Organizations across every industry are migrating to the cloud to eliminate expensive data centers, increase efficiency and reduce costs.
All clouds, however, are not created equal.
While cloud migration can save money and increase efficiencies, some businesses, like hospitals and banks, need to store and process data locally to comply with regulations. In some cases, they also need to ensure low latency, which means the data must be processed with almost no delay, usually on premises. Other businesses that offer data-intensive applications, such as streaming services, need to deploy applications closer to their end users to ensure customers can view their favorite TV shows and movies without interruptions.
All of these businesses want to take advantage of the cloud, while keeping the data and applications on premises or at the edge. To meet this need, a cloud provider must offer a broad set of compute, networking, storage, security, identity, data integration, management, monitoring, and operations services wherever customers require it.
But enabling customers to build this type of hybrid architecture is easier said than done.
In the past, IT administrators patched together on-premises systems with cloud services, learned new APIs and code, and oversaw complex procurement periods, maintenance downtime, and management processes—a time-consuming and complicated process.
To simplify this approach for customers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) designed new hybrid and edge solutions. A key component of reducing that complexity is offering customers the same infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools across their on-premises, edge, and cloud environments. This approach is also more cost-efficient. A recent industry study shows that migrating to AWS leads to an average cost savings of 31 percent.
AWS realized that customers needed cloud-native compute, storage, networking, and other services closer to where their business operations or end users are located, so they focused on delivering solutions to make it faster and easier for customers to support hybrid and edge environments. They delivered two solutions: AWS Local Zones, a new type of AWS infrastructure conveniently located near major metro areas, and AWS Outposts, a family of fully managed solutions delivering AWS infrastructure and services to virtually any on-premises or edge location for a consistent hybrid experience.
A New Type of Hybrid Solution
AWS Local Zones place core AWS services, like compute, storage, and networking, in large metro areas to bring AWS closer to business centers and end users. Local Zones help customers in industries like media, entertainment, online gaming, and healthcare access the cloud services they need while meeting low-latency requirements. AWS launched Local Zones in 2019 in Los Angeles, have since expanded to 15 more metros in the United States and four metros internationally, and have announced plans to expand to 30 more metros globally—bringing the cloud closer to millions more users. Customers in these locations, who care about low latency or keeping the data local in the area, can now easily move workloads to Local Zones and experience all the benefits of cloud, including pay-as-you-go pricing and elasticity.
Netflix, for instance, has benefited by using Local Zones. “Using AWS Local Zones brings cloud resources closer to our artists and has been a game changer for these applications,” says Stephen Kowalski, Director of Digital Production Infrastructure Engineering at Netflix. “By taking advantage of AWS Local Zones, we have migrated a portion of our content-creation process to AWS while creating an even better experience for artists.”
While Local Zones provide AWS infrastructure located near major metro areas, Outposts comprise a family of racks and servers that can be deployed on premises or at an edge location depending upon the customer’s needs. Outposts, which include 25-gigabit-per-second (Gbps) servers, can turn any data center, colocation space, on-premises facility, or even an edge location into an environment for building and deploying applications using cloud-native infrastructure and services.
The main reason hybrid and edge computing are simple and efficient on Outposts is because of the underlying architecture, which leverages the AWS Nitro System—the underlying platform of all modern AWS compute instances. It has been designed to offload virtualization functions to dedicated hardware and firmware, which enable AWS to deliver a higher level of security to customers.
“One of the things we always struggled with before we introduced AWS Outposts was how to deliver the same experience of the cloud at these edge locations or in a customer’s on-premises environment,” says Anthony Liguori, Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at AWS. “But because of Nitro, we were able to move our infrastructure into hardware, raise the security bar, and offer virtualization infrastructure as an appliance that can be put anywhere to deliver the same experience that customers have when they’re in the public region. Nitro is the magic behind this.”
The Nitro System includes Nitro cards, with custom silicon built by AWS that enables high performance I/O virtualization. Those cards are dedicated hardware components with compute capabilities that perform I/O functions such as Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), and Amazon EC2 instance storage—all while offering end-to-end encryption.
Efficiency is especially important when it comes to edge computing. Space to compute is small at the edge, so getting every bit of performance possible from the underlying system is crucial for customers.
"We take security very seriously at AWS," says Liguori. "That's why we also introduced the Nitro Security Chip, which allows us to trust the hardware through the entire system and its life cycle.”
Furthermore, when customers are ready to decommission their data, instead of undergoing the costly and time-consuming process of shredding the drives in their data center, they can simply destroy the Nitro Security Key, a chip that’s used to enable the secure encryption and signing of data.
Cloud Migration Simplified
AWS has made designing and implementing a hybrid architecture as simple as possible. Many customers can just plug in an AWS Outposts server, which AWS can directly ship to their premises, immediately connecting them to the cloud. In addition, customers can easily migrate workloads to Local Zones by provisioning the Local Zone of their choice in the AWS console.
One customer, Tipico, a sports betting service based in Germany, needed a hybrid solution in the U.S. to meet local regulations. The company sent AWS the specifications for its data center, and AWS worked with Tipico to create a custom Outposts configuration that met its application needs.
“The setup phase was really smooth,” says Thorsten Hoellrigl, CTO at Tipico North America. “We were under pressure to get it done quickly.” Tipico engineers were guided by AWS teams throughout the whole process.
AWS customers can also use AWS Local Zones for edge computing. This is handy for applications that require low latency or need to remain in a particular geopolitical boundary for regulatory reasons. Now, organizations can migrate these applications to a nearby AWS Local Zone and achieve single-digit millisecond latency between the Local Zone and on-premises locations.
Ultimately, the Local Zone can help customers meet data residency requirements and simplify complex cloud migrations. And by extending their Amazon VPC to the Local Zone, customers can seamlessly connect their applications deployed on Local Zones to the full range of service in the AWS Region.
The Future of Hybrid
Hybrid and edge computing will continue to grow across all industries, particularly those running workloads with low-latency and regulatory requirements, such as smart manufacturing, digital healthcare, and online banking. Since AWS delivers options for business centers, both on premises and on the edge, customers can now get cloud benefits like performance, agility, and cost-effectiveness for their location-specific use cases.
And with the addition of AWS Outposts servers, customers now have options that range from using a 1U server to a 42U rack that can be installed in almost any configuration, using a fully managed service with AWS Nitro infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools.
AWS hybrid cloud solutions allow AWS to bring cloud infrastructure and services to customers where needed, enabling them to quickly start using the cloud. With a variety of options, including Outposts, Local Zones, and more,AWS is able to deliver a tailored solution for almost any workload in any sized environment.
“Smaller and smaller,” says Liguori. “But without losing any of the performance.”
This article was produced by WIRED Brand Lab on behalf of Amazon Web Services.
