Hybrid Servers
Hybrid configurations are a combination of multiple cloud instances and dedicated servers or clusters. When a site or an application is required to maintain backend database in a dedicated & restrictive environment due to regulatory compliances, hybrid configurations are used. While the application layer can make use of the robustness of cloud computing, the database layer can be kept in isolation in a dedicated environment. Before configuring such a system, it is essential to keep in mind on the following factors
1. Regulatory Compliance
2. Hardware / Software
3. Application Design and portability
4. User Base
Cloud Servers: This is a or a group of cloud instances in more than one location. These cloud servers are instantly scalable with respect to memory, cpu, disk. The cloud servers can be deployed in less than 2 min which makes the replication of the application layer within few min. With state of the art snap shot, it is possible to replicate and exact instance within minutes.
Firewall: Traffic from the internet is analyzed and filtered via CISCO Pix firewall. The max sessions and thorough put of the firewall is designed based on the user base and scalability required in the future.
Intrusion Detection System: This works in addition to firewall in analyzing requests and posts in user applications. Live intrusion detection systems help in mitigating attacks that are targeted towards the user application rather than other components such as web server, OS etc.
Load Balancers: This is primarily to distribute load among the nodes in the cluster. Web / Apps servers in particular.
Gigabit Private Network: The Web / Apps server connects to the database server via private network. Connectivity with gigabit speed makes the access to database cluster as if it is on the same machine without any latency.
Database Clusters: No direct connection to the database server is allowed except from the application layer. Database clusters are high end monster servers with RAID 10 minimum configuration and multicore turbo processors.
Backup: Fully scalable NAS / Storage Cloud.
Note : The above schema is a typical sample of a high performance configuration.
Certain components can be added or removed based on the customer’s input.