The business world has seen a dramatic shift to cloud computing in recent years. While fully embracing the move can be daunting for many organizations in terms of investment and time, hybrid cloud offers a more palatable solution. Today, nearly all organizations have adopted cloud applications into their IT offerings that run seamlessly alongside and integrate with on-premises infrastructure and applications. As IT departments increasingly focus on integrating the best features of public and private clouds, hybrid cloud has become a key investment for a growing number of businesses.
Scale Computing’s innovative solutions offer a combination of on-premises hyperconverged infrastructure, edge computing, and storage to meet the needs of those organizations walking the path of hybrid cloud. Scale Computing Platform delivers cloud-like simplicity, high availability, and scalability built into a self-healing platform for autonomously running applications in remote data centers or at the edge, closest to where data is created and utilized. SC//Platform consists of SC//HyperCore, the complete software stack that provides on-premises autonomous IT infrastructure management, and SC//Fleet Manager, for centralized monitoring, management, and orchestration of the distributed IT infrastructure fleet.
Microsoft Azure, a comprehensive public cloud computing platform, complements Scale Computing solutions for the ideal hybrid cloud experience. Integrating Azure’s various cloud-based services into SC//Platform enables an approach to hybrid cloud that allows IT departments to provide the optimal infrastructure solution for each new or existing application based on the unique requirements of those applications, including resiliency to network outages, latency/response, data governance, compliance, and overall cost.
SC//Platform can run all on-premises workloads. Integration with Azure and other public cloud providers enables IT teams to provide application developers the ability to continue using the tools and processes they are most productive with for public cloud deployment, while offering a true hybrid cloud experience even for widely-distributed compute resources. IT teams can monitor and manage on-premises resources running on SC//HyperCore as if they were Azure-hosted resources and can easily support a wide range of modern cloud-native and virtualized workloads. The Autonomous Infrastructure Management Engine (AIME) within SC//HyperCore makes the on-premises hardware and software infrastructure stack nearly as invisible as it is in public cloud deployments.
SC//Platform and Azure Hybrid Services Bring the Agility and Innovation of Cloud Computing to On-Premises Workloads
Azure hybrid services enables organizations to extend Azure Cloud for the management of on-premises deployments of Windows Server (as well as Windows IoT and desktop), most popular Linux operating systems, and containers and Kubernetes, including VMs and container-based workloads running on SC//Platform across one or even thousands of locations. Utilizing Azure hybrid services, SC//Platform automation and orchestration tools can easily automate the deployment and lifecycle management of those workloads, as well as register them securely into an Azure Cloud tenant for ongoing monitoring and management.
Simplify On-Premises Infrastructure Management with Azure Arc
With Azure Arc, organizations can build and modernize with cloud-native solutions that run anywhere, leveraging existing investments.
- Extend the Azure platform to run applications across data centers, multi-cloud, and SC//Platform edge computing environments.
- Support existing applications and develop cloud-native ones anywhere with a consistent development, operations, and security model.
- Centrally manage Windows and Linux VMs, Kubernetes, and containers running on SC//HyperCore at the edge.
- Access a range of services through the cloud-based Azure portal for remote resource management.
- Monitor on-premises and cloud servers and configure alerts with Azure Monitor, and apply governance policies using Azure Policy.
- Simplify monitoring and management of SC//HyperCore VMs with the Azure Arc agent loaded inside the guest OS, enabling seamless connectivity to the Azure Cloud.
- Deploy Azure Arc for Kubernetes to on-premises Kubernetes environments for containerized and Kubernetes-based workloads.
Utilizing Cloud Storage with Azure File Sync
Extend effective storage capacity and sync SC//HyperCore file server VMs and data to the cloud and other locations with Azure File Sync.
- Automatically archive older files from on-premises file servers running on SC//HyperCore to Azure storage, ensuring easy accessibility from the cloud.
- Utilize Azure File Sync as an archive location for Milestone XProtect Video Management Software, retaining older video footage in the cloud.
- Sync data and enable sharing between "edge" site file server VMs, central data center site (lab) file server VMs, and Azure cloud by leveraging Azure File Sync's replication capabilities.
- Shares up to 100Tb and sync groups of up to 99 remote servers, plus cloud file share endpoints.
- Seamlessly interface with the Azure Files service.
Simplify and Secure Public Cloud Access with Azure AD Integration and Azure Application Proxy
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is an enterprise identity service providing single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and conditional access to guard against cybersecurity attacks.
- Leverage Azure AD Connect to sync existing on-premises Active Directory accounts to Azure AD for centralized, cloud-based authentication and management.
- Utilize Azure AD as an OpenID Connect (OIDC) single sign-on source, Azure’s multi-factor authentication (MFA), and supported third-party MFA solutions to secure access to SC//HyperCore systems.
- Use Azure AD/Microsoft 365 Accounts for single sign-on to the SC//Fleet Manager console. ‘
- Access on-premises web-based applications remotely through the Azure AD portal without VPN using Azure Application Proxy.
- Enable secure, authenticated remote access to the SC//HyperCore UI and other web-based application or portal (or REST API) from edge or on-premises locations.
SC//Platform and Azure offer numerous other integrations beyond those we’ve described, including Azure IoT Core, Azure Networking services, and many others. For more information on how we can power your hybrid cloud strategy, contact your Scale Computing partner or account manager or reach out to us at 877-722-5359 or email info@scalecomputing.com.