Which cloud service provider refers to a virtual private cloud (vpc) as a vnet?

Companies continue to shift their networking services to the cloud, either hosted publicly or in a hybrid fashion, including virtual route tables, firewalls and gateways, management software, load balancers, static and dynamic IP addresses, subnetworks and VLANs.

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Azure Virtual Network (VNet) are two of the most popular cloud networking services. Each largely serves the same purpose, but there are some differences. Below, we will compare Amazon VPC vs. Azure VNet.

Amazon VPC has a simple purpose to allow customers to provision AWS resources in a defined virtual network. AWS provides the infrastructure, and the customer configures functionality as desired. Amazon asserts that users have complete control over their networking. With the VPC, users can perform the following tasks, choose IP addresses and their ranges, create subnets, configure route tables and gateways, isolate back-end systems on a private subnet, make web-connected systems available to users via public networks,  and establish VPNs and institute fine-grained security practices. VPC lets you set up a network access control list, which acts as a firewall and filter for network traffic. Finally, Amazon VPC emphasizes observability — both actively and retroactively. With VPC Flow Logs, ops teams have visibility into traffic allocation, network activity, data sharing and compliance, as well as highlights into suspicious events.

Amazon VPC fits squarely within the AWS ecosystem. The service integrates with AWS Lambda, Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2. This enables customers to execute functional, serverless code, store data remotely, making it only available to certain VPC instances or tools, connect networking resources with instances, to access scalable cloud-computing capacity.

AWS Transit Gateway forges a unified connection between VPCs, AWS accounts and on-premises networks. Similarly, AWS Private Link creates a secure pathway between active AWS services and VPCs.

Azure VNet connects Azure VMs and computing resources with one another, as well as on-premises networks and the internet. While Azure VNets share foundational infrastructure, they remain isolated from one another by default. Azure Networking uses virtual extensible LANs to securely link virtual networks, while remaining scalable in the process. A VNet peering connection lets these virtual networks communicate using IPv4 or IPv6. Data can flow back and forth as necessary, according to the organization’s configurations. Microsoft also acknowledges the role IPv6 plays to support IoT device communication. Service instances can dually connect with clients using both protocols.

With VNet, admins can enable, communication of Azure resources with the internet, communication between Azure resources, communication with on-premises resources, filtering of network traffic, routing of network traffic, and integration with Azure services.

Like Amazon VPC, Azure VNet employs routing tables to dictate how traffic flows from resources. Dubbed User-Defined Routing (UDR), Azure runs a default configuration that welcomes customization. These user routes often take precedence over default routes. With Azure VPN Gateway, UDR can also control traffic between virtual networks and others.

Azure VNets can host a litany of native Azure services, much like Amazon VPC. These virtual networks connect with Azure App Service Environments, Azure Kubernetes Service or Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets. Since it deals with data, VNet interfaces directly with current Azure Storage accounts and Azure SQL Database. It is easy to privately store and safeguard VNet information.

Azure VNet also lets you create two types of VPNs. The first, point-to-site VPN, creates a connection between a virtual network and one computer on another network. Microsoft views this as more of a plug-and-play setup since little configuration is required to get started. Secondly, site-to-site VPNs connect a VNet-deployed, Azure VPN Gateway with an on-premises VPN device. These connections rely on explicit authorization. They also use encrypted tunneling. Finally, network security groups contain two-way security rules, enforced according to IP address, port, firewall, source and destination. You can additionally provision a VM as a firewall — or for something like WAN optimization.

In terms of which is better, it largely depends on use case. VNet seems more enterprise focused, whereas Amazon VPC is ideal for more customer-facing resources — per AWS’ use cases. When you make the choice between Amazon VPC and Azure VNet, consider the following, what will your networks control, what services are you focusing on, are you already familiar with one technology stack over the other? Ultimately, the decision will depend on which service’s subtleties are most useful for your organization’s needs.

What is a virtual private cloud (VPC)?

A VPC is a public cloud offering that lets an enterprise establish its own private cloud-like computing environment on shared public cloud infrastructure. A VPC gives an enterprise the ability to define and control a virtual network that is logically isolated from all other public cloud tenants, creating a private, secure place on the public cloud.

Imagine that a cloud provider’s infrastructure is a residential apartment building with multiple families living inside. Being a public cloud tenant is akin to sharing an apartment with a few roommates. In contrast, having a VPC is like having your own private condominium—no one else has the key, and no one can enter the space without your permission.

A VPC’s logical isolation is implemented using virtual network functions and security features that give an enterprise customer granular control over which IP addresses or applications can access particular resources. It is analogous to the “friends-only” or “public/private” controls on social media accounts used to restrict who can or can’t see your otherwise public posts.

Discover how IBM can help you on your VPC journey.

Features

VPCs are a “best of both worlds” approach to cloud computing. They give customers many of the advantages of private clouds, while leveraging public cloud resources and savings. The following are some key features of the VPC model:

• Agility: Control the size of your virtual network and deploy cloud resources whenever your business needs them. You can scale these resources dynamically and in real-time.
• Availability: Redundant resources and highly fault-tolerant availability zone architectures mean your applications and workloads are highly available.
• Security: Because the VPC is a logically isolated network, your data and applications won’t share space or mix with those of the cloud provider’s other customers. You have full control over how resources and workloads are accessed, and by whom.
• Affordability: VPC customers can take advantage of the public cloud’s cost-effectiveness, such as saving on hardware costs, labor times, and other resources.

Benefits

Each VPC’s main features readily translate into a benefit to help your business achieve agility, increased innovation, and faster growth.

