What was the problem before VPC? How does it solve using VPC?
Let's try to understand the problem with a traditional example:
Assume that there is one village and the people of that village are very lazy. They are lazy enough to build their houses. One XYZ (person) saw the opportunity he was like ok you people request me with your requirement and I will build your houses but for that, you have to pay. So, XYZ person buys the portion of the land and starts building houses and some other people saw the problem that anyone can easily enter and access the houses and the entire village is unsecured. To solve this problem, XYZ person comes up with the concept of secure land.
Here, XYZ person can be considered as AWS and secure land as Virtual Private Cloud.
What is Amazon VPC?
At its core, Amazon VPC enables you to build a virtual network in the cloud that is closely reminiscent of a traditional on-premises network. This network can be customized to fit your organization's needs, offering complete control over IP address ranges, subnets, route tables, and network gateways.
The architecture of the Amazon VPC
- Internet Gateway (IGW):
Internet Gateway is the entry point VPC. if some user wants to access our application then it is sort of like a pass for the user.
- Subnets:
Subnets are logical subdivisions of your VPC's IP address range. They allow you to organize resources based on their functionality and security requirements. Subnets can be public (accessible from the internet) or private (accessible only within the VPC).
- Elastic load balancer
It is connected with the public subnet and distributed the request to the private subnet using the routing method which is implemented using routing tables.
- Route Tables:
Route tables determine where network traffic is directed. You can associate different subnets with specific route tables, controlling how traffic flows within and outside your VPC.
- Network Address Translation (NAT) Gateway:
If the application needs to download some package from google.com, it will be dangerous to expose the IP address of your application to the internet. So, instead of that, we do masking of IP address which is called NAT while dealing with the outside world it changes the IP Address of the application with public subnet IP or Router IP. If it is doing this using Router then it is called NAT Gateway.
- Security Groups and Network ACLs:
Security groups act as virtual firewalls, for instance, controlling inbound and outbound traffic. Network Access Control Lists (ACLs) provide an additional layer of network security by controlling traffic at the subnet level.
- Peering:
VPC peering enables you to connect multiple VPCs and share resources and data securely between them.
Advantage and Benefits
Isolation and Security: VPCs offer isolation and control over your resources. You can define network access rules, security groups, and ACLs to enforce robust security measures.
Scalability and Flexibility: VPCs allow you to scale your infrastructure as needed. You can create subnets in different Availability Zones for high availability and fault tolerance.
Hybrid Cloud Connectivity: VPC provides options for connecting your on-premises network to the cloud using VPN or Direct Connect, allowing for hybrid cloud architectures.
Resource Segmentation: By segmenting resources into different subnets, you can create separation between development, testing, and production environments.
Conclusion
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud is a foundational service that empowers businesses to build secure, scalable, and customizable network environments in the cloud. By mastering the concepts of VPC, you can architect cloud solutions that meet your organization's specific needs while maintaining the highest standards of security and performance.