Multi-Cloud Administration Guide E-Book

Jeroen Mulder

• Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 445

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

This is a comprehensive resource designed for IT professionals and cloud architects navigating the complexities of multi-cloud environments. As organizations increasingly adopt multi-cloud strategies, this guide provides essential frameworks and practical insights into managing and optimizing cloud resources across major platforms, including AWS, Azure, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud.
The book begins with an exploration of Cloud Adoption Frameworks (CAFs), offering a structured approach to cloud adoption that emphasizes governance, security, and operational excellence. Subsequent chapters delve into key aspects of cloud administration, such as virtualizing and managing connectivity, storage, and compute resources. The guide also addresses advanced topics like creating interoperability between clouds, managing data governance, and ensuring data security across multiple cloud platforms.
In addition to technical insights, the guide covers critical areas like access management, cloud security, and compliance automation, equipping readers with the knowledge to secure and streamline multi-cloud operations. By offering best practices, real-world examples, and in-depth analyses, this book empowers professionals to efficiently manage multi-cloud environments and leverage the full potential of cloud technologies.

Leseprobe

MULTI-CLOUDADMINISTRATION GUIDE

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MULTI-CLOUDADMINISTRATION GUIDE

Manage and Optimize Cloud ResourcesAcross Azure, AWS, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud

JEROEN MULDER

MERCURY LEARNING AND INFORMATION

Boston, Massachusetts

Copyright ©2024 by MERCURY LEARNING AND INFORMATION.An Imprint of DeGruyter Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted and revised with permission.

Original title and copyright: Multi-Cloud Administration Guide.Copyright ©2024 by BPB Publications. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-93-5551-555-1.

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J. Mulder. Multi-Cloud Administration Guide: Manage and Optimize Cloud Resources Across Azure, AWS, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud.ISBN: 978-1-50152-265-9

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TO

My wonderful wife, Judith

and

my girls, Rosalie and Noa

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Reviewer

Chapter 1: Using the Cloud Adoption Frameworks

Introduction

Structure

Exploring the Business Challenge of Multi-Cloud

Introducing CAFs: How to Use Them

Strategy

Plan

Prepare

Adopt

Govern

Operate

Deep Dive in the CAFs of Azure and AWS

Frameworks by GCP and Alibaba Cloud

Lead

Learn

Scale

Secure

Similarities and Differences

Monitoring Multi-Cloud and Keeping Track of Value Propositions

Measuring Business Metrics

Introducing Best Practices in Monitoring

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 2: Virtualizing and Managing Connectivity

Introduction

Structure

Building Blocks in Networks

Virtual Switching

Routing

Virtual Firewalls

Load Balancing

Cloud Network Operations

Deployment Concepts SD-WAN, Edge, and SASE

Managing Networks in Multi-Cloud

Setting Up VPN

Setting Up Direct Connections

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 3: Virtualizing and Managing Storage

Introduction

Structure

Types of Storage Virtualization

Storage Concepts in Public Clouds

Managing Storage Assets in Multi-Cloud

Protecting Data from Data Loss

Using Third-Party Storage Products

Managing Storage Lifecycles and Tiering

Automating Tiering

Automating Scaling of Storage

Managing Data Access

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 4: Virtualizing and Managing Compute

Introduction

Structure

Comparing Compute Models in Public Clouds

Key Considerations for Choosing Compute

Rightsizing Compute in Deployment and Autoscaling

Rightsizing Using Autoscaling

Exploring On-Premises Propositions of Public Cloud

Azure Stack and Azure Arc

AWS Outposts

Google Anthos

Extending VMWare

Deploying and Managing Compute Assets

Automating Infrastructure Management

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 5: Creating Interoperability

Introduction

Structure

Defining Interoperability

Requirements for Interoperability

Explaining the Difference Between Portability and Interoperability

Solutions to Create Interoperability in Public and Hybrid Clouds

Working with Open Compute Project

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 6: Managing Data in Multi-Cloud

Introduction

Structure

Defining a Data Strategy

Planning Data Migration

Managing Data Governance

Improving Data Quality

Data Quality in AWS

Data Quality in Azure

Data Quality in GCP

Data Quality in Alibaba Cloud

Securing Data

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 7: Build and Operate Cloud Native

Introduction

Structure

Understanding Cloud-Native Concepts

Organizing Cloud-Native with DevOps

Explaining Microservices

Managing Releases in Microservices

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 8: Building Agnostic with Containers

Introduction

Structure

Understanding Container Technology

Pitfalls and Risks of Container Technology

Container Services from Major Cloud Providers

Developing and Provisioning Containers Using Industry Standards

Guided Plan to Develop and Deploy Containers

Exploring Container Management Using a Single Pane of Glass View

Managing Security in Container Platforms

Deep Dive into Container Monitoring and Log Management

Collecting and Analyzing Logs

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 9: Building and Managing Serverless

Introduction

Structure

Understanding the Serverless Concept

Developing and Provisioning Serverless Functions from Architecture

Using CI/CD for Serverless Deployments

Managing Multi-Cloud Environments with Serverless Frameworks

Following Best Practices in Serverless

Deep Dive into Monitoring Serverless

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 10: Managing Access Management

