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Cloud Bursting

May 31, 2023

What Is Cloud Bursting?

Cloud bursting allows businesses to manage their infrastructure by automatically accessing additional cloud resources when there is an unexpected or temporary spike in demand for computing resources. With cloud bursting, businesses can scale their infrastructure quickly and cost-effectively without the need to maintain additional resources.

This method is particularly useful for organizations that experience significant variations in demand for their services, such as e-commerce companies during the holiday season. By using cloud bursting, organizations can ensure that they are able to handle peak workloads or seasonal surges while keeping costs low. Overall, cloud bursting is an effective way to ensure that businesses have the necessary resources to meet the demands of their customers while keeping costs under control.

Why Is Cloud Bursting Important?

Cloud bursting is important for organizations because it allows them to easily and quickly expand their infrastructure when there is a sudden increase in demand for computing resources. This means that organizations can avoid the cost and complexity of maintaining and managing their own physical infrastructure that may go underutilized during periods of low demand.

In addition, cloud bursting enables businesses to provide their customers with high-quality services, even during periods of peak demand. By seamlessly accessing additional cloud resources, they can ensure that their applications and services remain responsive and reliable, without incurring any downtime or service disruptions. Cloud bursting is a flexible, cost-effective, and reliable solution that enables businesses to meet the ever-changing demands of their customers in an efficient and effective manner.

How Does Cloud Bursting Work?

Below is an explanation of how cloud bursting works:

  1. Cloud bursting relies on a hybrid cloud infrastructure, which combines a private cloud environment with one or more public cloud environments.

  2. When the demand for computing resources exceeds the capacity of the private cloud environment, the cloud bursting mechanism automatically provisions additional resources from the public cloud environment(s).

  3. The cloud bursting mechanism typically uses pre-defined policies to determine when and how additional resources should be provisioned. These policies may take into account factors such as the current workload, the cost of additional resources, and the desired service level objectives.

  4. Once additional resources have been provisioned, the cloud bursting mechanism distributes the workload across the private and public cloud environments, enabling the application or service to handle the increased demand seamlessly.

  5. When the demand for resources returns to normal levels, the cloud bursting mechanism automatically releases the additional resources and returns the workload to the private cloud environment.

How Can Organizations Implement Cloud Bursting Effectively?

Organizations can implement cloud bursting effectively by following these best practices:

  • Set clear goals and policies - Before implementing cloud bursting, organizations should clearly define their goals and objectives, and develop policies that specify when and how additional resources should be provisioned. For example, policies may be based on metrics such as CPU utilization, network bandwidth, or storage capacity.

  • Choose the right cloud provider(s) - To ensure effective cloud bursting, organizations should carefully select their cloud providers based on factors like reliability, performance, and cost. Ideally, the providers should offer a range of complementary services that can be seamlessly integrated with the organization's existing infrastructure.

  • Optimize the workload distribution - To maximize the benefits of cloud bursting, organizations should optimize the distribution of their workloads across private and public cloud environments. This may involve using workload management tools that monitor and dynamically adjust the allocation of resources based on current demand.

As an example, consider an e-commerce company that experiences a surge in traffic during the holiday season. To handle this increased demand, the company could implement cloud bursting by using a hybrid cloud infrastructure that combines its existing private cloud with a public cloud provider such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. The company could then set policies to automatically provision additional resources from the public cloud when the demand for computing resources exceeds the capacity of its private cloud. By optimizing the workload distribution and selecting the right cloud providers, the company could effectively scale its infrastructure to handle the increased traffic, while avoiding the cost and complexity of maintaining additional resources during the rest of the year.