Don’t Get Trapped in the Public Cloud Alone

How bare metal and interconnection create a more resilient digital infrastructure model

Jason Powers
Don’t Get Trapped in the Public Cloud Alone

The digital world is constantly evolving. Enterprises need to keep up, and legacy digital infrastructure models based on siloed, centralized data centers aren’t nearly sufficient anymore. Companies need infrastructure partners that can deploy and operate digital infrastructure globally on their behalf. Don’t worry, that’s what the hyperscale cloud is for, right? But is going all-in on hyperscale public cloud the best answer? Not always.

The solution for modern developers looking to utilize all the digital tools at their disposal? A hybrid infrastructure model that combines the best of both worlds: dedicated cloud and public cloud infrastructure as a service. But, for modern developers, even this is not enough. That’s why two key elements are essential to any modernized hybrid infrastructure: bare metal infrastructure as a service and interconnection.

Bare Metal as a Service gives developers the high-performance, single-tenant compute and storage infrastructure they need, where and when they need it. Interconnection helps those developers move their data securely, reliably and with low latency, without using the public internet.

Working right in the heart of this space at Equinix, we’ve noticed that many of the developers and cloud architects responsible for deploying digital infrastructure don’t even know what interconnection is or how to use it to benefit their business. In this post, we’ll explore why combining bare metal and interconnection is the perfect mix for modern developers.

An infrastructure optimization guide

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Physical infrastructure at software speed

Data matters

It all comes down to data: moving it where it needs to be, and then using it to its full potential. You’ll need bare metal cloud and interconnection to do both reliably.

Bare metal without interconnection

You have the on-demand compute and storage infrastructure you need, but you need to reliably move your data around. Relying solely on the public internet to do that comes with inconsistent latency characteristics, security vulnerabilities and less control. Interconnection provides a fixed-bandwidth data pipeline at a fixed price, making movement of large volumes of data much more cost-efficient than paying common internet usage fees.

Interconnection without bare metal

You can move your data quickly, reliably and securely, but you won’t be able to use that data to its full potential once it gets there. Setting up new virtual connections (VCs) between all the locations that matter to your business is easy. However, it takes months to deploy the physical compute and storage infrastructure needed in those new global locations, and you’ll be stuck owning and operating that infrastructure.

Never go full cloud

Hybrid multicloud offers a better balance of flexibility, cost-efficiency, and best-of-breed services. However, hybrid multicloud networking can be extremely complex, and it’s easy to fall victim to vendor lock-in while you’re doing it.

At Equinix, we believe cloud adjacency is the answer. This means deploying your data near the clouds without storing it directly in the cloud. A software-defined interconnection solution like Equinix Fabric® is essential to enabling cloud-adjacent infrastructure. When you can deploy interconnection in the form of a VC to any hyperscale cloud provider in a matter of seconds and use it to move large volumes of data securely and with low latency, hybrid multicloud architectures become much simpler and more practical.

Keep data available and protected

We all know unplanned downtime is a fact of life, but you can prepare for it using geo-redundancy—the geographic separation of digital infrastructure between regions. Geo-redundant architectures, however, require consistent, high-performance data replication between two availability zones (or metros, in Equinix speak). When you need to fail over to your backup location, you’ll want to start accessing the latest data sets without skipping a beat. The quicker you can move your data, and the faster you can spin up compute resources alongside those backups, the better your disaster recovery story will be.

With Equinix Fabric interconnection, you can quickly move backup data sets between your own digital infrastructure in different locations. You can also scale capacity up or down to keep up with the changing needs of the business. Equinix Metal®, our Bare Metal as a Service offering, makes it easy to flexibly deploy the infrastructure you need to store data in backup locations, without the high costs and long-term commitment of physical hardware.

Take your digital infrastructure to the next level

As businesses across the world look to execute their digital transformation strategies, Equinix is here to support them with our suite of powerful digital services. Using Equinix Fabric together with Equinix Metal takes things to the next level. With Equinix, you can set up compute and storage infrastructure quickly and flexibly in edge locations where end users are. Then, you can connect securely and reliably to other locations in Equinix’s dense ecosystem of interconnection destinations, enabling a more complete edge-to-cloud approach.

For a closer look at how you can make confident decisions to get the hybrid infrastructure you need and drive your digital transformation forward, read our guide to infrastructure optimization.

 

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Jason Powers Senior Director, Product Management
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