Introduction

Structure

Exploring the Basics of Access Management

Understanding Managed Identities

Challenges in Access Management

Using Cloud Tools for Access Management

Understanding and Working with PAM

Privileged Session and Privileged Behavior Analytics

Creating and Storing Secrets

Managing Secrets and Keys in AWS and Azure

Managing Secrets and Keys in GCP and Alibaba Cloud

Avoiding Pitfalls in Managing Secrets and Keys

Defining, Implementing, and Managing Role Based Access Control

Monitoring Access Control

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 11: Managing Security

Introduction

Structure

Working with Cloud Security Frameworks

Example of Implementing CIS Guidelines for Azure

Choosing the Security Tools

Managing Security Through One Lens

Introducing Cloud Security Posture Management

Keeping Track and Up to Date with Security Trends

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Chapter 12: Automating Compliancy

Introduction

Structure

Understanding Compliance in Multi-Cloud

Automating Governance

Using RPA for Automating Compliance

The Next Step: Using AI for Compliance Checking

Conclusion

Key Points

Questions

Appendix

Index

PREFACE

Cloud-first is not a strategy, but a statement at best. For starters, the cloud does not say anything about your business strategy. It does not say anything about the goals you want to achieve by using cloud technology. Yet almost every company on earth is using the cloud in some form. And then the trouble starts: how do we manage our workloads in the cloud? Many companies find out the hard way that managing the cloud is something different from managing the more traditional IT. That is what this book is about: managing workloads in multi-cloud.

In this book, the reader will get guidance and hands-on instruction on operating multi-cloud environments. We will discuss all the various aspects that come with multi-cloud, such as interoperability between different cloud environments, networking configuration, data integration, and of course security requirements. There is no way of talking about cloud without addressing security and compliance.

This book provides new adopters of the multi-cloud approach with numerous frameworks and ideas for an efficient and sound multi-cloud infrastructure. Throughout the book, you will hopefully find solutions, techniques, designs, and administrative guidance for various types of multi-cloud environments, using AWS, Azure, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud. Why these? Because these are the most popular cloud platforms.

This book will hopefully help you in understanding the necessary steps in multi-cloud management. Let us now review the chapters in the book.

Chapter 1: Using the Cloud Adoption Frameworks – provides an overview of the various Cloud Adoption Frameworks (CAF) that help in setting up and manage environments in AWS, Azure, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud. CAFs contain pillars such as security, identity and access, cost, and governance. We will discuss the CAFs of the major providers and show readers how to use them to get maximum benefit.

Chapter 2: Virtualizing and Managing Connectivity – covers all aspects of connectivity in the cloud. Networking in the cloud is software based. In this chapter, you will learn what cloud networking is, with guidance to software building blocks, deployment models and operating networks in cloud computing. Concepts such as SD-WAN, SD-LAN and edge will be discussed. We will also introduce micro-services and how network virtualization can help with this.

Chapter 3: Virtualizing and Managing Storage – explains one of the major benefits of cloud: the almost limitless amount of storage that is available to us. But cloud is a shared resource model, so we need to understand how storage works in cloud, how to make sure that we get the right amount of storage and the right type, with the right performance. Cloud architects and admins should know about I/O, pooling, and the different storage types. All of that is covered in this chapter.

Chapter 4: Virtualizing and Managing Compute – covers the basics of compute, starting with virtual machines, but also discussing serverless and containers as cloud-native technologies. Public cloud providers offer a wide variety of compute power with different deployment models. We need to understand how compute in cloud works regarding for instance CPU and memory. In this chapter, we will also look at on premises offerings by major cloud providers.

Chapter 5: Creating Interoperability – explains why interoperability is one of the biggest challenges in multi-cloud. In this chapter, you will learn how to overcome these challenges between public clouds and between public and private clouds. The chapter discuss various solutions and frameworks such as Open Compute.

Chapter 6: Managing Data in Multi-Cloud – starts with defining a data strategy in multi-cloud. We need that strategy to determine where data is stored, who and what may access data, what the usage of data is as well as how to prevent events such as data-leaks and data loss. You will learn about data quality, security and integrity and data gravity.

Chapter 7: Build and Operate Cloud Native – further explores cloud-native technologies such as serverless and containers. Cloud native development offers solutions to create scalable applications using, for instance, micro-services, container and serverless concepts, and deploying declarative code. This chapter also contains an in-depth explanation of setting up micro-services architectures and how to manage these.

Chapter 8: Building Agnostic with Containers – covers all aspects of developing and managing containers in cloud platforms. Since Kubernetes has evolved to become the industry-standard, we will study setting up and managing Kubernetes clusters with Docker containers in more detail. Next, we will explore the requirements to monitor our containerized workloads.

Chapter 9: Building and Managing Serverless – helps in understanding the concept of serverless, providing guidance in developing and provisioning serverless functions. In this chapter, we will learn how to define our environments as functions, that we can deploy and manage as serverless environments.

Chapter 10: Managing Access Management – introduces the cornerstone of security in multi-cloud: access management. We do not want just anyone to be able to access data and applications in the cloud; we want to have control and thus, we need access management. The chapter provides an overview of various tools that we can use in multi-cloud, but also addresses concepts as privileged access management and Identity as a Service.

Chapter 11: Managing Security – discusses the principle of the single pane of glass view to monitor and manage security. With distributed environments, we must use frameworks that cover the various cloud technologies and tools that can manage various clouds.

