What is Hybrid Cloud Architecture?

Have you ever looked at the menu of your favorite restaurant and couldn’t decide what to order? The lasagna? Or maybe the Salisbury steak? Maybe even a salmon filet? Whatever the case may be- there is always the option of ordering everything you want and more. That’s exactly the case with a hybrid cloud architecture. 

As the name suggests, hybrid cloud architecture refers to the combination of two or more different types of infrastructure, with infrastructure options including: 

• Public Clouds: cloud resources shared by third-party cloud providers over the Internet, accessible and shared by many organizations
• Private Clouds: cloud resources and environments provisioned by a cloud provider but dedicated to a single organization
• On-premise: hardware located on a physical location and can be owned by an organization or third party

The goal of hybrid cloud is to add utility to and modernize legacy applications, enabling workflows that can operate across multiple environments. Companies building within a hybrid cloud architecture may also experience increased flexibility and scalability, as well as stronger security handlings. For many users, the hybrid cloud approach is a no-brainer.

Users around the world have been shifting to a hybrid cloud approach in waves, with Flexera’s 2025 State of the Cloud report stating that 70% of organizations have already embraced the hybrid cloud model. That being said, what exactly is a hybrid cloud architecture made of? And how can Lyrid help optimize the hybrid cloud approach?

Hybrid Cloud Computing Architecture Components

Hybrid cloud is typically conducted in one of two methods:

• Deploying with public cloud and private cloud
• Deploying with public cloud and on-premise infrastructure

While this approach seems like it only needs a public cloud, private cloud, or on-premise hardware to operate (which, in fairness, is true to some degree), the fact of the matter is that certain extra components are required to make multi-environment workflows work. These non-negotiable requirements to hybrid cloud architecture include:

Containerization

Containers are a method of development and deployment in which applications and their dependencies are placed into isolated packages, making these applications extremely flexible and lightweight. Containers are perfect for hybrid cloud environments, with containerized applications working across all environments. 

Often coupled with containers are microservices, splitting applications into different parts, or microservices, that can be developed and deployed independently.

Network Connectivity 

Network connections are absolutely essential in hybrid cloud environments, acting as the connectors between different cloud environments.

Connection methods for hybrid cloud environments include: 

• Virtual Private Networks (VPNs): VPNs establish endpoint connections through encrypted channels, keeping user data and other important information safe through transfers. When working with cloud environments, especially public clouds, VPNs are essential.
• Wide Area Network (WAN): WANs connect client computers over wide areas (hence the name). The largest WAN is the Internet, spanning continents and regions.
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs): APIs are rules that allow applications to communicate with each other. Through APIs, organizations are able to integrate their applications to other applications and even with third party developers

Hybrid cloud connectivity can be made up of a combination of these connection methods.

Unified Hybrid Cloud Management Platform

Perhaps the biggest challenges within a hybrid cloud architecture is managing and keeping track of multiple environments. Having a single platform or interface where users can operate and manage their current environments while still being able to discover new resources is key to the success of hybrid cloud.

Typically within a single tool or platform, a unified hybrid cloud management system will have functions such as:

Compute and Storage Services

Like any competent cloud option, a single hybrid cloud tool will provide interfaces for both compute services and storage services. Users should be able to provide core computing for their applications as well as data storage options within a single platform, removing the need to traverse different environments as a whole.

Storage options hosted by unified management tools should provide means to integrate large data transfers, organization, and analysis across multiple sources, with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning often aiding in this process. In addition, these storage options need data governance tools, ensuring that data inputs and outputs meet organization standards.

Resource Management Tooling

Managing resources across multiple environments is daunting, especially with the amount of resources and tools that providers have to offer. Resource management tooling can help efficiently allocate resources across multiple environments based on workload requirements and traffic.

Workload Orchestration

A popular practice within hybrid cloud is containerization, increasing the flexibility and portability of applications by packaging them, along with their dependencies, into a single package. Container orchestration software tooling like Kubernetes and Docker are instrumental in maintaining hybrid cloud workloads. Through container orchestrators, users can deploy and sync containers across different environments, with many of the processes, including scaling, being automated. 

Security Measures

Like all great platforms and tools, unified management platforms need some sort of security measures. And with an architecture that deals with multiple environments, strong data transfer security is absolutely necessary. Security measures such as data encryption, role-based access, backups and disaster recovery, and firewalls are just some of the ways organizations can safeguard their hybrid cloud operations.

While these requirements are not automatically baked into hybrid cloud operations, developers should recognize the importance of these elements in their architecture.

The Benefits of Hybrid Cloud Architecture

So why go hybrid cloud? Hybrid cloud certainly seems like a lot more work than warranted, with developers tasked with onboarding additional clouds, creating network connections, ensuring security, and so much more. Well, the work is certainly worth it, with hybrid cloud benefits including:

Increased Flexibility and Scalability

Hybrid cloud architectures support scaling by allocating compute resources across multiple environments, allowing businesses to respond to changes and scale across workloads once traffic demands it. Scaling within cloud providers is limitless, letting users scale without the confines of physical infrastructure (if they choose to omit on-premise from their hybrid cloud architecture). This scalability is critical during demand spikes and increases uptime in the process.

Working across multiple environments and within containers also enable applications to become more flexible, working throughout various different fields of operation.

Application Modernization

Hybrid cloud environments offer utility to legacy systems, updating old hardware to support cloud native app environments. The result is powerful hardware ready for modern applications and designed to scale.

Increased Cloud Utility

Hybrid cloud infrastructure supports cloud utility across the board, avoiding siloes in production and deployment by delivering services on service-based models such as platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

In these hybrid cloud environments, users are also able to pick and choose the best features from the clouds they’re working within, avoiding vendor lock while offering service variability.

Enhanced Cost Savings

Hybrid cloud environments encourage cost savings by shifting resource heavy workflows onto public clouds where resources are cheaper and potentially bypassing the costs of upgrading legacy infrastructure.

Maintaining Business Continuity

Having multiple cloud environments and on-premise environments requires replicated data sets to maintain continuity. These data sets allow applications to work even under failure and can even encourage scalability through seamless application backup transitioning.

Hybrid Cloud Architectures with Lyrid

Hybrid cloud is an ever growing movement, bringing in the best of public and private clouds and on-premise infrastructure. With a strong emphasis on network connectivity, data security, scalability, and flexibility, the hybrid cloud approach is suitable for companies looking for agility and dependability. 

Lyrid offers a hybrid cloud model that combines accessible cloud services with powerful local data center hardware. Unified hybrid cloud management is accessible within just the Lyrid platform, offering services like:

• Managed Kubernetes
• Managed Databases
• Scalable Object Storage
• Instant environment provisioning

And more, on top of highly scalable and affordable bare metal infrastructure! With Lyrid, users no longer have to scramble back and forth between cloud providers to scale their resources, Lyrid handles scaling and deployment automatically, letting users focus on their core business competencies.

Learn more about Lyrid and how to get started on a hybrid cloud track by visiting our website: https://www.lyrid.io/product-tour-app