What is cloud bursting? Defin­i­tion and features explained

Cloud Bursting is a cloud computing tech­no­logy where ad­di­tion­al computing and storage resources are added once the ca­pa­cit­ies of a private cloud or local in­fra­struc­ture are no longer suf­fi­cient. Sudden spikes in website traffic can be ef­fi­ciently handled in this way.

What is cloud bursting?

Cloud bursting is a cloud-computing tech­no­logy that allows you to expand and reduce cloud resources as needed. It’s pre­dom­in­antly used by busi­nesses using a private cloud and an on-site data centre. If there is high demand or a seasonal peak load, internal computing capacity can quickly reach its limits. This is where cloud bursting comes in. It allows internal resources to be expanded using external cloud capacity from third parties. Any con­nec­tion to external resources only occurs for a limited time and when needed. By using this tech­no­logy, you can process high workloads, seasonal load and demand peaks without having to invest in costly on-site IT systems.

What does cloud bursting do for companies?

Busi­nesses that outsource their storage and computing resources to the cloud save money on expensive, physical IT in­fra­struc­ture and get more per­form­ance capacity at the same time. To un­der­stand what cloud bursting means for a business’ cloud capacity, it’s important to first un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence between a private and public cloud:

Private cloud

The advantage of a private cloud is that you have dedicated cloud in­fra­struc­ture that can only be used by your business. In most cases, it involves on-site in­fra­struc­ture which includes a cloud server that you manage yourself. However, you can also use private clouds from third-party suppliers with external cloud servers like IaaS (in­fra­struc­ture as a service). Virtual cloud resources are used for this, which reduces costs and workload despite it being a flexible cloud computing service.

Public cloud

A public cloud also works on the IaaS principle, or depending on what’s available, as XaaS (anything as a service). Public cloud solutions such as AWS from Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Services provide on-demand services for cloud computing. By using the IT in­fra­struc­ture of third-party providers, busi­nesses benefit from wide-spread and reliable avail­ab­il­ity thanks to shared, flexible resources that allow for scalab­il­ity.

Simply speaking, cloud bursting tech­no­logy makes it possible for a private cloud to tem­por­ar­ily become a public cloud. In this way, a business’ IT in­fra­struc­ture is able to absorb peak loads when needed.

How does cloud bursting work?

The way cloud bursting works is based on a hybrid de­ploy­ment model and is as simple as it is effective. Busi­nesses that prefer to use on-site IT in­fra­struc­ture in the form of a private cloud use external cloud resources only when needed. If demand, workloads or traffic become too much, a cloud burst occurs. This es­sen­tially ‘bursts’ the private cloud and auto­mat­ic­ally shares the computing per­form­ance across external third-party cloud services. As soon as the workload and peak loads reduce, the external resources are dis­con­nec­ted, and the cloud capacity returns to the on-site data centre.

More and more companies are also adopting a multi-cloud strategy, combining multiple cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Cloud bursting allows workloads to be dis­trib­uted stra­tegic­ally across these providers. However, a thought­ful in­teg­ra­tion is required to ensure in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity, latency, and security.

By doing this, cloud bursting offers flexible scalab­il­ity using pre-defined capacity limits on internal resources. Scaling listeners as well as other cloud bursting tools and cloud APIs decide when capacity should be expanded. They automate the out­sourcing of resources in a flexible and secure manner. In contrast to permanent in­fra­struc­ture, there are no on-going main­ten­ance costs to pay in order to connect to these resources. In other words, you only pay when you need it.

Common processes and ap­proaches include:

• Automatic bursting: Pre-defined load limits auto­mat­ic­ally increase and decrease capacity. Ap­plic­a­tions and workloads that are usually used in the private cloud will be processed in external clouds for the time needed.
• Manual bursting: Expected peak loads, for example, seasonal peaks or internal software updates, can be manually connected and dis­con­nec­ted to and from external capacity.
• Shared load bursting: With a load-balancing approach, ap­plic­a­tions can be made available using an identical en­vir­on­ment in both private and public clouds. If the pre-defined load is reached, the ap­plic­a­tion’s workload will be shared to external capacity without any downtime. Once the load reduces, the workload will go back to using internal capacity.

Who uses cloud bursting?

Cloud bursting can be used across all in­dus­tries and flexibly employed, catering to busi­nesses that have no use for large cloud in­fra­struc­tures as well as those that prefer to have on-premises data centres. In addition to adding resources for a short period of time to handle increased demand, cloud bursting can also be used for big data and machine learning models and sim­u­la­tions without incurring high costs.

Cloud bursting is par­tic­u­larly re­com­men­ded for non-business-critical ap­plic­a­tions and data that do not contain sensitive in­form­a­tion. When external ca­pa­cit­ies are used, data flows for business-critical ap­plic­a­tions should still remain within the private cloud, while non-critical workloads can be dis­trib­uted across public clouds. This ensures that companies comply with com­pli­ance re­quire­ments and data pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions while staying flexible regarding per­form­ance and scalab­il­ity.

Cloud bursting is also gaining in­creas­ing im­port­ance in the field of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. Ap­plic­a­tions such as large language models (LLMs), automated data analysis, or gen­er­at­ive AI require massive computing power on short notice. Through cloud bursting, these ca­pa­cit­ies can be ef­fi­ciently and flexibly added from external clouds when needed, without requiring costly hardware in­vest­ments.

What are some examples of cloud bursting use cases?

Cloud bursting is commonly used in scenarios such as seasonal peaks in online stores, when a seasonal demand increase requires scalable ca­pa­cit­ies. It is important to ensure that cloud bursting does not result in the trans­mis­sion of sensitive customer data, such as payment in­form­a­tion, to third-party providers. When it comes to analysing big data or gen­er­at­ing models and sim­u­la­tions, cloud bursting ac­cel­er­ates data pro­cessing through the extensive in­fra­struc­ture of providers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. Research in­sti­tu­tions with limited local IT in­fra­struc­tures also benefit from cloud bursting by accessing global cloud ca­pa­cit­ies.

What are the benefits of cloud bursting?

Cloud bursting can benefit busi­nesses and in­sti­tu­tions in the following ways:

• Cost savings: The con­struc­tion, main­ten­ance and pro­tec­tion of a local, physical IT in­fra­struc­ture for cloud computing can be costly in terms of material, energy and staff. Small and medium-sized busi­nesses as well as entities with limited financial resources may not be able to afford their own cloud in­fra­struc­ture. By using cloud bursting, they can better plan fin­an­cially and reduce capacity to their re­spect­ive needs.
• Effort: Alongside the financial burden of main­tain­ing the IT in­fra­struc­ture, there is also the time it requires. The main­ten­ance and the daily operation of a data centre requires an in-house IT de­part­ment with specialty knowledge. Since many busi­nesses lack the time and money to search for and hire personnel, cloud bursting makes for a practical solution.
• Flex­ib­il­ity and scalab­il­ity: Cloud bursting offers flexible IT resources for storage and computing capacity when you need it. Instead of operating your own data centre, you can connect resources to meet your demands. By doing so, you can flexibly share and process workloads and make use of needs-based scalab­il­ity.
• Capacity: Cloud bursting tech­no­lo­gies can help maintain per­form­ance during peak loads and avoid IT outages. You can increase per­form­ance limits and outsource workloads to external resources. This gives your public cloud and on-site data centre more capacity.
• Customer and operator friend­li­ness: By main­tain­ing per­form­ance and capacity, you also improve your customer friend­li­ness and your user ex­per­i­ence design. This makes an app or online store more appealing to customers as well as more reliable and easier to use.