AWS Extends Amazon Virtual Private Cloud

Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company, has announced expanded functionality of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). Amazon VPC lets enterprises specify which of their Amazon VPC resources they wish to make directly accessible to the Internet and which they do not. Earlier, customers of Amazon EC2 could provision a private, isolated section of the AWS cloud (called an Amazon VPC) and launch AWS resources into that VPC that were only accessible via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection to an existing enterprise datacentre. Amazon VPC was not directly accessible to the Internet. With this announcement, enterprises no longer need a VPN or existing infrastructure resources in order to leverage Amazon VPC. Enterprises can now define a virtual network topology in Amazon VPC that closely resembles a traditional network that they might operate in their own datacentre.

Customers can control selection of IP address range, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways. Users can customise the network configuration for Amazon VPC, for example creating a public-facing subnet for web servers that have access to the Internet, and placing backend systems such as databases or application servers in a private-facing subnet with no Internet access. Enterprises can continue to choose to connect Amazon VPC to their own existing IT infrastructure with an encrypted VPN connection, extending enterprises' existing security and management policies to Amazon VPC instances as if they were running within an existing datacentre.

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"Amazon VPC has been the first stop for many enterprises as they build migration plans to the cloud. The service has provided a secure bridge between an existing datacentre and the AWS cloud via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and enables enterprises to extend their existing security and management policies to AWS," said Peter De Santis, General Manager of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. "Enterprises can also choose to connect to AWS without a VPN, by setting up virtual networks within the AWS cloud that they can control and customise. We're excited to make available this level of security and simplicity."