Chapter 12: Automating Compliancy – starts with explaining why compliance in cloud might be more of a challenge than in traditional IT, where we have workloads mostly on premise. Governmental bodies, certification authorities and auditors are setting compliancy guardrails to allow usage of major cloud providers. In this chapter, we will learn how to use automation and even AI to ensure that our workloads in the cloud remain compliant.

Companion files with code samples and color figures from the book are available for downloading by writing [email protected].

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all, I have to express my deepest gratitude to my beloved and wonderful wife, my girls, and my entire family and dearest friends. This has been a difficult year with health issues whilst planning for the move to a new house. Thank you for standing next to me, even when I have not been the best version of me. I am truly sorry.

Next, I also have to thank my employer Fujitsu for granting all the time I needed to get well again. And thank you all at my publisher for all your patience.

And of course: a big thank goes to you, dear followers and readers. You’re making all the effort worthwhile.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After his study in journalism, Jeroen Mulder started his career as an editor for the economic pages of Dutch agricultural newspapers. From 1998, he got involved in internet projects for Reed Business Information, creating websites and digital platforms. Highly attracted by the possibilities of the new digital era and the booming business of the internet, Jeroen decided to pursue a career in digital technologies. In 2000, he joined the IT company Origin, as a communication specialist for a group designing and developing cross media platforms. Origin evolved to AtoS where he fulfilled many roles, lastly as principal architect. In 2017, he joined the Japanese IT services company Fujitsu as Senior Lead Architect, with a focus on cloud and cloud native technology. From May 2020, he held the position of Head of Applications and Multi-Cloud Services for Fujitsu Netherlands, leading a group of frontrunners in digital transformation. In 2021, he was assigned Principal Cloud Architect at Philips Precision Diagnosis. He returned to Fujitsu in the summer of 2022 as Principal Consultant for the Global Technology Solutions Business Group, focusing on hybrid IT.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Fouad Mulla is a seasoned Lead Consultant, Digital Leader, and Cloud Security Architect with 15 years of professional experience in the digital and software industry at global corporations. Fouad excels in designing and implementing comprehensive cloud solutions across multi-cloud platforms. He has assisted numerous businesses in effectively governing and safeguarding their information, proactively identifying cybersecurity risks, and enabling them to make informed and strategic business decisions. Fouad is CISSP, CISM, CASP+ certified.

CHAPTER 1

USING THE CLOUD ADOPTION FRAMEWORKS

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the cloud. Or better said: welcome to the multi-cloud. The major public cloud providers, such as Azure and AWS, offer cloud adoption frameworks (CAF) to help customers set up and manage environments in their clouds. Their usage should be secure and efficient. CAFs are good guidance for architects and engineers. These frameworks contain pillars such as security, identity and access, cost, and governance.

This chapter first discusses what multi-cloud is and next studies the CAFs of the major providers, showing how to use them to get maximum benefit. It also discusses monitoring, including keeping track of (business) key performance indicators(KPIs). At the end of the day, value should be created from our cloud, and value needs to be measured.

STRUCTURE

This chapter discusses the following topics:

■Exploring the business challenges of multi-cloud

■Introducing CAFs: how to use them

■Deep dive in the CAFs of Azure and AWS

■Frameworks by GCP and Alibaba cloud

■Similarities and differences

■Monitoring multi-cloud and keeping track of value propositions

EXPLORING THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE OF MULTI-CLOUD

Before diving into the challenges of multi-cloud, multi-cloud must be defined. Multi-cloud refers to the practice of using multiple cloud service providers to distribute an organization’s computing resources and applications. By leveraging the strengths of different cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and others, businesses can optimize their IT infrastructure for performance, cost, security, and scalability.

The rise of multi-cloud strategies has become an important topic in today’s IT landscape for several reasons:

■Flexibility and avoiding vendor lock-in: Utilizing multiple cloud providers allows organizations to prevent reliance on a single vendor, offering them the flexibility to choose the best services and pricing structures for their specific needs.

■Optimal resource allocation: Each cloud provider has unique strengths and weaknesses. A multi-cloud approach enables organizations to allocate resources based on the specific capabilities of each platform, ensuring optimal performance and cost-effectiveness.

■Enhanced security and compliance: Distributing data and applications across multiple cloud environments can help organizations reduce the risk of data breaches, meet regulatory requirements, and adhere to industry standards.

■Increased resilience and redundancy: A multi-cloud strategy can improve business continuity by providing redundancy in case of outages or failures in a single cloud environment. This ensures that critical applications and data remain available and operational.

■Innovation and competitive advantage: Leveraging multiple cloud platforms allows organizations to access cutting-edge technologies and tools, fostering innovation and providing a competitive edge in the market.

Most companies are multi-cloud, even when they have a single cloud strategy. The staff will work with Office365 of Microsoft, store customer contacts in Salesforce, the book travels through SAP Concur, and have meetings through Zoom. At the same time, the backend systems of companies might be hosted on a public cloud such as AWS or Azure or on servers in a privately owned data center. Thus, companies use software as a service(SaaS), platform as a service(PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and all these different environments must be managed. This is the IT challenge of multi-cloud.

Multi-cloud strategies are motivated by the desire to optimize IT infrastructure using different cloud platforms’ unique strengths. Benefits include flexibility, optimal resource allocation, enhanced security and compliance, increased resilience and redundancy, and access to innovative technologies. These advantages make multi-cloud strategies relevant and valuable in today’s competitive digital landscape.

