This link Episode XIV: Circle of Life is to a really interesting and thoughtful article by Fatih Nar Chief Technologist at Red Hat, and Tom Conklin Senior Director at Red Hat. The article discusses the subject of on-premises versus cloud infrastructure, weighing the pros and cons of each and providing insight to the reader.
I am hoping that my point of view about this subject and the issues that get in your way because of vendor lock-in when you are running workloads on Kubernetes in public cloud providers is helpful to you. I am also hopeful that in this blog I can provide insightful thoughts about our innovative approach and how we can help organizations future-proof their infrastructure and data storage decisions and not worry so much about cloud versus on-premises and enable a true hybrid Kubernetes world.
A little bit about Trilio’s Kubernetes Data Protection Solution
Trilio provides an application-centric backup and intelligent recovery solution for cloud-native applications based on Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift. Our platform enables organizations to intelligently recover their Kubernetes applications, including metadata, configurations, and data through automation and orchestration. As an application-centric Intelligent Recovery Platform, organizations can backup and restore individual applications, rather than the entire Kubernetes cluster. This approach saves time and reduces the cost required to back up, restore, and migrate Kubernetes applications.
Trilio supports numerous Kubernetes distributions, including Red Hat OpenShift, SUSE Rancher, and other CNCF-compatible distributions. Trilio also supports a number of public cloud providers, including AWS, GCP, Azure, and others. Ultimately, with Trilio, organizations can confidently back up and restore their Kubernetes applications, regardless of the underlying Kubernetes distribution, private cloud infrastructure, or public cloud provider in use. This flexibility, scalability, and control make Trilio the best solution to satisfy customer requirements and solve needs.
Read on to discover how Trilio can help your business stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing world of data management.
What is Vendor Lock-in?
And why you should avoid it
Vendor lock-in is a situation where an organization is unable to switch from one vendor to another without significant costs or disruption to their operations. Vendor lock-in is also a common problem in the technology industry, where vendors offer proprietary solutions that are not compatible with other vendors’ products. Vendor lock-in can limit a business’s ability to innovate, reduce competition, and increase costs.
How does Lock-in of Cloud Native Applications Occur?
Kubernetes vendor lock-in can occur in several ways.
- When an organization uses cloud offerings from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), they offer managed Kubernetes services. With limited capabilities, these offerings provide ease of use, but make it challenging for organizations to switch to other cloud providers.
- If an organization uses a more robust Kubernetes distribution from a vendor, such as VMware, Rancher, or Red Hat lock-in occurs too. Their Kubernetes distributions are tailored to their products and services, making it challenging, and costly to switch to other vendors’ platforms and products.
One of the most significant contributors to vendor lock-in in the public cloud is egress charges. Egress charges refer to the fees that cloud providers charge for data that leaves their network. These charges can add up quickly, especially for organizations that need to transfer large amounts of data out of the cloud. This could result in the cost of moving to another provider being prohibitive due to the egress charges.
For example, if an organization is using a specific cloud provider to host its application data, a change in vendors make necessitate a large transfer to another provider. The egress charges for this transfer can be significant, which can discourage an organization from implementing change, leading to vendor lock-in, and hindering innovation and modernization.
How can egress charges be avoided?
There are several ways public cloud customers can reduce egress charges, you can find multiple tips and tricks online. In this blog post by IT Convergence, there is a good summary of how to “detect” those costs, and some ways to avoid them: What are Cloud Egress Charges and How to Manage Them
But at the moment there is no way to completely avoid charges when you are moving data out of a public cloud or across its availability zones.
Also, there are other solutions available that can help organizations to avoid these charges and reduce their dependence on a single cloud provider.
One such solution is Wasabi Storage Fast, Affordable Cloud Storage & Secure Data Protection. Wasabi offers a cloud storage service that provides organizations with affordable, high-performance, and durable storage for their data. One of the significant advantages of using Wasabi is that they do not charge egress fees for accessing data from their storage service, which can significantly reduce costs for businesses. We think the industry is going to evolve and egress charges will be reduced slowly or even removed completely.
Another vendor that comes to my mind is Rackspace Data Freedom | Destroy Egress Fees and avoid Cloud lock-in, and according to them “Rackspace Data Freedom enables you to remove these barriers by storing data centrally, outside of any particular cloud, and transporting it via our private, fast and secure global network backbone while ensuring your data is available to any cloud service.”
What’s Trilio’s role in avoiding Kubernetes Vendor Lock-in?
Trilio supports Kubernetes-based applications as a native extension to whatever platform you are using and enables recovery and restoration of an application and its associated data to various distributions or heterogeneous cloud infrastructures. Recovery as a mobility vehicle is a powerful capability. Whether you plan to use a single cloud and distribution or multiple clouds and distributions, Trilio’s solutions enable you to have better control over your application and data.
Conclusion
Kubernetes is a powerful technology for container orchestration and management, but it can also lead to vendor lock-in which could turn “Circle of Life” into “Imprisonment for Life”. Trilio provides an intelligent recovery solution for Kubernetes, helping businesses avoid Kubernetes vendor lock-in by empowering recovery and orchestration regardless of your move from and/or to any distribution and cloud. Trilio’s cloud-native, scalable, and user-friendly solution is ideal for businesses that operate Kubernetes in a hybrid public cloud environment. It not only meets the needs of today but also future-proofs your business for tomorrow.
