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Cloud Infrastructure Management
What is Cloud Infrastructure Management?
Cloud infrastructure management is comprised as any tasks, processes, and resources necessary for the administration, monitoring, and optimization of the infrastructure of a cloud environment - servers, networking, storage, and virtualization. The cloud provides many opportunities for businesses to grow, remain agile, and modernize their operations. However, without good cloud infrastructure management, this progress can be hindered. Strong management can ensure flexibility and growth while prioritizing cost-saving measures.
Why is Cloud Infrastructure Management Important?
Cloud infrastructure management is important because it ensures the optimal utilization, performance, reliability, and security of cloud resources. When done effectively, it allows organizations to minimize risks and maximize efficiency while leveraging the cloud environment's full potential.
By outsourcing the management of cloud infrastructure to experienced professionals or utilizing managed service providers, organizations can free up their internal resources and focus on their core competencies, such as developing innovative applications, enhancing user experiences, or driving business growth.
What is the Purpose of Cloud Infrastructure Management?
The purpose of cloud infrastructure management is to ensure organizations have the right tools and resources to securely configure, optimize, and retire infrastructure as time goes on. Whether it's in-house or done with outsourced help, organizations should have a centralized management operation that can identify cloud infrastructure needs.
What Do Cloud Infrastructure Management Tools Do?
Cloud infrastructure management tools streamline and simplify various management tasks associated with cloud resources. They help organizations maximize the value of their cloud investments, boost operational efficiency, improve security and compliance, and optimize resource utilization and costs.
Tools are an essential part of managing cloud infrastructure, and each tool brings its own strengths. Examples of cloud infrastructure management tools include, but are not limited to:
- Provisioning and configuration: Tools can enpower users to provision and configure resources including virtual machines (VMs) and networks in the cloud. They offer user-friendly interfaces or APIs that drive both resource creation and setup.
- Automation and orchestration: One of the best ways to boost performance, improve efficiency, reduce manual intervention, and save on costs is by incorporating automation into your cloud infrastructure. Cloud infrastructure tools power the automation of various tasks and workflows. They provide scripting or configuration capabilities to automate resource provisioning, deployment, scaling, and management processes.
- Security and compliance: Cloud infrastructure management tools can assist in implementing more robust security measures. They offer features like identity and access management, vulnerability scanning, security threat monitoring, encryption, and compliance monitoring. All of these features can be used to protect cloud resources from disruptive events like data breaches, unauthorized access, and compliance violations.
- Reliability: Uptime can be make-or-break for some organizations. Depending on the type of business, even a few minutes can result in unrecoverable losses. Cloud infrastructure management tools can monitor cloud environments for performance issues and any problems that may be affecting reliability.
- Resource allocation: Some tools can help determine the right amount of resources to provision for each workload, and can keep in mind workload size, type, expected growth, and costs attached to certain allocations.
- Monitoring, visibility, and performance management: These tools offer monitoring to document the health, performance, and utilization of resources in the cloud, and can be used to improve visibility across an organization's cloud infrastructure. They also gather and analyze metrics, provide real-time insights, optimize resource allocation and performance, and can trigger alerts for abnormal behavior.
- Cost optimization and management: The best way to optimize cloud costs is by tracking spending via tools and identifying where costs can be reduced. These tools provide insights into resource utilization, spending, and cost trends, thus empowering organizations to monitor and manage cloud-related expenses more effectively.
What is an Example of a Cloud Infrastructure Management Tool?
Most public cloud providers have portals for cloud infrastructure management that allow customers to manage their resources from one centralized location. For example, Amazon Web Services has the AWS Management Console which is a centralized platform that allows users to manage and control their AWS cloud resources. Businesses that operate in a multicloud or hybrid cloud infrastructure may benefit from infrastructure management tools and services that span across several cloud environments.
How TierPoint Can Help With Cloud Infrastructure Management
TierPoint's cloud services and solutions are ideal for organizations looking to get the most out of their cloud infrastructure. We provide cloud infrastructure management services for public, private, and multitenant cloud. Learn more here.
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