Solving hybrid cloud complexity with F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge on HPE GreenLake

[Cloud_Experts]

Hybrid Cloud is complex in terms of security, performance, and management.  HPE and F5 help to address these challenges with F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge on HPE GreenLake.

by Ranjini Srinivas, Technical Engagement Manager, HPE; and guest blogger Lauren Wood, Business Development Manager, F5

Businesses today are realizing that a one-size-fits-all approach for data center and cloud deployment no longer meets the diverse needs of their global workloads. Organizations are now reevaluating their cloud strategies and increasingly adopting a hybrid or multi-cloud approach to meet their ever-growing infrastructure and application demands.

This approach brings flexibility and scalability but also introduces new challenges in terms of security, performance, and management. To address these complexities, the collaboration of F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge and HPE GreenLake provides a powerful solution.

In this blog post, we'll explore how this dynamic duo can simplify your cloud journey while securing your multi-cloud network from the cloud to the edge.

The Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Conundrum

As organizations expand their digital footprint, they often find themselves relying on a combination of on-premises data centers, private clouds, and multiple public cloud providers. This heterogeneous cloud environment can quickly become a maze of complex networking configurations and security policies, making it difficult to manage, optimize, and secure the flow of traffic across these diverse infrastructures.

Challenges in Multi-Cloud Environments

1. Complexity and Management Overload: Managing multiple cloud providers, each with its unique interface, networking configurations, and management tools, can be overwhelming. It leads to increased complexity, administrative overhead, and the potential for human error.
2. Data Security and Compliance: Safeguarding sensitive data across various cloud providers while adhering to industry-specific compliance requirements is a major concern. Customers demand robust security measures to protect their assets.
3. Performance Optimization: Inconsistent performance across different cloud environments can impact user experience and operational efficiency. Customers expect consistent, high-performance delivery of their applications, irrespective of the cloud they are hosted on.
4. Interoperability Challenges: Ensuring seamless communication and data exchange between applications in different clouds can be tricky. Customers want their applications and data to function harmoniously in a multi-cloud setting.
5. Cost Management: Cost management becomes intricate in a multi-cloud setup. Balancing expenses while ensuring the required infrastructure and services are available can be a daunting task.
6. Data Mobility and Lock-In: Avoiding vendor lock-in while enabling data and application mobility between cloud providers is a key concern. Customers want the flexibility to move workloads without being tied to a single vendor.

What Customers Want in a Multi-Cloud Environment

1. Simplified Management: Customers desire tools and solutions that simplify the management of multi-cloud environments. Unified management consoles and automation capabilities reduce complexity and administrative overhead.
2. Enhanced Security: Robust security features, including encryption, identity and access management, and compliance enforcement, are top priorities. Customers want to know their data is protected regardless of its location.
3. Performance Guarantees: Consistent and high-performance application delivery is a must. Customers expect solutions that optimize application performance and minimize latency across clouds.
4. Interoperability and Integration: Customers seek solutions that facilitate smooth integration between applications, services, and data across different clouds. Compatibility and seamless communication are vital.
5. Cost Transparency and Optimization: Transparent billing, cost monitoring, and optimization tools help customers maintain control over their spending. They need the ability to scale resources as required without financial surprises.
6. Data Mobility and Flexibility: The ability to move applications and data between clouds without major disruptions is a customer priority. Avoiding vendor lock-in while retaining flexibility is crucial.
7. Scalability: Customers want the freedom to scale their infrastructure as their business grows. Scalable solutions, such as HPE GreenLake, meet this demand.

Introducing F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge on HPE GreenLake

F5, a global leader in application delivery and security, addresses these multi-cloud challenges via its Distributed Cloud Customer Edge product.   It is complementary to HPE GreenLake which provides infrastructure as a service, ensuring the availability of scalable resources. F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge on HPE GreenLake offers a comprehensive solution for organizations seeking to streamline their hybrid and multi-cloud strategies.

HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise is an innovative private cloud solution that offers cloud-native experience. The solution is characterized by a scalable, enterprise-grade, managed service model that can be leveraged across multiple locations, ranging from edge to cloud, all while operating on a pay-per-use model. HPE GreenLake is designed to cater to businesses that are looking to adopt cloud technology and align with the transition to hybrid cloud and multi-cloud models. 

By fully managing the deployment of the system within an on-premises data center or a colocation facility, HPE offers a production-ready infrastructure that eliminates the complexities inherent in conventional private cloud solutions. The enterprise-grade service-level agreements cover various aspects including installation, provisioning, firmware updates, maintenance and support. This significantly accelerates the process of making the infrastructure production-ready and allows customers to focus on their core business activities that generate revenue.

The joint solution from HPE and F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge:

1. Unified Application Delivery: F5 Distributed Cloud ensures that applications are delivered consistently and securely across multiple clouds, while HPE GreenLake provides the necessary infrastructure resources where you need them, ensuring high availability.
2. Scalability On-Demand: HPE GreenLake offers an intuitive, browser-based user interface, APIs, CLIs, and infrastructure-as-code which enables organizations to configure resources and provision services faster to meet business needs without requiring further intervention from IT personnel. Combined with F5 Distributed Cloud, you can scale your application delivery and security measures in tandem.
3. Optimized Performance: F5 Distributed Cloud offers advanced load balancing and traffic management, ensuring optimal application performance.  HPE GreenLake offers a range of virtual machine instances with varying compute instance types and sizes, enabling users to optimize performance while adapting to changes in their cloud workloads.
4. Security Across Cloud Boundaries: F5 Distributed Cloud provides security features like web application firewall (WAF), DDoS protection, and SSL/TLS offloading, safeguarding your applications and data across multiple clouds. HPE GreenLake provides a secure cloud experience. The infrastructure and services are built upon zero trust principles. Only authorized users are provided access to the resources they need. Service provider operations are separated from customer workloads to provide extra level of security. All management activities are logged for audit purposes, ensuring transparency and accountability. HPE GreenLake is a custodian for data in use, at rest, and in motion and supports customer BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) to give customers complete control over their data and they retain ownership of their data at all times. Edge Computing and IoT: For edge and IoT deployments, F5 Distributed Cloud optimizes application delivery and security at the edge, while HPE GreenLake provides edge infrastructure as a service, simplifying the management of these distributed environments.

 The power of F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge on HPE GreenLake

The integration of F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge on HPE GreenLake addresses these challenges and aligns with customer needs in a multi-cloud environment. This partnership simplifies complex multi-cloud management, provides flexibility in resource allocation, ensures consistent security and compliance standards, optimizes application performance, and offers cost control measures. Together, they empower organizations to navigate the intricate multi-cloud landscape efficiently, while securing their data and applications from the cloud to the edge.

The complexity of hybrid and multi-cloud environments can be daunting, but the combination of F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge and HPE GreenLake offers a solution for organizations to gain a competitive advantage by simplifying and securing their multi-cloud journey. By unifying application delivery, scaling resources on-demand, optimizing performance, and enhancing security, this integrated approach ensures your multi-cloud networking is reliable from the cloud to the edge.

Learn more:

Harnessing F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge on the HPE GreenLake Platform

HPE GreenLake - Edge-to-cloud platform | HPE

Ranjini Srinivas is a technical engagement manager for the HPE Ezmeral ISV ecosystem. She works closely with ISVs to facilitate their product validation on HPE Ezmeral Runtime. Ranjini received her MS degree in computer science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Lauren Wood is a Business Development Manager, and she manages the alliance between F5 and HPE GreenLake along with other strategic partnerships at F5. Her focus and charter are on emerging solutions and growing the technical partnership ecosystem at F5 that securely delivers services and solutions to customers.

Cloud Services Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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