How do I choose between a "Native" hybrid cloud and a "Generic" hybrid setup?

All answers to this question.

If you have a small team, go with the "Native" solution. AWS Outposts or Azure Stack provides a single control plane, which means your team doesn't have to learn two different ways to provision storage or manage identities. Yes, you are "locked in" to that vendor’s ecosystem, but the reduction in operational overhead (OpEx) is massive. We tried building an OpenStack-to-AWS bridge three years ago, and we spent 80% of our time just maintaining the integration scripts. When we switched to Azure Stack, we finally started shipping actual business features instead of just playing with the infrastructure.

   Answered 2025-02-10 by Margaret Robinson

Are there any specific latency requirements for your edge locations that would make a custom-built hardware solution more viable than the standard racks provided by the big cloud vendors?

   Answered 2025-02-25 by Thomas Allen

• Thomas, we have some manufacturing sites with very poor connectivity. We found that AWS Outposts requires a constant link to the home region to function properly. For those specific sites, we had to go with a generic ruggedized server running local K3s because we couldn't guarantee that "phone home" connection would always be active.

     Commented 2025-03-02 by Brian Scott

Consider the hardware lifecycle. With a native solution, the vendor often handles the hardware refreshes and maintenance. With a generic setup, that's all on your team.

   Answered 2025-03-15 by Dorothy Young

• That's a huge point, Dorothy. Not having to worry about swapping out dead drives or upgrading firmware is a massive relief for our data center staff.

     Commented 2025-03-20 by Linda Garcia