Single-cloud vs. multi-cloud: Choosing the right strategy for your platform

TL;DR

Multi-cloud development has all the same benefits as single-cloud development, with additional benefits and unique challenges. Legacy tools are no longer sufficient to support the complexity of modern development and must be updated accordingly.

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing refers to the delivery of computing services like data storage, servers, software, and more over the internet (referred to as ‘the cloud’), as opposed to using a local server, personal computer, or on-premise hardware. Instead of owning and maintaining physical infrastructure, users can access and pay for services from cloud providers as needed. This style of computing and software development offers flexibility at scale and streamlines resource acquisition and distribution.

Due to its advantages, many platforms are switching to cloud computing. Yet as the adoption of cloud computing continues, software developers find themselves sailing into uncharted waters around security, infrastructure, and legal compliance. Securing and managing API keys, database credentials, and other secrets is vital to all of these areas, yet legacy secrets management solutions struggle to adapt to modern development environments.

What is the multi-cloud?

Multi-cloud, or multi-cloud development, refers to companies that host their platforms on any combination of public or private clouds. Multi-cloud computing has all the same benefits as normal cloud computing, with additional adaptability, but it poses unique challenges requiring modern solutions.

Here, we’ll explore how multi-cloud environments differ from single-cloud environments and examine some of the solutions to the challenges cloud-based development introduces.

What are the benefits of cloud computing?

Cloud services are considered among the most important developments in modern computing for a reason. The flexibility in personnel management for hybrid work environments and reduction in server hosting costs through dynamic resource provisioning vastly improved upon existing static or self-hosted frameworks. The benefits of cloud computing are even more pronounced for smaller organizations. Here are a few key factors:

Initial hardware cost and upkeep

Cloud computing eliminates the need for on-premise physical hardware, since the servers are maintained by cloud providers. This removes the burden of purchasing, storing, and maintaining servers.

Scalability

Dynamic server provisioning scales according to platform demand. Pay-as-you-go models mean your platform is only paying for the server use it needs. With cloud computing, you won’t run out of server space, nor will you overpay for excess server space when application traffic decreases.

IT freedom

Without servers to constantly maintain, configure, and reconfigure, IT teams can focus on other priorities, like maintaining robust platform security. Freeing up personnel helps run a smoother ship and reduce overhead.

Security and recovery: Cloud providers employ their own security systems to prevent vulnerabilities with dedicated, professional teams updating to more secure versions when possible.

What are the benefits of the multi-cloud?

The most significant addition that adopting a multi-cloud approach provides is adaptability. Reliance on a single cloud solution, public or private, means the platform is tethered to its architecture. If a company decides to expand into a market or region where that cloud provider is no longer the optimal solution, remaining locked to a single-cloud provider might not effectively meet your platform’s needs.

Locking a platform into just one provider also means it will be reliant upon that provider and will be subject to future updates and pricing changes. Using a multi-cloud approach prevents this vendor lock-in. The multi-cloud takes advantage of market competition, allowing your team to choose price points from different cloud providers.

Challenges of implementing multi-cloud environments

Developers face a few unique challenges when implementing multi-cloud environments.

Additional configurations

Each cloud in a multi-cloud application requires its own configuration, and even with a robust infrastructure as code (IaC) framework, this will take time and development resources.

Cross-compatibility

Migration and portability mechanisms between clouds suffer from a lack of integration among cloud-providing services, making the transference of platform infrastructure and configuration of new clouds more challenging. This process often involves manual action from developers, which introduces security risks.

Duplication

Due to the complexity of the migration and configuration process, duplicate versions of secrets (API keys, database credentials, and more) become a significant risk to platform security and developer efficiency. This secrets sprawl makes tracking down duplicate secrets for rotation significantly more challenging.

Tracking and auditing

Each additional environment means more information. Keeping track of audit information is necessary for many compliance regulations and industry certifications, and this process may grow more tedious with additional cloud environments.

Scale

All issues grow with additional clouds.

New tools

To tackle new development challenges, new tools and solutions were created. These new strategies, conversely, come with a learning curve for security teams and require new or additional measures to maintain a secure development environment. One of these solutions is the professional secrets management solution.

Every secrets manager, legacy, homegrown, open-source, cloud-native, or professionally managed, helps you improve your security posture by eliminating hard-coded credentials in application source code and CI/CD workflows. These secrets are replaced with a runtime call to retrieve the credentials as needed, avoiding vulnerabilities stemming from an application’s source code visibility.

Secrets management solutions aren’t created equally, however. Traditional secrets management solutions lack the automation capabilities of modern, professionally managed secrets management solutions. Cloud-native secrets management solutions, designed to operate alongside cloud-based development, lack the compatibility features to port and track secrets between cloud providers.

To effectively manage secrets in a multi-cloud environment at the enterprise level, it is necessary to use a centralized solution that integrates and operates in every cloud environment, tracks the use and location of each instance of a secret, and easily enables the automation of common security practices.

Configuration work increases dramatically without a centralized solution, as each cloud must be configured separately. Without integration support, duplicate secrets and other security vulnerabilities abound. A lack of automation features hinders the development efficiency central to the adoption of cloud-based development in the first place.

We know developers would much rather ship new features than spend time managing secrets and configuring servers. Doppler was built by developers, for developers, with that very purpose in mind. Check out a free demo to see how Doppler can improve your security posture!

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