one who is in control. That is a powerful—and sometimes overwhelming—
position. Thought and planning prevent painful mistakes and repeated
engineering.
Deploy/Install Basics: Public, Private, or Hybrid?
There are two ways to deploy Ubuntu in the cloud: on a private cloud or on a
public cloud. Both have benefits and drawbacks. This section presents the
factors you need to consider when choosing. We also look at a way to mix the
two, in what is called a hybrid cloud.
A public cloud is built on a cloud provider’s systems. This means your local
hardware requirements are minimal, your startup costs are low, deployment is
quick, and growth is easy. A public cloud can be incredibly useful for testing
and has gained the stability and reputation for also being a great idea for
production. The drawback to working this way is that you do not physically
control the hardware on which your cloud is running. For many this is a
benefit, but such a situation might not be suitable for high security needs.
Although you alone control the software and processes on your public cloud,
there might be some worry about who has access to the machines. Although a
cloud provider would not last long in business if its data centers and machines
were not secure, some applications and data are so sensitive that you cannot
afford to allow any outside risk. Legal constraints, such as from the Sarbanes-
Oxley Act, sometimes force IT policy decisions in an organization and make
the public option impossible.
A private cloud is created on hardware you own and control. This requires a
large upfront commitment, but you have the security of running everything
behind a company firewall and with complete knowledge of who is able to
physically access your machines and who is listening on the network.
One thing to consider is the possibility of a hybrid cloud by starting as a
private cloud and then creating interfaces from there to public services.
Perhaps you prefer to keep some of your data and services stored on the
private cloud, but you have other data that is less sensitive and want to use
some services and applications on a public cloud. This is an avenue worth
exploring if your company has a mixture of “must be secured and held in-
house” and “we still want to keep it away from prying eyes, but if something
happens, it won’t be catastrophic” needs. The big issue with this method is
moving data between public and private servers; if you have large amounts of
data that may move between the two, this can be prohibitive. As always, do
your due diligence.