Security considerations still keep many businesses from moving their infrastructure to the cloud. Private cloud alleviates those concerns, but requires building your own on-site cloud so you lose the advantage of the maintenance and support a cloud provider offers. Many businesses aren’t aware that you can take advantage of private cloud supported by a cloud provider. Virtual private cloud (VPC) creates an isolated environment within the cloud provider’s facilities. In fact, Amazon Web Services (AWS) now provides virtual private clouds by default, making it even easier to take advantage of the benefits.
Isolation Controls Offered By Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
Virtual private cloud creates a virtual network isolated from other AWS servers. You have very similar control over the virtual network as you would if it were on premises while still being able to take advantage of Amazon’s infrastructure and services. You are able to fully manage your VPC including determining its IP addresses. You control the definition of subnets, and can establish some that are internet facing while others are private.
Security controls available in your VPC include the ability to limit both outbound and inbound traffic. Network access control lists let you manage the communication between devices.
Along with isolated networks, AWS VPC allows you to use isolated hardware. Dedicated instances will share hardware only with other instances belonging to your account. Dedicated hosts provide physical servers that you control, including control over which instances it runs.
It’s important to note that the default VPC provided by AWS may not fully meet your requirements. For example, default VPCs have public IPv4 addresses unless you change this; nondefault VPCs do not have public IPv4 addresses. Default VPCs have public internet access with an internet gateway; in a nondefault VPC, you control this.
Benefits of Using Virtual Private Cloud
There are other benefits to VPC beyond the enhanced isolation. With a VPC, you can establish a contiguous address space and more easily integrate the cloud with your own data center. The dedicated resources mean your cloud resources don’t share capacity with other users and you can experience better performance. You can also use VPC to more easily meet compliance standards, such as PCI, that require data isolation. At the same time, you achieve the full scalability and support benefits of cloud.
Set Up Your Virtual Private Cloud Easily
While many organizations have virtualized their data centers, few have implemented true private cloud with its on demand provisioning and scalability. Using Amazon VPC makes setting up your private cloud straightforward. However, it’s easy to make a mistake and misconfigure your subnets, making some public instead of private.
Work with the team at dcVAST to make sure your Amazon infrastructure is properly configured to meet your business requirements. We provide managed Amazon Web Services that ensure your infrastructure is properly configured, along with monitoring and support that resolves problems rapidly. Contact us to learn more about why you should use a virtual private cloud in Amazon Web Services.
