What is Amazon VPC?

 What is Amazon VPC?

A virtual private cloud (VPC) is a private cloud computing environment contained within a public cloud. Essentially, a VPC provisions logically isolated sections of a public cloud in order to provide a virtual private environment.

With Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), you can launch AWS resources in a logically isolated virtual network that you've defined. This virtual network closely resembles a traditional network that you'd operate in your own data center, with the benefits of using the scalable infrastructure of AWS.

The following diagram shows an example VPC. The VPC has one subnet in each of the Availability Zones in the Region, EC2 instances in each subnet, and an internet gateway to allow communication between the resources in your VPC and the internet.

Create a (VPC) Network

The first step in setting up an Amazon VPC using RightScale is to create a network using the Network Manager. Creating a VPC includes specifying the set of IP addresses for the VPC in the form of a Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) block (for example, 10.0.0.0/16).

1. In the RightScale Dashboard, navigate to Manage > Networks.
2. Click New Network. The New Network dialog displays.

 Select a cloud and enter a name for the new VPC along with a short description. For this example, we will use 'my-vpc-example' as the network name. Click Next.

1. Enter a value for the CIDR Block (10.0.0.0/16 in this example) and use the Default setting for Instance Tenancy. Click Create. You should see a 'growler' message near the top of the Dashboard indicating that the network was created successfully.

Create and Attach an Internet VPC Gateway

Next, we create an internet gateway and attach it to the network you created in the previous step. The role of the internet gateway is to enable your servers to connect to the Internet from within the VPC.

1. Under Select Resource click Network Gateways , then click New Network Gateway. The following dialog displays.

1. Select the same Cloud you used for creating the network, enter a Name and Description and select Internet for Type. Click Create. You should see a 'growler' message near the top of the Dashboard indicating that the network gateway was created successfully.
2. In the Network Gateways list, click the entry for the gateway you just created, then click Edit. The following dialog displays.

Features

The following features help you configure a VPC to provide the connectivity that your applications need:

Virtual private clouds (VPC)

A VPC is a virtual network that closely resembles a traditional network that you'd operate in your own data center. After you create a VPC, you can add subnets.

Subnets

A subnet is a range of IP addresses in your VPC. A subnet must reside in a single Availability Zone. After you add subnets, you can deploy AWS resources in your VPC.

IP addressing

You can assign IP addresses, both IPv4 and IPv6, to your VPCs and subnets. You can also bring your public IPv4 and IPv6 GUA addresses to AWS and allocate them to resources in your VPC, such as EC2 instances, NAT gateways, and Network Load Balancers.

Routing

Use route tables to determine where network traffic from your subnet or gateway is directed.

Gateways and endpoints

A gateway connects your VPC to another network. For example, use an internet gateway to connect your VPC to the internet. Use a VPC endpoint to connect to AWS services privately, without the use of an internet gateway or NAT device.

Peering connections

Use a VPC peering connection to route traffic between the resources in two VPCs.

Traffic Mirroring

Copy network traffic from network interfaces and send it to security and monitoring appliances for deep packet inspection.

Transit gateways

Use a transit gateway, which acts as a central hub, to route traffic between your VPCs, VPN connections, and AWS Direct Connect connections.

VPC Flow Logs

A flow log captures information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC.

VPN connections

Connect your VPCs to your on-premises networks using AWS Virtual Private Network (AWS VPN).