But what is the business challenge of multi-cloud? Among others, there are the following:

■Cloud sprawl: Cloud sprawl is when a company lacks visibility into and control over the spread of its environments in various clouds, including instances, services, or providers across the company.

■Lock-in, including data gravity: A mistake that companies often make is assuming that multi-cloud decreases the risk of lock-in. That risk still exists, but now it is spread over multiple clouds. This risk is directly related to portability. It is not as easy as it seems to migrate native services across different clouds. Next, the issue of data gravity plays an important role. Applications often need to be close to the data. Having data sitting in a different cloud than the application may lead to issues such as latency. Moreover, rules for compliancy can cause issues. Think of laws that prohibit companies from having data outside country borders, limiting the choice of clouds.

■Lack of multilingual knowledge: If a company uses various clouds, it also means that it has to know how to use these clouds. Although the principles of public cloud are largely the same, clouds such as AWS and Azure still do differ in terms of operating workloads on these platforms. The company will need resources, engineers, and architects to cover the different technologies used.

■Dynamics of changing cloud features: Cloud is evolving fast. During the yearly large conferences such as Ignite for Azure and re: Invent for AWS, these providers launch hundreds of new services. Over the year, even more new features and services are added to the portfolio. Not everything might be of use to a company, but it needs to keep track of features and releases of new services to be able to improve its own cloud environments. This is not trivial, and certainly not when a company is operating multi-cloud. In most cases, cloud providers will help their customers in getting the best out of the cloud by adopting the right technologies.

■Integration: Using environments on different platforms might lead to integration issues simply because workloads cannot communicate with each other. This can be due to network issues such as bad routing and because technologies are not compatible.

Of course, there are many more challenges to overcome. Think of network performance and latency, security and compliance, governance, and policy management, not to mention controlling costs and the cloud vendor relationship as part of the governance. All these items are captured in the cloud adoption frameworks. During the course of this book, these items will be discussed in more detail.

Following best practices and guidelines from CAFs can help to at least address these issues and design solutions to overcome them.

INTRODUCING CAFs: HOW TO USE THEM

What is a cloud adoption framework, and how should it be used? Maybe a better first question would be: why use a CAF? The answer to that question is: because as long as the guidelines and guardrails as defined in the CAF are followed, it will be a lot easier to get support from the cloud providers when encountering issues. It is fair to say that the CAF provides a universal language between the cloud provider and the customer. The CAF is basically a set of documentation with guidelines and best practices on how to best design and operate the cloud.

Before we dive into the details of the CAF for Azure and AWS, which are the leading public clouds, we will study the generic pillars of the CAF. The six pillars of the CAF are as follows.

Strategy

Moving to the cloud just because you can is not a strategy. Cloud first, for that matter, is not a strategy. Using cloud technology should be valuable to a business. This means that there must be a business justification. This section discusses similarities and differences between the various CAFs. A business will have an ambition laid out in business goals. The next step is to define how the business can achieve those goals and, in the end, fulfill the ambition. The architecture will lay out what the ambition will look like (sometimes referred to as the North Star architecture), but more importantly, how to reach the goals. What steps must a business take, and in what order? That defines the business strategy.

Plan

Despite what a lot of people think, the cloud is not solely about technology. Of course, technology is an important part of the CAF and the forthcoming architecture, but cloud adoption is even more so about aligning business processes, people, and technology. In adopting the cloud, workloads such as applications will likely move to a cloud platform. Ask these questions in drafting the plan:

■What do we use?

■Why do we use it?

■Who uses it?

■When do we use it?

The answers will help in defining the strategy to migrate workloads and applications to the designated cloud platform. One essential question is: does it bring added value to move a workload to the cloud? Followed by the question: how will it bring that value? This is where the following five Rs is important:

■Rehost: This is lift and shift. Workloads such as applications are not modified but migrated as they are to the cloud platform.

■Replatform: This is lift and shift too, but this time some modifications are done. For instance, a business chooses to keep the application as it is, but some parts are shifted to managed services by the cloud provider. Think of having the databases managed through a managed service such as Relational Database Service (RDS) by AWS.

■Refactor: By refactoring an application, the application is modified. Services are replaced by cloud-native services, for instance using container technology or serverless functions. This often means a redesign of the application, such as from a monolith architecture to microservices.

■Retire: An outcome of the strategy or planning phase might be that an application is obsolete and can be retired.

■Retain: There might also be workloads and applications that cannot be migrated to the cloud for various reasons. The application must be close to the data source or the machine that it operates, which is typically the case in operational technology (OT). Think of manufacturing or healthcare. There might be restrictions on using public clouds because of legal compliance, or an application is critical to the business but simply too old to move to the cloud. These might all be reasons to retain an application, meaning that they are not touched at all.

Prepare

The next step is to prepare the cloud platform that will host the workloads and applications. Typically, this starts with setting up the landing zone in the designated cloud. The landing zone is the foundation. If we are building a house, we need to know what the house looks like before we can lay out the foundation. It is the same for the cloud. We have to know what sort of workloads we will be migrating to the cloud to define and design the landing zone. During the course of this book, we will discuss the landing zone extensively.

Adopt

This is the phase where the workloads are migrated to the cloud according to the plan and the migration strategy that have been defined. We can either lift and shift workloads as-is or transform the workloads and adopt cloud-native services.

