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Hybrid public/private cloud

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Article from ADMIN 55/2020

By Konstantin Agouros

Extending your data center temporarily into the cloud during a customer rush might not be easy, but it can be done, thanks to Ansible's Playbooks and some AWS scripts.

Companies often do not exclusively use public cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) [1], Microsoft Azure [2], or Google Cloud [3]. Instead, they rely on a mix, known as a hybrid cloud. In this scenario, you connect your data centers (private cloud) with the resources of a public cloud provider. The term "private cloud" is somewhat misleading, in that the operation of many data centers has little to do with cloud-based working methods, but it looks like the name is here to stay.

The advantage of a hybrid cloud is that companies can use it to absorb peak loads or special requirements without having to procure new hardware for five- or six-digit figures.

In this article, I show how you can add a cloud extension to an Ansible [4] role that addresses local servers. To do this, you extend a local Playbook for an Elasticsearch cluster so that it can also be used in the cloud, and the resources disappear again after use.

Cloudy Servers

In classical data center operation, a server is typically used for a project and installed by an admin. It then runs through a life cycle in which it receives regular patches. At some point, it is no longer needed or is outdated. In the virtualized world, the same thing happens in principle, only with virtual servers. However, for performance reasons, you no longer necessarily retire them. With a few commands or clicks, you can simply assign more and faster resources.

Things are different in the cloud, where you have a service in mind. To operate it, you have to provide defined resources for a certain period of time, build these services in an automated process, to the extent possible (sometimes even from scratch), use

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