Sunday, December 8, 2013

AWS hybrid cloud – shared customer gateway to multiple VPCs

VPN connection is the most commonly used method to connect enterprise data centers to AWS Virtual Private Cloud. More often than not, enterprises use multiple VPCs, sometimes across multiple regions. For a large enterprise doing business internationally, its global data center footprint can be linked to AWS data centers across multiple continents, thus forming a global hybrid cloud.

Clearly, it is desirable to have a redundant pair of Customer Gateways to terminate multiple VPN connections to multiple VPCs. Having dedicated gateway to each VPC is neither scalable nor cost efficient. Automation will be impossible if new hardware is required each time a new VPC is created.

However, AWS’s current VPN connection creation logic is designed to ensure unique tunnel IP addresses for each connection within a single VPC, but not necessarily across multiple VPCs. In other words, each time a new VPC establishes tunnels to existing customer gateway, there is a real risk that address conflict will bring down existing production traffic.

In this AWS guide, a couple of workarounds are suggested to support connecting a single customer router to multiple VPCs. However, neither workaround is elegant. In the first case, implementing VRF just for the sake of this deficiency creates unnecessary complexity on the customer’s part, not to mention some devices may not support VRF. In the second case, which is essentially trial and error, automated VPN creation through scripting and API becomes extremely cumbersome.

AWS Feature Request
Because each customer gateway is uniquely identifiable (at least within the region), it seems logical (and desirable) for AWS to implement a feature to ensure uniqueness of tunnel address generated for shared customer gateways.
  •    Phase 1 may support uniqueness within the region, as illustrated.
  •     Phase 2 may support uniqueness across multiple regions. In a global hybrid cloud, enterprise data centers may connect to multiple AWS regions in multiple continents.



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