- A virtual private cloud is a secure, isolated segment of a public cloud that provides users with dedicated resources while utilising the infrastructure of the larger cloud provider.
- VPCs allow businesses to customise their networking configurations, including IP address ranges, subnets, and routing policies, enhancing security and control over data.
- By leveraging a VPC, organisations can benefit from scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness that come with cloud solutions while maintaining higher levels of privacy and data protection.
As businesses increasingly migrate to cloud solutions, the need for secure and scalable environments becomes paramount. A virtual private cloud offers an innovative solution by combining the advantages of public cloud infrastructure with enhanced security features.
With a VPC, organisations can create their own private network within a public cloud, providing greater control over data management and resource allocation.
This setup not only enhances privacy but also allows businesses to tailor their IT infrastructure to meet specific operational needs, making it an attractive option for companies seeking both efficiency and security in their cloud strategy.
Understanding virtual private cloud
A virtual private cloud is conceptually similar to a virtual Private network. A VPN can be used to send data over a public network, such as the Internet, through a dedicated tunnel that cannot enter data that is not properly encrypted. An additional level of security includes both the encryption of data and the encryption of the generated and received network addresses.
A virtual private cloud creates an isolated, user-independently configured and managed virtual network environment for elastic cloud servers, improving cloud resource security and simplifying network deployment.
You can define network features such as security groups, VPNS, IP address segments, and bandwidths in a VPC. Users can easily manage and configure internal networks in a VPC to quickly and securely change networks. Users can customise the access rules of elastic cloud servers within and between security groups to enhance the security protection of elastic cloud servers.
Also read: Is VPS the same as cloud hosting? Understanding the differences
Also read: Is VPS the same as cloud hosting？
Key benefits of VPC
Isolation: Users can create an isolated, dedicated network space in a shared network environment to ensure that their resources are not accessed or tampered with by other users.
Security: Virtual private clouds provide a secure way to isolate and protect users’ resources, thereby preventing unauthorised access and attacks.
Scalability: Users can easily scale up or down their virtual private cloud according to their needs to adapt to changing business needs.
Flexibility: Virtual private clouds allow users to customise their network configurations to meet specific business needs and requirements.
The architecture of VPC
You can deploy cloud resources to your own isolated virtual network in a VPC. These cloud resources, also known as logical instances, fall into three categories.
Computing: Virtual server cloud hosts are presented to users in the form of virtual cpus with predetermined computing power, memory, and so on.
Storage: Each account of a VPC customer is typically assigned a block storage quota and can purchase more. This is similar to buying extra hard drive space. The storage recommendations are based on the nature of the workload.
Networking: Virtual versions of various networking capabilities can be deployed to a virtual private cloud account to enable or restrict access to its resources. These include public gateways that are deployed to provide all or parts of your VPC environment over the public facing Internet; A load balancer for distributing traffic among multiple VSI to optimise availability and performance; And routers, which are used to direct traffic and enable communication between network segments.
Three-tier architecture in VPC
Most applications today are designed with a three-tier architecture, consisting of the following interconnect layers:
The Web/ presentation layer: accepts requests from Web browsers and presents to the end user information created or stored in other layers.
The application layer: containing the business logic and does most of the processing business.
The database layer: consisting of database servers, stores the data that is processed in the application layer. To create a three-tier application architecture in a VPC, each layer needs to be assigned its own subnet, which gives each layer its own range of IP addresses. Each layer is automatically assigned its own unique ACL.
