Using hybrid cloud platforms

Question

Is it make sense to use both AWS and Microsoft Azure in my application?

Lets say I prefer Azure storage over AWS S3 but AWS Elastic Beanstalk (PaaS) over azure cloud services, is it make sense to create an hybrid solution between the two assuming both components will be hosted nearby geographically?

What are the gotchas in that approach?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

It does sound a bit complex, but you've got vendors offering their services so you can design your multiple-provider hybrid cloud. I've tried it with Stratoscale, where I integrated many different services from different providers into one hyper converged infrastructure. But I've also heard some positive critics about Terraform as well, so you can definitely do your research. (in second thought, stratoscale might be more appropriate for companies, but still do your research)

Answer 2

Having different IaaS providers is just a choice of comfort and mostly for legacy reasons, but beware it will require more effort in terms of dealing with more APIs. However as a pro, it will give you an idea of more comprehensive overview as not being locked-in to vendor's conventions. Terraform might be helpful to design hybrid clouds. Having multiple providers, you will less likely to benefit from in-cloud features at same time, for e.g. auto-scaling groups in AWS, so you might feel need to code your way through custom services to have similar functionality. Another benefit would be to get better opportunity for comparison of the performance you are paying for.

Answer 3

I see the following issues:

• If you use two AWS or two Azure components hosted in the same data center, the components will connect via the internal network.Even if you used an AWS and an Azure service hosted in the same city, the services will connect via an external network, which is always significantly slower than an internal network.
• The external network connection represents an additional point of failure.
• If either the Azure or the AWS data center is down, your entire solution is down.
• You have to manage the services via two different interfaces.
• If you have difficulty connecting the services due to some unforeseen issue, it may be harder to find a solution.