Govern

We need an organization that is able to manage the cloud and the workloads in the cloud. These are necessarily the same thing. In the govern phase, organizations might want to form a cloud center of excellence (CCoE) with a specific platform team, which manages the cloud, and application teams that manage the specific applications in the cloud.

Operate

This is the phase where organizations will monitor the workloads and make sure that these are performing in the optimal way, following the best practices of the cloud provider and fulfilling the business requirements.

Most CAFs have added two more pillars to these six: security and sustainability. These might be debatable since both security and sustainability should be intrinsic and taken into account for every workload that is migrated to a cloud platform. In other words, security and sustainability are part of all six stages in the CAF. Yet, both AWS and Azure have security as separate pillars in the CAF, as is explained in the next section.

DEEP DIVE IN THE CAFs OF AZURE AND AWS

First, take a look at the CAF of AWS. It includes the generic pillars of the CAF, but AWS calls these the foundational capabilities:

■Business: The business perspective helps to set the strategy for digital transformation. The AWS CAF takes the need for digital transformation as the starting point. In other words: it is not the question of whether a business must digitize but how. The business perspective helps define how cloud investments can accelerate this transformation.

■People: The people’s perspective is mainly about transforming the culture of a business. Digital businesses need people with a growth mindset and people who are willing to learn continuously and change accordingly. One remarkable aspect of the people’s perspective is cloud fluency. People need to understand the cloud, in this case, AWS. It might require a workforce transformation.

■Governance: The governance perspective is all about project and program management, guiding organizations in their journey to AWS, and making optimal use of AWS services. This includes risk management and cloud financial management or FinOps.

■Platform: This is, obviously, about the cloud platform itself and how to build it in AWS. There is one golden rule that applies here: AWS is responsible for the cloud, the customer for what is in the cloud. AWS provides its customers with a toolkit to build a virtual private cloud on their platform. It is up to the customer to use these tools and build a scalable, resilient environment to host applications and data. The CAF will help with best practices for platform, data, and application architecture, including continuous integrationand continuous delivery (CI/CD) through (automated) pipelines that integrate with AWS.

■Security: As said in the previous section, AWS and Azure have separate pillars for implementing and managing security in the cloud. It includes identity and access management (IAM); threat detection; protection of infrastructure, data, and applications; and the management of the security postures in the cloud.

■Operations: From the business, requirements will be set concerning performance and reliability. This must be monitored and managed. Typically, IT operators manage environments using IT service management frameworks such as ITIL, including incident, change, configuration, and problem management. Observability is key, next to fast detection and response. The AWS CAF specifically mentions AIOps, predictive management through artificial intelligence (AI).

These capabilities are required to go through cloud transformation value chains. The value chains lead to the following business outcomes:

■Reduction of business risks

■Improved environmental, social, and governance (ESG) values

■Growth of revenue

■Increasing operational efficiency

To reach goals in business outcomes, businesses must go through a transformation. AWS specifies four transformation domains:

■Technology

■Process

■Organization

■Product

All these domains will continuously change and transform. But by using cloud technology, these transformations can become more agile: adaptable and scalable. If we put this all together, we get the CAF of AWS, as shown in the following Figure 1.1:

FIGURE 1.1 High-level representation of AWS Cloud Adoption Framework.

A whitepaper about AWS CAF can be found at: https://aws.amazon.com/professional-services/CAF/.

As we will see in Azure as well, the CAF is not a one-time exercise but more of a lifecycle. That makes sense if we realize that the business, and the cloud itself, constantly changes with updates and new features. AWS presents this as the cycle from envisioning to aligning, launching, and scaling. The business envisions how the cloud can help in achieving business goals, aligns this with the foundation capabilities, launches the new services and products as minimal viable products (MVP) or a pilot, and lastly, expands it to production. From there, the cycle starts over again.

Microsoft Azure presents the CAF as a cloud adoption lifecycle, too, starting with the definition of a strategy. The strategy is all about defining the desired business outcomes and the accurate justification to start the cloud journey. The Azure CAF is represented in the following Figure 1.2:

FIGURE 1.2 High-level representation of Azure Cloud Adoption Framework.

To get started with the Azure CAF, Microsoft recommends working from scenarios. These scenarios have been chosen from various business standpoints. Perhaps one remarkable scenario is the hybrid and multi-cloud scenario. It is remarkable since this scenario focuses on businesses that will have more than one cloud and even cloud combined with on-premises environments. Using the CAF, businesses can establish unified and centralized operations across these different clouds and their on-premises data center. The CCoE is an important element in this scenario, combining knowledge of various cloud solutions and integrating these into one unified set of processes and best practices for architecture.

One other special scenario is desktop virtualization, allowing customers to migrate to workplaces to Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD). Using the CAF guidelines, businesses can implement AVD instances in Azure and integrate this with Windows and Office365, the latter being a SaaS proposition.

These scenarios all follow the same approach that is set out in the CAF: strategy, plan, migrate, manage (operate), and govern. The business will formulate the ambition and the goals that are worked out in a plan. Next, the workloads—for instance, the virtual desktops—are migrated. An organization centralized in the governing CCoE will manage the workloads compliant with the business requirements.

