Connectivity options.
In this lesson, we're going to talk
about the different connectivity options
that are available when connecting
to cloud-based solutions, including virtual private networks
or VPNs, and a private-direct connection
to your cloud provider.
Now, as we go through these options, I want to point out
that we're not talking about your ability to use software
as a service as part of a cloud technology
in this lesson necessarily.
Instead, we're more focused
on connecting our enterprise networks
to our public cloud service providers, known as CSPs.
Now, for example, let's pretend your organization decide
to offload all of its on-premise servers over to the cloud,
including your intranet servers, like your file servers,
your proxy servers, your mail servers, and others.
Well, how are your network clients going
to access those resources?
We need to ensure that when Susan in accounting
or Bob in Human Resources logs onto the network,
they can actually reach that domain controller
and be authenticated, and then access the shared drive
just like they could when the server was down the hall
in our data center,
even though the server may now be across the country
sitting in one of Amazon's
or Microsoft's data centers.
So we need to talk about connectivity options.
The first type of connectivity we need to cover is known
as a virtual private network or VPN.
By using a virtual private network solution,
you can establish a secure connection
between your on-premise network, your remote offices,
your client devices,
and the cloud provider's global network.
This type of connection will usually be created
as a site-to-site VPN between your edge router
and the cloud service provider's network.
When using a VPN solution like this,
usually you're going to rely on a traditional IPSec VPN
to create an encrypted connection
between your cloud provider's network
and your own enterprise network,
all over the public internet
using this encrypted VPN tunnel.
This allows you to extend your network
using a highly available, managed
and elastic cloud VPN solution
to protect your network traffic instead
of laying it to traverse the internet directly.
While a VPN works well in most cases,
if you're running a large enterprise network
and you need higher speeds and redundancy,
you may instead choose to use a private-direct connection
to your cloud provider.
These are sold under different names
depending on the cloud provider you're using.
If you're with Amazon Web Services, or AWS,
they call this a Direct Connect Gateway.
If you're with Microsoft Azure,
they call this an Azure Express Route.
So what is a private-direct connection?
Well, it's going to allow you
to extend your preexisting on-premise data center
or office network into the cloud provider's network,
so you can directly connect to your virtual private cloud
inside that cloud provider's network.
Now, by using a private-direct connection,
you can bypass the internet directly
and instead establish a secure
and dedicated connection from your infrastructure
to the cloud provider's infrastructure
using a dedicated leased line
or similar type of WAN connection.
So what's the difference between using a VPN
and a private-direct connection?
Well, in general, a private-direct connection
will support faster speeds and better performance.
For example, if you're using an AWS-managed VPN service,
you can only achieve a maximum speed
of four gigabytes per second
when you're connecting your enterprise network
to your virtual private cloud
that's hosted by Amazon.
Now, on the other hand,
if you have a private-direct connection,
which they call AWS Direct Connect,
you can get speeds up to 40 gigabytes per second.
Additionally, private-direct connections
can support multiple connections into multiple VPCs
that are hosted in the cloud,
and this provides us with redundancy.
Whereas with a VPN solution,
we can only support one VPN connection to one VPC at a time.
But with everything in the cloud,
there's always going to be trade-offs.
Yes, a private-direct connection has better performance
and better redundancy,
but it's also a more expensive connection
than a VPN connection.
So with AWS, for example, if you're using a VPN solution,
this costs you about 9 cents per gigabyte of data transfer.
But if you're using a private-direct solution, this costs
between 20 and 30 cents per gigabyte of data transfer,
making it two to three times more expensive.
So when it comes to connecting your enterprise networks
to your virtual private clouds, you're hosted by Amazon
or your Azure virtual networks,
remember, you can either use a VPN
or a private-direct connection.
It just depends on the level of performance you need
and the amount of cost that you're willing to accept.