Branch Infrastructure Design: The Cloud Effect

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Andrew Froehlich.

When designing infrastructure for corporate branch offices, you usually run up against one or more common pitfalls. Best-practice architecture documentation and common sense dictate that designing and implementing branch offices in a cookie-cutter fashion makes it much easier to manage all sites. But various factors commonly force designs to be altered to meet the needs of each individual branch.

Because of this, the architecture and, therefore, support of each branch office end up being decidedly different. Your support staff has to burn more time and resources to support disparate infrastructures — time that could be spent on more meaningful tasks. Thankfully, the growing acceptance of cloud computing allows for an opportunity to design branch office infrastructures in a far more homogeneous manner…

In traditional branch office infrastructure architecture, everything from branch location and number and type of users to applications, security requirements, and business criticality plays a role. If the site calls for a handful of users who require only access to web-based applications, a simple Internet connection with a site-to-site VPN back to headquarters might be a logical choice. But once you ramp up the desired branch office data access, architectural complexity grows exponentially…

Read more from the source @ http://www.networkcomputing.com/cloud-infrastructure/branch-infrastructure-design-the-cloud-effect/a/d-id/1269186