New AWS Enterprise Features: VPC Everywhere, Direct Connect, Identity Federation

I often see blog posts that start by saying “with the announcement of ____, it is clear that AWS is now targeting the enterprise.” These posts mention recent developments such as Reserved Instances, Dedicated Instances, VM Import, support for Oracle Database 11g, and the improvements to the EC2 networking model.

Today we are adding three major items to that list:

1. VPC Everywhere – The Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is now generally available, and can now be used in multiple Availability Zones of every AWS Region. VPCs can now span multiple Availability Zones, and each AWS account can now create multiple VPCs. Windows 2008 R2 is now supported, as are Reserved Instances for Windows with SQL Server.
2. AWS Direct Connect – Enterprises can now create a connection to an AWS Region via dedicated 1 Gbit and 10 Gbit network circuits in order to enhance privacy and reduce network latency.
3. Identity Federation – Enterprises can now create temporary security credentials for AWS to allow existing identities (from, for example, a LDAP server) to make use of IAM’s fine-grained access controls.

I’ve written an entire post for each of these new features. Check them out, and let me know what you think!

— Jeff;