Amazon Announces Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC)
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) lets you provision a private, isolated section of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define. With Amazon VPC, you can define a virtual network topology that closely resembles a traditional network that you might operate in your own datacenter. You have complete control over your virtual networking environment, including selection of your own IP address range, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways.
You can easily customize the network configuration for your Amazon VPC. For example, you can create a public-facing subnet for your webservers that has access to the Internet, and place your backend systems such as databases or application servers in a private-facing subnet with no Internet access. You can leverage multiple layers of security, including security groups and network access control lists, to help control access to Amazon EC2 instances in each subnet.
Additionally, you can create a Hardware Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection between your corporate datacenter and your VPC and leverage the AWS cloud as an extension of your corporate datacenter.
Amazon VPC Functionality
With Amazon VPC, you can:
- Create an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud on AWS’s scalable infrastructure, and specify its private IP address range from any range you choose.
- Divide your VPC’s private IP address range into one or more public or private subnets to facilitate running applications and services in your VPC.
- Control inbound and outbound access to and from individual subnets using network access control lists.
- Store data in Amazon S3 and set permissions such that the data can only be accessed from within your Amazon VPC.
- Attach an Amazon Elastic IP address to any instance in your VPC so it can be reached directly from the Internet.
- Bridge your VPC and your onsite IT infrastructure with an encrypted VPN connection, extending your existing security and management policies to your VPC instances as if they were running within your infrastructure.
Source: Amazon AWS Website
