The Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Cloud Platform
By Shantanu Kaushik
An efficient and successful IT operations is all about responding to developers’ need for resources and services in a timely and cost-effective manner. IT operations teams need to ensure the security and reliability of the software, and also maintain an infrastructure that enables the whole Developer and Operations practice to be in sync. A streamlined service is what makes everything possible. It takes care of the challenges faced by different segments of the whole deployment and management cycle to ensure an agile and scalable solution.
Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Cloud solution does just that. In this article we will focus on different aspects and products by Alibaba Cloud that help you build your own hybrid cloud platform by assembling the best in class industry leading products and services like containers, Kubernetes, Apsara Stack and many more.
Alibaba Cloud’s solutions are built to meet all the expectations of a cloud team, perfected through our own experience as well as by working closely with our customers. Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Cloud offers all the flexibility and benefits of a public cloud and gives you additional control over your resources, which you can expect in a private cloud.
Some of the key benefits of the Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Cloud Platform are:
- High Scalability
- Unlimited Storage
- Cost Effective
- Flexible and Scalable
Hybrid Cloud Platform | Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Cloud can be used anywhere, with numerous success stories associated with its name. This highly versatile solution provides a highly unified Apsara Stack console as a management portal for the hybrid cloud environment. Though it can also be integrated with third-party consoles.
The image below illustrates how a hybrid cloud platform works:
Let us talk a little about all the products and services that make this platform successful.
Apsara Stack | Alibaba Cloud
Introduction
Apsara stack is a full-stack cloud platform that is based on Alibaba Cloud’s distributed architecture. It is an extension of Alibaba Cloud Public Cloud and brings all the functionalities of the public cloud to Apsara Stack. It lets you locally deploy public cloud products and services in any environment and enables one click expansion of there services to the public cloud. This property of Apsara Stack enables the user to enjoy a Hybrid Cloud service with ease.
Alibaba Cloud made its way leading into the evolution cycle of cloud computing. This enabled all the organizations and businesses who chose Alibaba Cloud for their efficiency and evolutionary expertise, to leverage a large-scale cloud computing solution in their own data centers.
Apsara Stack works like a hyper-scale cloud computing and big data solutions provided by Alibaba Cloud in a local environment. The consistent hybrid cloud experience guarantees continuity of business by provisioning resources as and when required. Apsara Stack also provides an on-premises deployment option. This deployment can continue to operate, be managed, and provide services while not being connected to Alibaba Cloud for an infinite time.
Features
Apsara stack is backed by industry leading products and services from Alibaba Cloud. It is one of the prime movers in the field of digital transformation for Governments and industries.
- Elasticity
Resources are combined and are flexibly scaled out to help minimize costs and to add to the overall performance and stability.
- Data
Deals with large amounts of data by with a data shared service that allows for data flow between vertical businesses.
- Agility
Uses microservices and Internet to fuel the innovation of traditional enterprises is among the prime influencers of Apsara Stack.
- Smart
Reinvents business models and allows for smart global business transformation.
Product Support structure resembles this reimagine table:
Let us look at a visualization to look at the how the Apsara Stack works:
Alibaba Cloud ZStack | Alibaba Cloud
Apsara ZStack (Apsara Agility Elastic Compute Service) is an open-source hybrid cloud solution that has the ability to setup a cloud platform in approximately 30 mins. It proves Restful APIs for private cloud functionality and SQL -like query APIs to query resources. Apsara ZStack is known for its cost efficiency. It concentrates hardware resources and integrates information system architecture to increase the utilization of server resources.
Alibaba Cloud ZStack has the capacity to create 100+ VM instances in minutes. It can manage more than 10000 hosts and in excess of 100000 VM instances on a single management node. It can also match with request of more than 10000 APIs per second.
High-availability is again a strong of Apsara ZStack. Management nodes and VM instances are made available for any and all requirements. This ensures that all variables like network, computing, and storage services work properly.
Features
- Disaster Recovery
- One-Click Cloud Migration
- Security and Protection
- Unified Hybrid Cloud Management
- Network Interconnection
- Public Cloud Value Added Services
Storage and Backup
Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Cloud platform is backed by their industry leading Object Storage Service (OSS) and Network Assisted Storage (NAS) service. With that Cloud Storage gateway, Hybrid Backup Recovery (HBR), Hybrid Disaster Recovery (HDR), and Hybrid Cloud Storage Array (HCSA) can be integrated with the OSS for a highly-secure, available and flaw free storage and Backup solution. For better durability and reliability, the technology supports deduplication and compression. Apart from Hybrid cloud platform, it can also be deployed on-premises, and cross cloud platform.
This seamless storage and backup service ensure almost no downtime. With that the performance and reliability factor give the Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Cloud platform a perfect system to achieve maximum reliability.
Let us check this visual representation to look the work-flow model:
Conclusion
Organization are transforming and making their way with strategic migration to better and well-equipped computing solutions. A good solution makes the most difference when it comes to a viable practice. Be it DevOps or any other such practice, the unique benefit of leveraging best of both worlds, i.e. Public and Private Cloud, clearly grants the hybrid cloud an edge over traditional models.
Interoperability, security and performance make it a lucrative solution. Having said that, Alibaba Cloud ensures a platform as robust as this with support from its leading products and services make it an industry leader,
Next In Line
- Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud — Alibaba Cloud
- Best Practices for Building a Hybrid Cloud — Alibaba Cloud
The views expressed herein are for reference only and don’t necessarily represent the official views of Alibaba Cloud.
