Evaluating Hybrid Cloud Computing Scenarios

Question

My company is deploying a SaaS product. We are anticipating spikes of server load, but otherwise fairly static usage. Therefore:

Is it a good idea to come up with a server scenario where you have a mix (hybrid):

• an in-house dedicated hardware that takes care of the "trunk" static load
• a cloud computing handler (farmed out to a PaaS provider like Amazon EC2) that would only "kick in" at peak load times to handle the extra traffic.

Have you had any bad/good experiences with such a scenario? Would it be better to just stick with one or the other?

Thanks,

Answer 1

Your scenario will have challenges with developing this handler that detects load and farms out at peak times. Instead of reinventing the solutions, look at Having a IAAS solution in house (Private Cloud) that can handle smaller fluctuations in house and can federate larger peaks to a public cloud (AWS, Rackspace) during peak. Look for Hybrid cloud solutions. One solution that I know of is Nimbula Director 2.0 (http://www.nimbula.com), see if it helps.