How to Manage Cloud Resources Wisely

Physical resource requirements. Even in hybrid cloud environments, physical resource considerations must be made. Costs need to be kept in check, and planning around the physical resource requirements is very important. By knowing and understanding all previously discussed cloud requirements, administrators are able to create a more solid plan around what their infrastructure will actually need. Remember, under or over provisioning resources can be a waste of precious budgeted dollars. This is why it’s important to know what the cloud environment will be doing, how it will be accessed, and what workloads will be delivered. To maintain a good level of understanding into a cloud environment, organizations will have to use tools for visibility into their cloud-based infrastructure.

Cloud data center limitations. Just because resources are located in the cloud, it does not mean there are endless amounts of them. This is where “out of sight, out of mind” can become a serious issue. When planning and balancing resources it’s important to understand the limitations of a cloud deployment. That is, how many users can a single physical host handle? Or understanding WAN link limitations to prevent possible network-related bottlenecks. Pay-as-you-go models can get very pricey as well if administrators improperly provision resources without really understanding their use or benefits. A good cloud resource balancing plan will include maximum capacity considerations for all vital cloud components. This includes WAN, storage, and physical server limitations. By knowing how much an environment can handle, IT managers are able to plan around these limitations and develop a plan where extra resources can become available when needed. This is a big difference between having resources sitting idle and not doing much versus deploying cloud resources when the need arises.

Infrastructure expansion. The goal of any organization is to grow and be more efficient in their business practices. IT plays a big role in this and cloud computing can certainly help. When planning out and balancing resources, it’s important to plan for business expansion. With growth at the organizational level, IT managers must keep up with the demands placed on their environment. Instead of pointing users to an existing local data center, plans might be made to re-route new users to a cloud environment. This is a great example of where a private or hybrid cloud deployment can be very powerful. By using WAN-based resources, corporate IT staff are able to deliver entire centrally managed workloads to users all over the world. The best part is that these users don’t require a local data center to be fully productive. With infrastructure expansion there is the further need for visibility. The more granular the view into a cloud environment, the better the resource management. Agile cloud platforms are able to scale up and down as needed mainly because administrators know exactly what resource they have available. Effective cloud growth can only come with solid cloud resource balancing and distribution.

Workload utilization. Cloud environments will vary greatly. Some organizations are simply giving users access to a few applications, while others are delivering entire desktops via VDI. The workload type holds a lot of weight in how cloud resources are managed and distributed. Again, this is where visibility plays an important role. Depending on what is being pushed down to the end-user, resource management will have to be carefully monitored at the cloud level. This means constantly watching cloud usage spikes, how resources are provisioned, and where potential bottlenecks are occurring.