What is Cloud Orchestration? A Guide to Optimize Your Resources

Cloud orchestration resources have become intrinsic components of modern businesses because they enhance operational efficiencies, cut up-front costs, and improve agility. However, as the need for cloud-based services increases, so does the need for effective automated management.

Cloud orchestration is the process that you can use to manage multiple workloads automatically across private and public clouds. The primary goal is to synthesize all cloud-based workloads into a single workflow, allowing organizations to enhance efficiencies and support development and operations (DevOps) initiatives. Learn more about cloud orchestration and its benefits in this article.

A Closer Look at Cloud Orchestration

Containerization has become a viable alternative for virtualization in the software development sector because containers are lightweight and more resource-efficient than virtual machines (VMs). In small numbers, containers and other cloud-based workloads are easy enough to deploy and manage manually.

However, such workloads are growing rapidly in most companies. Managing cloud-based resources at scale, especially as part of the DevOps pipeline, is becoming increasingly difficult. Organizations can leverage cloud orchestration tools to automate tasks associated with the deployment and management of cloud-based workloads.

What makes Cloud Orchestration so Important?

When used in an organization, it can significantly reduce the need for IT teams to handle tasks manually. This frees them to focus on productive tasks while eliminating manual errors. By allowing the company to focus on innovation, cloud orchestration fosters accelerated deployment and management of applications across a hybrid cloud infrastructure.

You can also orchestrate services as either a single cloud or multi-cloud. A single cloud model is simpler to set up and manage because you run only multiple workloads on the same cloud service provider (CSP). However, a multi-cloud orchestration model can be complex to set up and manage because multiple CSPs are involved.

There are also three cloud-delivery models in general: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Cloud orchestration solutions streamline the management of all these models—typically taking advantage of IaaS providers—to allow them to operate as a single entity.

What are Cloud Orchestration Models?

You can create a ready environment to launch virtual servers using Cloud Director orchestration models. Single-cloud or multi-cloud orchestration are both possible. Multiple apps operate within the same cloud service provider in a single cloud model, which is a simpler configuration. The multi-cloud configuration is a more difficult, but also more versatile architecture.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) are the three delivery methods for cloud services in general.

SaaS

SaaS is a popular sort of cloud computing software with a subscription-based pricing mechanism that is available through the Internet. Web-based software, hosted software, and on-demand software are all terms used to describe it. Businesses no longer need to install or administer software at their offices thanks to the SaaS model.

PaaS

PaaS also supply software packages and middleware, whereas SaaS companies just deliver apps through a web interface and charge a subscription fee.

IaaS

In either a dedicated or multi-tenant environment, IaaS providers supply network infrastructure, storage, and servers, along with physical security. Virtualization services and management technologies are also available from IaaS providers, which may help IT operations run more smoothly within their cloud or across several clouds.

Cloud orchestration solution enables all of these models to function like one, automating throughout models and clouds. However, IaaS providers are frequently used to optimize the deployment process, reducing labor and resources required so that they may focus on revenue-generating activities.

Differences between Cloud Orchestration and Cloud Automation

Cloud orchestration and cloud automation can practically work together to ensure that cloud-based resources get deployed and managed in a cohesive and functional IT environment. However, despite the close relationship, notable differences exist between them, as summarized in the table below:

	Cloud orchestration	Cloud automation
Task management	Manages multiple automation tasks so the organization can achieve a higher-level workflow goal. Cloud orchestration goes beyond automated processes to also coordinate between various automation tasks.	Uses a program to perform a single repetitive task. Cloud automation is a subset of cloud orchestration.
Permissions and security control	IT teams can leverage cloud orchestration to manage permissions and the security of automated tasks. It ties together three attributes: service, workload, and resource orchestration, which can provide permission checks for security.	Cloud automation cannot link the service, workload, and resource orchestration. It cannot implement policy decisions outside of the OS-level account control lists (ACLs).
Cloud-based resources	Organizations can use cloud orchestration to achieve efficient utilization of their cloud-based resources. IT teams can significantly reduce manual and repetitive processes, standardize their deployments, and accelerate delivery.	Cloud automation has a minimal context of resources that organizations can use outside of a specific task. IT teams cannot optimize the utilization of cloud resources.

Benefits of Cloud Orchestration

Cloud orchestration has increasingly become an organizational must-have IT feature because of its many benefits, such as:

It enhances operational efficiency. IT teams can streamline the management of manual and repetitive tasks through automation. This makes it easier to coordinate cloud-based resources efficiently and scale the infrastructure according to business requirements.
It can lead to cost reduction. Cloud orchestration can help the company minimize overall costs required for cloud-based resources by significantly reducing the number of IT administrators.
It enables IT teams to have more visibility and control over cloud resources. Cloud orchestration solutions allow IT teams to access a centralized dashboard from which they can deploy and manage corporate resources.
It can increase business responsiveness. Cloud orchestration enables companies to create a more consolidated, efficient, and responsive cloud deployment model that increases agility. For example, organizations can innovate faster and accelerate product delivery because of streamlined IT management.
It can improve the overall security posture of the organization. Cloud orchestration makes it easy for IT teams to use available resources for continuous vulnerability scans, configuration and validation, and compliance testing. Implementing standardized configurations and re-using them can help organizations avoid errors and potential security breaches.
It supports DevOps initiatives. Cloud orchestration enables developers to focus on their core work by automating server provisioning, network configurations, firewalls, and application testing.

Qualities of an Effective Cloud Orchestration Solution

An effective cloud orchestration solution can help you standardize templates while enforcing strict security practices. It also serves as a good defense mechanism against VM sprawl, providing better visibility and control over the cloud resources. Six characteristics of good cloud orchestration software include that it should:

Handle complex task dependencies. Effective cloud orchestration is one that links tasks to one another automatically, making it easier to execute them properly.
Utilize computing resources efficiently. A good cloud orchestration tool does not over-provision or under-provision system resources.
Support a heterogeneous cloud environment. A tool that supports private and public environments is essential because you’ll want to avoid vendor lock-in.
Support extensibility. You should opt for cloud orchestration software that can plug into any platform, including legacy systems. You can easily leverage existing automation workflows and scripts to operate even in the most complex cloud environments with such a tool.
Simplify the visibility of cloud workloads. You should always go for a tool that offers a unified dashboard. Visualizing all the cloud workloads via a single pane of glass allows you to optimize resource consumption while ensuring you operate within budget constraints.

Use Parallels RAS to Get the Most Out of a Cloud Orchestration Solution

Cloud-based services continue to gain traction, thanks to their operational efficiencies, cost savings, and business agility. Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) is architected on the same principle. As an out-of-the-box virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution, Parallels RAS can publish and deliver cloud workloads at scale from a centralized server.

Parallels RAS has an architecture that supports multiple cloud deployment models, including private, public, hybrid, and multi-cloud architectures. This provides the flexibility you need to deliver corporate resources to your employees. It also supports hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) deployments from leading vendors such as Scale Computing HC3 and Nutanix Acropolis, allowing IT teams to create and deploy guest virtual machines (VMs) on the fly.

In addition, with protocols such as the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)-140-2 and transport layer security (TLS) already integrated securely in Parallels RAS, you don’t need to worry about extra complexity. Most of all, Parallels RAS has a robust High Availability Load Balancing (HALB) feature that you can leverage to distribute traffic among different servers and gateways.

It also supports third-party load balancers such as the AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), and Azure Load Balancers.

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