As we continue our tour of Amazon services, we come to the VPC service. This service is not a part of their free tier, but instead one of the enterprise-focused offerings. This service allows you to build your private cloud within their network.
VPC is a Virtual Private Cloud
As with all of their services, there is an excellent overview and summary page. You may ask what a private cloud is. We have discussed the Cloud in prior posts, but only briefly. In general, a Cloud service allows resources pooled in a way that the hardware is not necessary. This pool might be a powerful cloud server on your desktop that lets you spawn virtual machines of a variety of shapes and sizes. It may also be a pool of resources in a data center such as Amazon provides. Of course, a mixture is possible as well, which is what VPC allows.
Benefits Over General AWS
AWS services provide a broad range of services (as we have noted) in their cloud. Thus, you might need some reasons to use VPC. Every shop and enterprise are different, but here are a few common reasons.
Security is a big plus in a VPC of any sort. The pool of resources can be held within a single network and access limited to that network. Access to any of the Cloud resources can also be configured, so they are only available within the private network. Think of any private network as an opportunity to place a firewall around that network as well to quickly add additional security and access restrictions.
The VPC service also allows you to “bring your own device” to the Cloud. This approach is an excellent way to provide access to your internal network via the cloud while still keeping it secure. When a mix of local servers and cloud resources is needed, this is a perfect solution. You can extend your internal network as needed while still having a core of devices that are completely under your control.
Ease-of-use is another value of VPC. Amazon makes it easy to integrate your devices and allow a full range of access routes into your virtual private cloud. Thus, you may only allow people to access it from your network, from a secure VPN connection, or many other ways listed on the summary page.
Best of Both Worlds
A solution like a virtual private cloud is a great way to grow your IT infrastructure. The mix of traditional hardware and virtual resources allows for rapid growth, just-in-time resources as needed, and support for personal hardware devices like servers and network attached storage. Put simply; a VPC makes it even harder to determine where your machine ends and the Cloud begins.
