around the globe back each other up in case of a disaster. Streaming from local data centres allows for a faster viewing experience.

Multi-data centres can be created in the architecture above, each with its own load balancer, application tier, and database tier. Horizontal autoscaling is the most exciting feature of the cloud. The load balancer allows you to increase or decrease the number of server resources as needed. Server arrays create a specific tier of architecture that can autoscaler based on predefined alert conditions.

Multi-Cloud Strategy

The multi-cloud strategy involves using multiple cloud services, such as AWS Azure, Google Cloud, and Azure. This allows you to use Google Cloud for US users and Microsoft Azure in Europe for European customers.

You could also use Azure SQL to manage your databases, Cognito to manage users, and Amazon EC2 instances for load balancing and application load balancing. You can also run your app entirely on Digital Ocean, but it is fully replicated and backed up on AWS.

You can run different apps on different clouds. Your development and testing environments can be on one cloud and your production environment on another. Multi-cloud management involves monitoring cloud deployment costs. Multi-cloud is a great way to reap the benefits.

However, multi-cloud benefits can only be enjoyed if you manage and monitor cloud deployments and costs.

Multi-Cloud Architecture

Multi-cloud architecture strategies and designs are an excellent choice for creating highly reliable and scalable applications. We are here to offer architectural guidance to migrate cloud-based systems that run on multiple independent clouds. Let's look at some of the most prominent multi-cloud architectures and their cloud migration.

Cloudification

This architecture allows application components to be hosted on-premise. After migration, they can use other cloud services from other cloud platforms to increase performance. This application component C1 was previously hosted on-premise, but it has now adopted multi-cloud and uses AWS storage service Amazon S3 for computing and Amazon S3 for storage.

Benefits: Increased availability through application re-hosting on multiple cloud platforms Also, it avoids vendor lock-in.

Multi-Cloud Relocation

This architecture allows you to re-host an application component on a cloud platform. To expand capabilities, you can also use cloud services from multiple cloud platforms.

After migration, the application component C1 was re-hosted on the AWS platform and is now available in Azure's environmental services.

Benefits: Increased availability through application re-hosting on multiple cloud platforms Also, it avoids vendor lock-in.

Multi-Cloud Refactor

An on-premises application can be re-architected to allow deployment on multiple cloud platforms to provide a better quality of service. This application must be re-architected using fine-grained components to allow for the independent deployment of high-usage parts. This allows for high-usage components to be deployed independently from low-usage components. Parallel design improves throughput on multi-cloud platforms.

Before migration, AC1 and AC2 were hosted on-premise. AC1 and AC2 are both independent integrity units. They are deployed on AWS using Amazon S3. AC2 can be deployed on Azure and can access any Azure cloud service it needs.

Benefits: optimal scalability and performance; a range of multi-cloud deployment options; and agility to respond to business and IT change.

Problems: Modernization of on-premise applications is done in isolation. Modernization is primarily performed for technical reasons. Multi-cloud environments may necessitate the re-evaluation of component architectures that were not determined from the ground up.

Multi-Cloud Rebinding

Re-architected applications are partially deployed across multiple cloud environments. This allows the application to continue functioning using a second deployment in the event of a failure on the primary platform.

Multi-cloud vs. hybrid cloud

Both may look the same at first glance, with others using these terms interchangeably. However, they are different. We'll explain their subtle differences, but they are very distinct.

Hybrid cloud

A hybrid cloud can be described as a combination of public and private clouds that connects to AWS and your on-premise systems. All mission-critical stuff is kept on-premises for security and privacy reasons.

Hybrid cloud: why?

To maximize the unique benefits of public and private clouds, specific use cases may require organizations to have both a private and a public cloud.

Cloud busting is a way for organizations to leverage cloud computing. This allows application workloads to burst onto the public cloud for additional computing resources after reaching a threshold in the private cloud.

Organizations should use public cloud resources to test a new application before investing in the capital required to launch it in a private cloud. An organization can move an application to on-premises systems once it has established a steady-state workload.

Cloud customers can use hybrid clouds to increase high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR). For example, in a disaster recovery scenario, an organisation could keep its production environment in a public cloud while keeping its recovery environment private. This allows it to be ready to spin up whenever necessary.

While the organization copies data to the public cloud and all other resources are available for operation, they only use them once they are needed. Hybrid cloud architecture allows for maximum flexibility to meet the requirements of organizations. It provides infrastructure so IT operations can be automated to enhance the user experience.

Multi-cloud

Multi-cloud is more than one cloud deployment of the same type. It can be in the private or public cloud and sourced from different cloud providers. Multi-cloud is used by businesses to mix and match public and private cloud providers to get the best possible applications and services.

Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud approaches do not have to be mutually exclusive. You can use both simultaneously. Many organizations seek to increase security and performance by having a more comprehensive range of environments.

Multi-cloud architecture differs from multi-tenant architecture. As we've already mentioned, the former refers to a software architecture with one instance of software running on a server and serving multiple tenants.

Conclusion

The multi-cloud architecture allows businesses to create secure, powerful cloud environments independent of traditional infrastructure. Multi-cloud is a way to maximise the impact. However, multi-cloud requires that you address the issues of app sprawl, unique portals, compliance, migration security, and compliance.

A multi-cloud strategy's main objective is to use multiple clouds to overcome the limitations of only one provider. Although it can be challenging to switch between cloud providers to complete tasks, especially at the beginning, cloud service providers are trying to make this easier. Multi-cloud computing will grow faster the more efficient it becomes.