The Azure CAF pays extra attention to so-called antipatterns. There is a list of antipatterns to be found on https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/antipatterns/antipatterns-to-avoid, but there are two in particular that we like to mention here:

■IT as cloud provider: This is the antipattern where the business treats its IT organization as the cloud provider. It is not the cloud provider; they are using technologies in the cloud. Keep in mind that the cloud provider is responsible for the cloud, the customer for what is in the cloud. For example, the failure of a region in Azure or any other cloud is not the responsibility of the IT organization. Monitoring and managing the resiliency of specific workloads, where these failover to another region, is the responsibility of IT. That, however, starts with business requirements and the forthcoming architecture to design the resiliency of that workload.

■Inaccurate out-of-the-box security assumptions: Again, cloud providers offer a massive number of tools that will help organizations to secure workloads in the cloud. Public clouds are likely the best-secured platforms in the world, but that doesn’t mean that workloads are secured by default. That depends on how the customer applies security guardrails, guidelines, and usage of tools to protect applications and data in the cloud. The assumption that the cloud provider automatically takes care of that is wrong.

The appropriate use of the CAF will help avoid these pitfalls and antipatterns. The next section describes the CAFs of Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud, which are a bit different from AWS and Azure.

FRAMEWORKS BY GCP AND ALIBABA CLOUD

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Alibaba Cloud also have versions of a CAF. These will be studied in this section. GCP defines its CAF in four themes and, with that, takes a completely different approach to cloud adoption.

Lead

This is about leadership from sponsors in the business, which supports the migration to the cloud. It also includes the teams themselves and how they collaborate and motivate one another in a successful transition and transformation to a cloud platform.

Learn

Cloud adoption is so much about technology but more about adopting a new way of working. Companies will have to learn how public clouds work. In other CAFs, this is typically gathered under people or as part of the operating model, including a center of excellence. Moreover, the staff needs to be trained and upskilled. This goes beyond technical skills.

A company and its employees also must learn to understand how, for instance, financing works in the cloud. What financial models are applicable in the cloud? Typically, organizations start with pay-as-you-go in the cloud, but there might be situations where reserved capacity might be a much better choice. Reserved capacity often means that a company still needs to invest or at least confirm and commit that it will use resources in the cloud for a longer period.

Migrating to the cloud is a learning process in many aspects. Not only is the technology different from traditional IT, but applications and data are managed differently in the cloud. Migrating to the cloud is a huge change and requires transformation and change management. Governance, security, development, operations, and financial management: these are all part of the transformation. This book focuses mainly on the technical management of cloud environments, but it is good to keep in mind that cloud adoption involves more than just technology.

Scale

One of the most important and obvious reasons for companies is that the cloud offers scalability. GCP focuses on limiting manual processes as much as possible. Hence, automation is a major topic in the adoption framework. Workloads and services in the cloud must scale automatically but are always triggered by business processes. This is referred to as event-driven. For example, an event can be a customer that places an order on a Web site. That will trigger the process of payment and delivery process of the product. When a company launches a new product, this might lead to a peak in orders. Using automation, the cloud services will automatically scale to facilitate the peak and make sure that the Web sites and associated applications keep performant. As soon as traffic decreases again, automation will also take care of scaling down, avoiding unnecessary costs.

Secure

Performance and cost control are important, but there is one more item that is at least equally important or perhaps even more important. The fourth pillar in the CAF of GCP is, therefore, security. Security starts with identity and access management but also includes several tactics and techniques to protect workloads and services in the cloud.

Next, the framework addresses three levels of adoption: tactical, strategic, and transformational. Simply put, tactical concerns the individual workloads in the cloud, but there is no plan to leverage cloud-native services, enhancing automation and scalability. It is a simple lift and shift of workloads to the cloud, causing no disruption to the company. Basically, the cloud is used as a traditional data center.

On a strategic level, there is a plan to automate individual workloads and start decreasing the manual efforts to manage these workloads. On the transformational level, organizations use the cloud to innovate, using automated development and deployment pipelines to enable regular releases of new features to products or new products as a whole. The cloud now has become essential in shortening time to market, decreasing the cost of sales, and, with that, increasing revenue. The cloud is adding value to the business and, with that, has become part of the digital transformation of the business. This is discussed in the final section of this chapter.

Putting the four pillars and the three stages together results in the cloud maturity scale that GCP uses. It can be seen in the following Figure 1.3:

FIGURE 1.3 High-level representation of Google Cloud Adoption Framework.

This cloud maturity scale can be used to define where the organization stands and what the ambition should be. The following example makes this a bit clearer:

■Scale on a tactical level means that environments are hardly scalable. There is a lot of manual work involved in managing the workload.

■On a strategic level, an organization might already use automated templates to deploy workloads.

■On the transformational level, all workloads scale automatically, using blueprints from CI/CD pipelines, including automated deployment and scaling scripts. Manual work is very limited.

We can do the same for the three other pillars. This will help architects define what is needed to get the most out of the cloud and help businesses by adding value. A whitepaper with Google’s approach to the CAF can be found at https://cloud.google.com/adoption-framework.

Like Azure, Alibaba Cloud presents the CAF as a journey and cloud lifecycle. The first step is setting the strategy. Essential in setting the strategy is answering the question of why the organization should move to the cloud; Alibaba calls this Cloud Adoption Motivation. Quite obviously, this starts with business requirements. Next, Alibaba Cloud provides examples of motivations such as:

■Speeding up global delivery of applications.

