The content in this blog is outdated and we cannot reliably say it is still accurate with the speed in which the cloud industry moves. But don’t worry—below are more recent, up-to-date blogs.
What Does Cloud Efficiency Mean To You?
The CloudHealth Guide To AWS Cost And Usage Reports
How To Best Manage Cloud Financial Reports
Given the open-ended nature of the hybrid cloud, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for managing your resources efficiently. That being said, there are several rules of thumb that you can follow to save time and money:
1. Gain Visibility and Control
Having visibility and control across your entire infrastructure is essential for a successful implementation of a hybrid cloud strategy. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, so the ability to break down infrastructure and usage by business group, line of business, or owner is critical. Use a platform that enables you to visualize your environment in a single pane of glass, saving you a great deal of time by eliminating the need to switch between platforms.
2. Analyze and Optimize Costs
Many factors must be considered when determining your overall IT costs, including amortized upfront charges, ongoing management, labor, facilities expenses, and monthly cloud bills. The most important is being able to differentiate between costs which are for resources utilized effectively and those wasted on idle infrastructure, also known as ‘zombies.’ This is a bigger issue than many realize—as many as 30% of on-premises servers, both physical and virtual servers, are zombies, and 35% of servers are only showing activity less than 5% of the time.1 Save money by finding and terminating zombies in your environment.
3. Automate! Automate! Automate!
The most efficient hybrid clouds rely on policies and automation. The simplest policies start with defining the desired state, and then setting an alert for when your infrastructure deviates from that desired state. More advanced policies can be configured to automatically take actions on your behalf. With the right policies in place, the ‘set it and forget it’ approach can drastically reduce the amount of time required to manage your hybrid cloud environment.
To learn how CloudHealth can help you maintain control over cost, usage, performance, and security of your hybrid cloud environment, watch our on-demand webinar, How to Win the Game of Clouds.
1Zombie/Comatose Servers Redux, Jonathan Koomey and Jon Taylor Stanford University; Anthesis, April 3, 2017