• Flexible business growth: Because cloud infrastructure resources—including virtual servers, storage, and networking—can be deployed dynamically, VPC customers can easily adapt to changes in business needs.
• Satisfied customers: In today’s “always-on” digital business environments, customers expect uptime ratios of nearly 100%. The high availability of VPC environments enables reliable online experiences that build customer loyalty and increase trust in your brand.
• Reduced risk across the entire data lifecycle: VPCs enjoy high levels of security at the instance or subnet level, or both. This gives you peace of mind and further increases the trust of your customers.
• More resources to channel toward business innovation: With reduced costs and fewer demands on your internal IT team, you can focus your efforts on achieving key business goals and exercising core competencies.

Architecture

In a VPC, you can deploy cloud resources into your own isolated virtual network. These cloud resources—also known as logical instances—fall into three categories.

• Compute: Virtual server instances (VSIs, also known as virtual servers) are presented to the user as virtual CPUs (vCPUs) with a predetermined amount of computing power, memory, etc.
• Storage: VPC customers are typically allocated a certain block storage quota per account, with the ability to purchase more. It is akin to purchasing additional hard drive space. Recommendations for storage are based on the nature of your workload.
• Networking: You can deploy virtual versions of various networking functions into your virtual private cloud account to enable or restrict access to its resources. These include public gateways, which are deployed so that all or some areas of your VPC environment can be made available on the public-facing Internet; load balancers, which distribute traffic across multiple VSIs to optimize availability and performance;  and routers, which direct traffic and enable communication between network segments. Direct or dedicated links enable rapid and secure communications between your on-premises enterprise IT environment or your private cloud and your VPC resources on public cloud.

Three-tier architecture in a VPC

The majority of today’s applications are designed with a three-tier architecture comprised of the following interconnected tiers:

• The web or presentation tier, which takes requests from web browsers and presents information created by, or stored within, the other layers to end users.
• The application tier, which houses the business logic and is where most processing takes place.
• The database tier, comprised of database servers that store the data processed in the application tier.

To create a three-tier application architecture on a VPC, you assign each tier its own subnet, which will give it its own IP address range. Each layer is automatically assigned its own unique ACL.

For a more detailed explanation of how to create this architecture in a VPC and deploy applications to it, see the blog post “Virtual Private Cloud: The Tech and the Test.”

Security

VPCs achieve high levels of security by creating virtualized replicas of the security features used to control access to resources housed in traditional data centers. These security features enable customers to define virtual networks in logically isolated parts of the public cloud and control which IP addresses have access to which resources.

Two types of network access controls comprise the layers of VPC security:

• Access control lists (ACLs): An ACL is a list of rules that limit who can access a particular subnet within your VPC. A subnet is a portion or subdivision of your VPC; the ACL defines the set of IP addresses or applications granted access to it.
• Security group: With a security group, you can create groups of resources (which may be situated in more than one subnet) and assign uniform access rules to them. For example, if you have three applications in three different subnets, and you want them all to be public Internet-facing, you can place them in the same security group. Security groups act like virtual firewalls, controlling the flow of traffic to your virtual servers, no matter which subnet they are in.

VPC vs. …

VPC vs. virtual private network (VPN)

A virtual private network (VPN) makes a connection to the public Internet as secure as a connection to a private network by creating an encrypted tunnel through which the information travels. You can deploy a VPN-as-a-Service (VPNaaS) on your VPC to establish a secure site-to-site communication channel between your VPC and your on-premises environment or other location. Using a VPN, you can connect subnets in multiple VPCs so that they function as if they were on a single network.

VPC vs. private cloud

Private cloud and virtual private cloud are sometimes—and mistakenly—used interchangeably.  In fact, a virtual private cloud is actually a public cloud offering. A private cloud is a single-tenant cloud environment owned, operated, and managed by the enterprise, and hosted most commonly on-premises or in a dedicated space or facility. By contrast, a VPC is hosted on multi-tenant architecture, but each customer’s data and workloads are logically separate from those of all other tenants. The cloud provider is responsible for ensuring this logical isolation.

VPC vs. public cloud

A virtual private cloud is a single-tenant concept that gives you the opportunity to create a private space within the public cloud’s architecture. A VPC offers greater security than traditional multi-tenant public cloud offerings but still lets customers take advantage of the high availability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of the public cloud. In some cases, there may be different ways of how you scale a VPC and a public cloud account. For instance, additional storage volumes may only be available in blocks of a certain size for VPCs. Not all public cloud features are supported in all VPC offerings.

VPC FAQ

For answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about virtual private clouds, see "FAQs for VPC."

Pricing

The various cloud providers may offer different pricing models in their VPC offerings. It is common for individual VPC resources—such as load balancers, VSIs, or storage—to be priced separately. It is also common for data transfer charges to be applied based on volume, but there are some cloud providers do not charge for data transfers over private networks.

To find the VPC offering whose pricing model works best for your business needs, it is vital to consider the requirements of the applications you are planning to deploy. Are they compute-intensive? Will they require large amounts of memory and CPU? Or are they more balanced in terms of their CPU, storage, and memory requirements? Answering these questions accurately helps you to predict your usage needs, which in turn allows you to estimate the potential costs when comparing options.

VPC and IBM Cloud

IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is among the latest IBM Cloud infrastructure offerings. Now available across several multi-zone regions, IBM Cloud VPC is designed from the ground up for cloud native workloads, with IBM experience in building and managing cloud architectures as its foundation.

IBM Cloud VPC features a new REST-based API to ease integration with your existing applications and toolsets, multiple connectivity options (including IBM Cloud Direct Link), and full integration with all core IBM Cloud platform capabilities.

To learn more about IBM Cloud VPC, sign up for a free IBM Cloud account today and provision your first virtual server instance right away.

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