■Reduction of costs: Remarkably, Alibaba Cloud argues that most costs in the cloud are operating expenditure (OPEX), where upfront investments are not needed in contrast to capital expenditure (CAPEX). A characteristic of CAPEX is the need for upfront investments. This might be true for a lot of cloud services, but there are situations where upfront investments will be required, for instance, when reserving resources for a longer period in the cloud. The shift from CAPEX to OPEX in a cloud computing context has significant business impacts:

•Financial flexibility: OPEX models allow organizations to pay for services as they use them, providing greater financial flexibility and reducing upfront investments typically associated with CAPEX.

•Scalability: OPEX models enable businesses to scale resources up or down based on demand, improving cost efficiency, and reducing the risk of overprovisioning or underutilization.

•Faster time-to-market: Lower upfront investments and the ability to quickly deploy resources reduce the time-to-market for new products or services, offering a competitive advantage.

•Focus on core business: By moving to an OPEX model, organizations can allocate resources toward their core business functions, while cloud providers handle infrastructure management and maintenance.

■Improved security: In this case also, there is a trade-off. Public clouds are likely the best-secured platforms in the world since they serve millions of customers. Cloud providers offer extensive toolsets to protect workloads and data in their clouds. However, it is still the responsibility of the customer to use these tools.

Evaluating all these aspects is part of setting the strategy. The following step in Cloud Adoption Motivation is setting up the organization. Alibaba Cloud recommends having a Cloud Center of Excellence with cloud technologists, application owners, and security specialists. The application team works closely together with the business, responding to the business requirements. The cloud team is mainly responsible for the continuity of services. Lastly, the security team takes care of defining and controlling the security guardrails that must be followed in the cloud.

The next phase is cloud adoption preparation and management framework building. The first and main task in this phase is setting up the landing zone in the cloud. In the CAF, the landing zone refers to the foundation of cloud management, including:

■Financial management

■Security management

■Compliance and auditing

■Automation

■Network planning

■Resource planning

Once the landing zone has been defined, our cloud is ready to onboard applications, which is the following phase. The phase includes the migration of applications and data and development innovations to enhance applications and usage of data. In the case of the latter, an example is adding artificial intelligence to analyze data.

Now, we have a CCoE helping the business to start the digital transformation and setting up the landing zone to start adopting applications and data. This new cloud environment must be operated and managed from a cost and security perspective, identifying and quantifying risks that may impact the business in a timely manner and ensuring business continuity. This is done in the final phase of organization and governance. Reacting to events will lead to new insights and new motivations, taking us back to the first phase in the CAF, adjusting the cloud adoption strategy.

The complete CAF of Alibaba Cloud can be downloaded from: https://resource.al-ibabacloud.com/whitepaper/id_4303?spm=a3c0i.23458820.2359477120.14.66667d3fFxjdMN.

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

If we compare the different CAFs with the generic principles, we will notice similarities. All CAFs start with defining the business strategy, which is absolutely a crucial step. There is no point in moving to the cloud just for the sake of being in the cloud: there has to be a business justification. A lift and shift of environments—applications—to a cloud platform will barely bring any benefit. The rationales for businesses to migrate and embrace cloud technology include business agility and scaling.

■Business agility: The ability of businesses to respond and adapt to changing customer demand or market circumstances swiftly. Since in the cloud, virtually everything is coded using infrastructure as code and configuration as code, it allows for applying fast changes and rapid development. One of the key elements in achieving business agility is scaling.

■Scaling: Remember that scaling can be both up and down, preferably automated. This way, a business will have the ability to use exactly what is required and also pay for the resources that are used. This is addressed by the CAFs from various angles: automation, financial management, and resource management.

Typically, we see a couple of common use cases for businesses to migrate to the cloud. Outsourcing is the number one reason why the existing data center is decommissioned. This is often financially driven, where data centers require a lot of upfront investments that must be depreciated over the years. These are CAPEX costs. By migrating to the cloud, companies can shift to OPEX.

Another reason is the lack of efficiency in the existing setup of IT. There might be technical debt slowing down development and increasing operational efforts. A lack of skilled resources to manage the legacy IT or skilled resources that cannot be utilized for innovations because of too many operational tasks will also be arguments to migrate to the cloud, including the adoption of automated, cloud-native services.

All CAFs emphasize the need for training and upskilling people. This includes technical staff but also other personnel, including financial specialists and senior management. Companies shifting to the cloud as part of digital transformation programs will encounter cultural changes. That requires sponsorship and teamwork. Management must endorse the adoption of the cloud; teams will need to learn to work with the cloud.

One other major similarity is the drive to set up specific governance. IT and business must be aligned, but in the cloud, this becomes even more important. The reason for this is that with the cloud, IT shifts closer to the business, meaning that the business gets more control over the development and deployment of products, whereas, in more traditional IT, the business is completely dependent on how fast IT can implement technology. In the cloud, this has become a much easier process. Every asset is turned into code, including the infrastructure. There is no need to define a long list of requirements for equipment; using the cloud, the infrastructure is a string of code that can be easily adapted to the exact needs of the application.

The cloud enables business agility and makes businesses really scalable, but the cloud must be managed. That is where the CAFs focus on governance and management, stressing the importance of:

■Cost management

■Security management

■Development and deployment of resources (starting with MVPs)

The outcome of the CAF should be business value. That is the central theme in all CAFs. To achieve this, organizations must agree on the strategy. All stakeholders must be involved and convinced that cloud migrations will add business value. The following step is to train the appropriate capabilities in the organization. People, processes, and technology must be aligned in a new way of working. Cloud adoption will bring significant changes to an organization, and this needs careful planning in a lot of domains. The CAFs will show where the organization stands and where and how it can grow those capabilities. This is where all discussed CAFs have the same focus.

