The Global Cloud Outage

In today’s fast-paced digital world, cloud reliability is paramount. Recent outages, like the one experienced by Microsoft Azure, have highlighted the vulnerabilities inherent in relying on a public cloud provider. The disruption affected countless businesses, halting operations and causing significant financial losses. This incident underscores the importance of having a robust, reliable, and flexible cloud solution.

A Modern Cloud Solution: HPE GreenLake

HPE GreenLake is a suite of solutions that delivers cloud services but can be hosted in a location of your choice. It combines the agility and economics of the public cloud with the security and performance benefits of on-premises IT. GreenLake’s private cloud offering allows businesses to run their workloads in a dedicated environment, providing greater control, security, and reliability.

The Problem with Aging Cloud Models

The problem was caused by organisations clinging to an old model, which everyone believes is current. Microsoft Azure was launched at the start of 2010, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) was launched in 2006. We are clinging to a business model which is 20 years old, and the cracks are starting to show!

How HPE GreenLake Private Cloud with VDI Could Have Prevented the Azure Outage Impact

The issues Microsoft faced, and the whole world were two-fold: Azure experienced an outage, compounded by a flawed security update from CrowdStrike taking down client equipment. To make matters worse, the proposed fix for the CrowdStrike issue is to manually boot the client machine into safe mode and manipulate the files directly, one machine at a time. How will that work if you are a global company with a global workforce?

A Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is not only incredibly secure but because of its virtualized client environment, recovering from these kinds of issues requires a few clicks of a mouse. Update a single file, then roll out the change to everyone. Rather than having downtime measured in days, you have downtime measured in seconds. With HPE GreenLake and a hosted VDI environment, you are immune to public cloud outages and bad client updates. Your business can rely on the systems to get the job done.

Additional Benefits of HPE GreenLake:

• Improved Security: HPE GreenLake offers enhanced security features, data encryption, secure access controls, and compliance with industry standards. Data sovereignty ensures your data is only ever where you put it.
• Flexibility, Scalability, and Cost Efficiency: Scale HPE GreenLake up or down based on demand and pay only for the resources you use, similar to the public cloud model.

How HPE GreenLake Could Have Mitigated the Azure Outage:

• Avoiding Single Points of Failure: A key advantage of HPE GreenLake is the ability to avoid reliance on a single cloud provider. By running workloads in a private cloud, businesses can maintain operations even if a public cloud provider goes offline.
• Seamless Failover and Redundancy: HPE GreenLake’s infrastructure is designed for high availability and disaster recovery. In the event of an outage, businesses can quickly switch to backup systems, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuity.
• Consistent User Experience: With VDI, users can continue accessing their desktops and applications without interruption, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. This ensures that business operations remain smooth and employees stay productive at all times.

The recent global cloud outage serves as a stark reminder of the need for modern, resilient cloud solutions. HPE GreenLake offers a compelling alternative, combining the best of public and private clouds to ensure your business remains operational, secure, and efficient.