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This Guidance shows how you can use a satellite infrastructure for critical and noncritical workloads with multiple resiliency types, such as development and test resiliency, high resiliency, or maximum resiliency. By using AWS Direct Connect in conjunction with a satellite infrastructure and the best practices outlined here, you can establish resilient network connections between your AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and your on-premises infrastructure. This Guidance helps you extend your access to AWS resources in a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective way.
Please note: [Disclaimer]
Architecture Diagram
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Development and Test Resiliency
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High Resiliency
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Maximum Resiliency
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Development and Test Resiliency
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This architecture diagram shows how to achieve development and test resiliency for noncritical workloads by using separate connections that terminate on separate devices in one location.
Step 1
Use satellite communications to communicate from your on-premises environment to your AWS environment. In this configuration, use two routers and one satellite antenna. -
High Resiliency
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This architecture diagram shows how to achieve high resiliency by having one connection terminating at multiple locations.
Step 1
Use satellite communications to communicate from your on-premises environment to your AWS environment. In this configuration, use one router with one satellite antenna per location, and use multiple locations to maintain redundancy in the event of device or location failure. -
Maximum Resiliency
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This architecture diagram shows how to achieve maximum resiliency by separating connections terminating on separate devices in more than one location.
Step 1
Use satellite communications to communicate from your on-premises environment to your AWS environment. In this configuration, use two routers with one satellite antenna per location, and use multiple locations to maintain redundancy in the event of device or location failure.
Well-Architected Pillars
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The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of the decisions you make when building systems in the cloud. The six pillars of the Framework allow you to learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable systems. Using the AWS Well-Architected Tool, available at no charge in the AWS Management Console, you can review your workloads against these best practices by answering a set of questions for each pillar.
The architecture diagram above is an example of a Solution created with Well-Architected best practices in mind. To be fully Well-Architected, you should follow as many Well-Architected best practices as possible.
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Operational Excellence
Direct Connect allows you to maintain a consistent throughput into your AWS environment. And, various automated monitoring tools let you more easily debug a multipoint failure if one occurs. For example, Amazon CloudWatch alarms notify you if a metric stays beyond a specified threshold for a specified number of periods, and AWS CloudTrail lets you share and monitor log files. Additionally, Direct Connect and CloudWatch provide console dashboards that offer a simple view of the state of your AWS environment, so that you can also manually monitor your solution.
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Security
Direct Connect helps you securely set up a private, dedicated throughput into AWS. You can also optionally activate MAC Security. Additionally, Amazon VPC lets you configure a logically isolated virtual network to host your AWS resources.
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Reliability
Direct Connect lets you plan for reliability and resiliency by architecting one or multiple connections into your AWS environment, based on your workload resiliency requirements. This helps you achieve fault-tolerant and highly available connections. Additionally, Transit Gateway lets you connect multiple VPCs to Direct Connect with a single interface, simplifying network monitoring and maintenance and removing complex peering relationships.
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Performance Efficiency
Direct Connect helps you achieve the network throughput and bandwidth required for your applications while also providing configurability in the types of connections you can use (for example, private or public VIFs) depending on the service you’re communicating with.
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Cost Optimization
You can use a pay-as-you-go pricing model for Direct Connect, allowing you to achieve cost savings by only paying for the network bandwidth you need. Additionally, you can save on infrastructure costs because you don’t need to manually provision ground segments or satellite constellations.
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Sustainability
Direct Connect and Transit Gateway let you specify the exact number of resources needed to maintain optimal network connectivity, helping you to avoid overprovisioning, resulting in efficient and sustainable operations.
Implementation Resources
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A detailed guide is provided to experiment and use within your AWS account. Each stage of building the Guidance, including deployment, usage, and cleanup, is examined to prepare it for deployment.
The sample code is a starting point. It is industry validated, prescriptive but not definitive, and a peek under the hood to help you begin.
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Disclaimer
The sample code; software libraries; command line tools; proofs of concept; templates; or other related technology (including any of the foregoing that are provided by our personnel) is provided to you as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement, or the relevant written agreement between you and AWS (whichever applies). You should not use this AWS Content in your production accounts, or on production or other critical data. You are responsible for testing, securing, and optimizing the AWS Content, such as sample code, as appropriate for production grade use based on your specific quality control practices and standards. Deploying AWS Content may incur AWS charges for creating or using AWS chargeable resources, such as running Amazon EC2 instances or using Amazon S3 storage.
References to third-party services or organizations in this Guidance do not imply an endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation between Amazon or AWS and the third party. Guidance from AWS is a technical starting point, and you can customize your integration with third-party services when you deploy the architecture.