Still, there are differences too. These differences can often be explained by the origin of a specific cloud provider. AWS is completely cloud-born and focuses primarily on cloud-native services. With that, AWS is set up in a more modular way, offering a lot of different, customizable building blocks, whereas Azure offers more out-of-box, complete services. Next, Azure also focuses more on hybrid clouds. Microsoft was already an established name in computing, with an operation system that could run on a variety of machines, from personal computers to servers. Microsoft is used to working in hybrid environments.

The Azure portfolio contains several services that enable hybrid strategy. Think of Azure Stack, which is basically an Azure extension on-premises, but also Azure Arc, which allows bringing non-Azure workloads under the control of the Azure console.

Note that customers could have AWS on-premises, too, via VMWare on AWS, allowing on-premises VMWare stacks to be stretched into the AWS cloud. This was later followed by native AWS on-premises, with AWS Outposts.

The bottom line is that a company that starts its journey in digital transformation and adopting cloud services must first set out its business strategy. From the business strategy, a solution and the right fit of cloud technology will follow. The CAFs are a great aid in defining the business strategy and how cloud technology can help in achieving the goals and ambition of that strategy.

MONITORING MULTI-CLOUD AND KEEPING TRACK OF VALUE PROPOSITIONS

So far, various CAFs have been discussed that will guide in setting up environments in the cloud. If workloads are running in Azure and AWS, just as an example, then a multi-cloud environment must be managed. However, the same is already true when a company uses SaaS, such as Office365 and Salesforce, next to having backend IT hosted in a hyperscale cloud (major cloud providers with a global presence, such as the providers that we discuss in this book: AWS, Azure, GCP, and Alibaba Cloud).

Alternatively, an organization might have workloads in public clouds and on-premises in privately owned data centers—this is typically referred to as a hybrid. To cut a long story short, the introduction of cloud technology has not made things easier or less complex. That is the reason why companies need to think about their cloud strategy before they start migrating workloads to any cloud. The CAFs are good guidance in defining that strategy, as discussed in the previous section.

But that is not all. Through the course of this book, it is shown that managing multi-cloud is not easy. There is a good reason why all CAFs mention the human factor in setting up and managing cloud environments. Professionals are needed: architects, engineers, and developers that have a thorough knowledge of the cloud.

Those are the hard skills, but soft skills are just as important. Cloud architects must be able to understand the business and translate business challenges into cloud solutions. It cannot be stressed enough: going to the cloud just because it is possible will not bring any value to the business. At the end of the day, it is about value propositions. How can cloud technology help businesses in digital transformation and move the business forward? Cloud architects need to understand business metrics.

Measuring Business Metrics

Measuring the performance of the business is done through business metrics that quantify that performance. Quantifying parameters can be defined in finance, marketing, operations, production, human resources, and IT. The following are examples:

■Sales revenue

■Cost of sales

■Conversion rate

■Web traffic

■Goods sold

■Time to delivery

■Payment cycle, including days payable outstanding (DPO)

Cloud technology can help in increasing revenue, lowering overall operating costs, reaching more customers, increasing the speed of innovation, releasing new products, and decreasing time to market. Is this part of the CAFs? The answer is yes. The CAFs are not as much about the technology itself. That is where concepts such as well-architected frameworks and reference architectures play a much bigger role. The CAF is really about business adoption and implementing value propositions. So, how can a business increase sales using the cloud? For instance, by providing webshops around the globe that automatically process orders, thus decreasing the cost of sales.

That is the key to digital transformation—companies adopting digital technologies to change the existing business or, even better, create new business. The cloud can help in this, but it likely requires a new operating model wherein digital expertise plays a much bigger role. First of all, the transformation must be data driven. Only through accurate, timely, and continuous analysis of data will a business be able to make the right decisions. What does the customer want? What is the competition doing? What is the best time to launch a new product? This is where the cloud brings real added value. In the cloud, data can be brought together, analyzed, and used to refine the strategy.

It has a major impact on a lot of aspects of a company. Does the company have the right skills? Has it chosen the right partners? Is the leadership supporting the changes? Does the company have a budget? Does it have access to the right data sources? Who should have access to data and resources? Before getting into the application, data, and technical architectures, these questions must be answered. It defines the level of adoption of the change that comes with digital transformation and the use of cloud technology.

Introducing Best Practices in Monitoring

Once solutions are deployed in the cloud, they must be managed. That is the core topic of this book. Managing starts with seeing what is going on; it starts with monitoring. Now, admins are likely not very fond of having to use multiple tools and consoles to monitor the various environments. Monitoring multi-cloud is best served with a single pane of glass view. Best practices in monitoring are as follows:

■Use monitoring tools that are capable of monitoring heterogeneous multi-cloud environments.

■Have a configuration management database (CMDB) that is truly responsive to the cloud. If an engineer spins up a VM in the cloud, it must be reflected as a new asset in the CMDB.

■Following the CMDB and the responsiveness: monitoring must support automation.

■Preferably, monitoring must be intelligent, supporting anomaly detection, self-healing, and automated remediation.