Bursting is an increasingly popular way to deal with sudden increases in demand for IT resources. Organizations often use it to handle surges in website traffic, requests to APIs, data or video streaming, and database queries. Hybrid cloud solutions often power bursting architectures, and it's important to understand how they fit into the picture.

Physical and Cloud Resources

You should consider how your system will connect physical and cloud resources. The simplest solutions usually employ the cloud as a host for cached versions of content. For example, a website might rely on the cloud to host static versions of popular pages. During low-demand periods, the site can update the cached versions so they provide the most up-to-date information possible. When demand peaks, though, the site can turn off updates and direct all traffic to the cached content.

Bursting is also possible with computational resources. A company that hosts an AI filter for apps, for example, might configure compute instances in the cloud. When demand threatens to swamp the bare-metal servers' CPUs and GPUs, a load balancer can connect to resources on the cloud instances to provide on-demand computing power and memory.

Detecting Demand

You could simply rely on the cloud as the primary host for data and processing. However, many businesses prefer to avoid this because always-on solutions can have poor price-to-performance ratios. Especially if demand is going to be very light at certain times, a company might not want to pay to have those cloud resources mostly idled. Instead, it can employ detection software to determine when to marshal cloud instances.

Most organizations will focus on stability in this scenario. In other words, they'll want to start bursting resources before their on-site systems start to suffer. With a bit of load testing, you can usually figure out what this threshold is in terms of memory and CPU utilization. When demand starts to approach these levels, the system can then call cloud instances in bursts to deal with demand. In some cases, you might only need seconds or minutes of bursting to avoid overloading your systems.

Anticipation

Companies also may handle bursting requirements by anticipating them. Retailers often face heightened demand during certain holidays, for example. An organization can ramp up cloud resources as the holidays approach and retire them once the sales season slows down. Similarly, organizations can deploy hybrid cloud solutions ahead of marketing pushes, announcements, and releases.

To learn more, contact a hybrid cloud solution provider such as Nfina.

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