Hi, I'm Ryan Sumner and I am a Chief Network Architect with IBM Cloud.
Do you know what "VPC" means?
- and why it even matters to you in your public cloud journey?
Well, today I'm going break it down.
VPC, or "Virtual Private Cloud",
is a public cloud capability
that provides you the ability to define and then control
isolated virtual networks
and then deploy cloud resources into those networks.
So, what is a virtual network?
Well, to help you understand that,
let me first help you understand
how we would deploy networks
in a standard public cloud.
An administrator is going to find a backbone, now that backbone is going to carry all the
traffic in that cloud.
There's going to be some segmentation on that backbone to create a separation between one
client and another client. Or let's even say separation between one application and another
application within that same client.
So, now that we have that segmentation, we need a network function that will actually
allow us to have communication between those segments.
A network function we're going to call router.
So, now that we have communication between these segments I might choose to say I don't
want traffic to flow between this segment and that segment.
Let's say because this is customer A and this is customer B.
So, now I have a firewall function that provides us with filtering capabilities.
So, now I have my cloud defined, it's completely isolated, it's not connected to the rest of
the world, but I need internet connectivity because I'm hosting web application here.
So, now I need a network function that can provide me with NAT-ing.
In addition, I need to extend my enterprise. Or I have applications here that need to communicate
and get data from my enterprise on site.
So, I'm going to build a VPN function.
So, in a traditional cloud environment most of all these network functions are actually
done with appliances. There done with appliances that require infrastructure administrators,
or network administrators to log into them using proprietary interface to define all
these flows and controls.
If you look at virtual networking, however we introduce all of these capabilities as
a service. For which in case, we introduce all these capabilities to the user where they
can now create these functions and create this isolation and the segmentation with a
UI or CLI or API.
So, they might be able to say I want four of these networks, and I want to find my own
custom segmentation for this application for that application.
Now I want to have connectivity to my enterprise, I provision a VPN service to get connectivity
to the internet instead of having to configure NAT-ing I provided, I provision a service
to be able to be able to give me that ability.
So, now the user has this control and they didn't need to know any proprietary interfaces
to make these connections are defined these flows, and since each of these are networks,
they are completely isolated with each other. They don't have connectivity between each
network until I say so.
So, let's talk about a few the benefits. Now you understand where the virtual network comes
into play and how that actually contributes to the private piece of V. P. C.
So, some of the benefits are because now I can get all these all these functions and
I have isolation built in I have some security aspects.
In addition, since these are not appliances and actually provided has a capability of
the cloud, I can do all of this at scale.
Again, developers need things that are customizable right. So, the aspect of being able to find
the segmentation and say I want four, five, or six, or tear it all down and come back
tomorrow to do it again, I need some aspects of customizing this environment.
In addition, it's flexible enough to allow the user to be able to say I need
to be able to add virtual segmentation later on down the road, or I need connectivity to
the enterprise down the road.
So, these two attributes here actually allow the developers to become more agile which
hopefully is going to save you some money. So, now you understand what virtual private
cloud is and why it matters to you.
We hope you like this video on VPC.
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