What is Cloud Bursting and why is it Important?

Cloud Computing

Instead of using infrastructure to store the data and applications. Cloud computing stores and access data and applications via the internet. In other words, cloud computing is the best option for businesses for many reasons which include performance, increase in productivity, and cost-saving.

Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is popular cloud computing examples. The three general types of Cloud computing are:

• Public cloud: In the public cloud environment, the resources are shared between multiple users also known as tenants. The user can be an individual or an organization.
• Private cloud: A private cloud is dedicated only to a sole user or a single organization. The cloud provider’s data center or the organization’s location hosts the private cloud. Private clouds provide high performance and high security.
• Hybrid cloud: Hybrid cloud is a combination of both private and public clouds. Organizations can use hybrid cloud services to host sensitive applications on the private cloud for more security and their secondary applications on the public cloud.

What is Cloud Burst?

When the private cloud reaches its full resource capacity then the overflow of traffic is deployed to the public cloud to any interruption in service. Cloud bursting is the process of deploying an overflow of traffic to the public cloud.

The organization only has to pay for the extra resources when there is a demand for those resources. They will not extend the capacity of the private cloud every time there is a spike in IT resource demand which is why the key advantage of cloud bursting is economical savings.

While using the cloud burst technique, organizations might face some challenges while deploying resources to the public cloud.

Features of cloud burst:

• With the help of a trigger, the additional workload moves to the public cloud when reaching the limit.
• It continuously monitors the current load of the applications is continuously monitored.
• Maintains the application consistency between the private and public cloud.
• When the load reaches to normal level cloud bursting is turned off.

What is Cloud bursting architecture?

Cloud bursting architecture establishes a form of dynamic scaling. It scales IT resources available on-premise or private cloud whenever the predefined capacity thresholds are achieved.

The IT resources are pre-deployed but stay inactive unless there is a cloud burst. The architecture bursts back the cloud-based IT resources on the environment on-premise once they are no longer required.

Cloud burst is a flexible architecture that provides organizations with the option of using cloud-based IT resources to achieve higher usage demands. This architecture is based on an automated scaling listener and resource application mechanism. The automated scaling listener determines when there is a spike in resources and when to redirect the resources to the cloud.

Challenges of Cloud Bursting

Benefits of Cloud Burst

The benefits of cloud bursting are as follows:

• Cost: Organizations only pay for the extra resources when there is a spike in demand. No need to expand the capacity of the private cloud. Although the public cloud is cheaper than the private cloud.
• Flexibility: Cloud burst can adjust the cloud capacity quickly as per the needs. Cloud burst also frees up private cloud resources.
• Business continuity: The application can be deployed to the public cloud if the peak occurs in resources. Therefore, users do not face any interruptions in that application.
• Peaks in traffic: During holidays or during seasons organization is always expecting a sudden increase in traffic. Hence cloud bursting is ready for such a situation to handle the expected and unexpected spikes in resources.

Cloud bursting examples

There are various scenarios in which sudden expected and unexpected increase in load occurs. Some examples of cloud burst scenarios are mentioned below.

• During festival time or during the offer period there is a surge in the user account of E-commerce sites.
• On educational websites, there is a sudden spike of users on the result announcement day.
• Unexpected spike on tax sites and financial applications during month-end.
• Sales Campaigns of companies.

The Value of Cloud Bursting

Cloud bursting is about moving the application which is running on a private cloud into a public cloud. The cloud burst technique expands the capacity requirements to handle sudden spikes in IT resources demand.

There is various situation where organizations can have benefits from cloud bursting. For example, many organizations have data centers at various locations and it can happen that one location can experience heavy loads and it should meet application performance needs.

Although, public cloud availability can offer the chance to minimize the cost of buying and maintaining excess storage for all kinds of workloads.

Cloud Bursting Use Cases

Cloud burst can be a more useful option as IT becomes more refined.

• Retail Industry: In retail industries, holidays and the festive seasons can create a sudden spike in data. This sudden spike can be so much that the current data centers cannot be able to store it. Instead of extending the infrastructure for a one or two months spike, bursting into the public cloud can be cost-effective.
• Marketing Campaigns: Huge campaigns can also create a large amount of web traffic in a short period. Cloud bursting can help these campaigns to handle such situations.

Conclusion

Applications that are less sensitive use cloud burst techniques. While using cloud bursts one should consider security requirements, latency, and load balancing compatibility. With increasing growth in hybrid cloud adaptation, cloud burst platforms must improve in the future across all the applications.