Creating Amazon VPC easy as Click – Click – Click

Amazon has launched its Cloud product which is easy to setup your own ‘private’ cloud. Well, it is not entirely true. Amazon VPC ( Virtual Private Cloud ) is not a private cloud offering. It is a connectivity option for a public cloud. If you have concerns with sharing infrastructure, unfortunately You will be disappointed here. Bear in mind You need to have faith with Amazon’s back-end security, this is another thing You really need to have faith on them on — their technology for preventing VM-to-VM and VM-to-public-Internet communication is proprietary. We won’t have lengthy discussion here regarding VPC or not VPC. It provides Internet VPN connectivity to a shared resource pool, rather than public Internet connectivity. It is still the Internet — the same physical cables in Amazon’s data center and across the world with the same logical Internet infrastructure. Amazon deployed Layer 3 IPsec encrypted tunnel on top of it. VPC is ‘virtual private’ in the same sense that ‘virtual private’ is used in VPN. Put aside VPC or not VPC, Amazon – Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched great product and easy – to – use from customer point of view. Let’s say it is ‘hybrid’

DevCentral has developed iApp Cloud Connector makes a hybrid cloud based on Amazon AWS like .. Voilà.

One of the difficulties experienced in executing on Hybrid Cloud. However, is connecting them to the corporate cloud or data center. Sure, the model is simple: simply deploy resources in the public cloud and leverage them as expandable compute from the private cloud/data center. The news is – to do that requires a way to leverage them. You need to connect them together in such a way as to make those externally deployed resources appear to be part of the data center.

That is where cloud bridges come in handy. Cloud bridges integrate environments at the network layer – extending the operational domain into remote environments such as public cloud. Bridges are the “connective tissue” that is the basis for a hybrid cloud. Configuring them. However, remains a challenge. There is core networking and security that must be defined and governed, routes determined, and monitoring enabled. Then there is the task of making sure remote resources are accessible, that they are also monitored and can be used as part of an elastic application scalability model.

The Cloud Connector iApp

The Cloud Connector iApp was developed specifically to support a hybrid cloud model for Amazon AWS (VPC) environments. It was developed in conjunction with F5’s latest virtualized ADN offering, BIG-IP for AWS and it is available since Dec 15. Woohoo!

The Cloud Connector iApp performs different tasks depending on how and what it is configuring. When it is in remote mode (i.e. in the Amazon AWS VPC) it sets up all networking (VLANs, Self-IPs, routes, and a WOM endpoint) for a remote data center (a single-tenant BIG-IP LTM VE). In local (or data center) mode, the iApp configures WAN optimization and the WOM iSession as well as WOM virtual sessions in the local data center where networking is already configured. There are also Device and Traffic Group options for the application being configured. This is part of the Device Management configuration, and extends the existing high availability infrastructure and allows for clustering, granular control of configuration synchronization and failover. It is this capability that provides for operational consistency between environments, ensuring that configuration on both BIG-IP LTM instances are applying the same policies. This synchronization can be tailored to only synchronize specific aspects. This allows for differences that provide value and enhance delivery, such as fine-tuning acceleration or TCP-related options to fit the environment. You can download the new iApp here from DevCentral ( free registration ) in the F5 contributed iApp templates section under ‘Cloud Connector’

Simply download the iApp to a location accessible from your BIG-IP system, extract the zip file, and import via your BIG-IP system web-based configuration utility.

• Download and import the iApp
  1. Open a web browser and enter the following URL (you may be required to login or complete
  a free registration):
  2. In the F5 Contributed iApp Templates section, click Cloud Connector.
  3. Download the Cloud Connector iApp to a location accessible from your BIG-IP system.
  4. Extract (unzip) the Cloud Connector zip file.
• Import into the BIG-IP system
  1. Log on to the BIG-IP system web-based Configuration utility, and then perform the following:
     1. On the Main tab, expand iApp, and then click Templates.
     2. Click the Import button on the right side of the screen.
     3. Click the Browse button, and then browse to the location you saved the iApp file.
     4. Click the Upload button.
     5. Perform step 6 on the other BIG-IP system.

The iApp is now available for use.

Another Happy Day!