How do multi-cloud networks ensure reliability

Most organizations are now operating in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. When cloud migration first emerged, organizations typically networked their cloud resources in a hub-and-spoke fashion, connecting on-premises environments from data center hubs to each cloud separately. All cloud traffic must go through a data center hub to access resources in another cloud.

However, for many organizations, using multiple clouds and interconnecting them has evolved to the point where the typical traditional model is no longer realistic. Networks must now be able to interconnect between on-premises services and external cloud resources from multiple providers. The need to interconnect resources across multiple clouds and data centers has given way to multi-cloud networking services.

Providing reliable, secure network connectivity in a hybrid multi-cloud environment presents several challenges, including complexity, vulnerability, and inconsistency. Multi-cloud web services are designed to address these challenges.

The network stack for each cloud environment is different from other cloud environments and on-premises networks. These differences add to the difficulty of achieving a reliable and secure connection.

The complexity of implementing different network services in each environment also makes it easy to create vulnerable networks. Network issues in a multi-cloud environment can cause network failures across the stack. Even a small error in the configuration of network services or virtual appliances can cause a fragile multi-cloud network to fail.

The complexity of implementing networks individually in each environment also creates plenty of opportunities for inconsistent network or security functions. Inconsistent functionality across clouds can lead to poor performance and unexpected behavior, such as failed bandwidth optimization or increased costs. Inconsistent configurations can also lead to vulnerabilities and errors in the implementation of network security policies, putting enterprise networks at risk.

Multi-cloud network services are designed to simplify the work of connecting workloads across environments by providing consistency on the consumer side and resilience in implementation.

Benefits of a multi-cloud network

Multi-cloud network services, whether deployed by the enterprise or offered as a service, have several goals:

Ensure network consistency across the cloud. Multi-cloud network services ensure that the network looks, behaves, and interacts the same across all cloud workloads, no matter where the workloads are located. Every workload in every environment can use the same network services.
Secure multi-cloud network. Multi-cloud network services include network security policies that administrators can deploy consistently across environments. Consistency makes it easier to properly set up secure network connections, see if network configurations deviate from policies and correct incorrect configurations.
Improve the reliability of multi-cloud networks. Multi-cloud network services improve network reliability by reducing the possibility of configuration errors and inconsistent network behavior across different environments.

Multi-cloud network to improve reliability

Many multi-cloud network reliability problems stem from misconfigured network services. However, multi-cloud network services and tools add redundancy to improve network availability, traffic management, and scalability. By adding redundancy in a multi-cloud environment, multi-cloud networking tools enhance consistency and improve abstraction to reduce complexity and simplify management.

Most reliability problems in multi-cloud environments are rooted in lower-level connectivity issues, such as link failures or congestion. Multi-cloud networking services provide a way to deploy redundant connectivity to address these issues, or to build this redundancy within the infrastructure.

Network availability

Multi-cloud network services, such as software-defined wide area network platforms, use transparent failover and recovery mechanisms to hide the failure of any individual link in the underlying network link, leaving workloads and end users unaffected. Multi-cloud network services can also hide the complexity of failover and recovery implementations for multi-link connections, benefiting network engineers. This reduces the chance of error and further improves reliability.

Traffic management

Multi-cloud networking tools support load balancing and traffic management as much as they support network availability. Some tools enable quality of service (QoS) management by prioritizing network traffic by category. Tools for managing network QoS can ensure that applications that require specific network performance guarantees, such as high-end video conferencing, can more reliably meet those needs.

Abstract network redundancy to improve scalability

Another aspect of network reliability is the ability to deliver the required level of network performance in the face of rapidly increasing demand. Multi-cloud network services can make it easier for multi-cloud environments to meet surging demand.

Multi-cloud networking tools can solve the problem of surging network traffic by managing bandwidth to shift capacity away from low-priority workloads. It also simplifies and enables network workers to transparently add network capacity to an enterprise's resource pool, enabling the environment to meet new network demands without additional work on the part of administrators.

Sum up

Multi-cloud network services, whether owned and operated by the enterprise or consumed as a service, help make the hybrid multi-cloud network of the modern enterprise more reliable and high-performance. A multi-cloud networking platform should provide these benefits while relieving the burden on network engineers, application developers, and cloud administrators by creating a consistent approach across all cloud environments for provisioning, security, and management of the network.