New Whitepaper: Selecting & Designing Your Hybrid Connectivity Model

Introduction

Many organizations need to connect their on-premises data centers, remote sites, and the cloud. A hybrid network connects these different environments.

A modern organization uses an extensive array of IT resources. In the past, it was common to host these resources in an on-premises data center or a colocation facility. With the increased adoption of cloud computing, IT resources are delivered and consumed from cloud service providers over a network connection. In some cases, organizations have opted to migrate all existing IT resources to the cloud. In other cases, organizations maintain IT resources both on premises and in the cloud. In both cases, a common network is required to connect on-premises and cloud resources. Coexistence of on-premises and cloud resources is called “hybrid cloud” and the common network connecting them is referred to as a “hybrid network. “ Even if your organization keeps all of its IT resources in the cloud, it may still require hybrid connectivity to remote sites.

There are several connectivity models to choose from. Although having options adds flexibility, selecting the best option requires analysis of the business and technical requirements and the elimination of options that are not suitable. Requirements can be grouped together across considerations, such as: security, time to deploy, performance, reliability, communication model, scalability, and more. Once requirements are carefully collected, analyzed, and considered, network and cloud architects identify applicable AWS hybrid network building blocks and solutions. To identify and select the optimal model(s), architects must understand advantages and disadvantages of each model. There are also technical limitations that might cause an otherwise good model to be excluded.

Figure 1 – Consideration covered on the whitepaper.

A new whitepaper on Hybrid Connectivity describes AWS building blocks and the key things to consider when deciding which hybrid connectivity model is right for you. To help you determine the best solution for your business and technical requirements, we provide decision trees to guide you through the logical selection process as well as a customer use case to show how to apply the considerations and decision trees in practice.

Figure 2: Example Corp. Automotive connection type decision tree

Contributors

Contributors to this new whitepaper on Hybrid Connectivity are: Marwan Al Shawi, AWS Solutions Architect; Santiago Freitas, AWS Head of Technology; Evgeny Vaganov, AWS Specialist Solutions Architect – Networking; and Tom Adamski, AWS Specialist Solutions Architect – Networking. Special thanks to Stephen Bird, AWS Senior Program Manager – Content.