In the Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem, a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a logically isolated section of the AWS cloud where you can provision resources like virtual servers, databases, and network configurations. VPC Peering is a feature that allows you to connect two or more VPCs, facilitating seamless communication and resource sharing.
When you establish a peering connection between VPCs, they can communicate with each other as if they were on the same network. This communication occurs over a private, encrypted connection, ensuring the security of your data.
The Importance of VPC Peering
VPC Peering provides several advantages that make it a crucial tool for designing and deploying applications within the AWS environment. Let's explore some of the key benefits of VPC Peering:
- Enhanced Security
When VPCs are peered, they communicate privately within the AWS network. This means that data transfer between peered VPCs remains secure and encrypted without the need to traverse the public internet. Keeping your data within the AWS network minimizes security risks while ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of the data.
- Improved Performance and Low Latency
VPC Peering enables direct communication between VPCs, resulting in low latency and improved network performance. This is particularly important for applications that require real-time interaction or rely on fast data transfer. By reducing the network latency, VPC Peering helps ensure that applications run smoothly and that users have a seamless experience.
- Cost Efficiency
VPC Peering helps organizations save costs by eliminating the need for complex and expensive network configurations. Since data transfer between peered VPCs uses private IP addresses, it is considered local traffic and is not subject to data transfer charges from AWS. This makes VPC Peering an economical solution for sharing resources and services across VPCs within your environment.
- Simplified Network Architecture
By establishing peering connections, you can create a more streamlined and manageable network architecture. VPC Peering eliminates the need for complex VPN connections or internet gateways, making it easier to design, configure, and control your network. This simplification enhances the overall operational efficiency and reduces the potential for errors in network configurations.
Use Cases for VPC Peering
- Multi-Region Replication
VPC Peering in AWS provides organizations with the ability to connect VPCs, enabling secure and efficient communication between them. Its advantages, such as enhanced security, improved performance, cost efficiency, and simplified network architecture, make it a vital tool for building scalable and interconnected applications in the AWS environment. Whether it's for multi-region replication, microservices architecture, shared services, or isolating environments, VPC Peering offers a robust solution to meet a variety of use cases.
- Microservices Architecture
VPC Peering is well-suited for inter-service communication within a microservices architecture. It allows different microservices to securely communicate with each other, promoting flexibility, scalability, and decoupling between services.
- Shared Services
Many organizations have shared services, such as databases or authentication services, that need to be accessed by multiple VPCs. VPC Peering enables easy and secure access to these shared services, simplifying the overall architecture and promoting resource efficiency.
- Isolation of Environments
VPC Peering can be utilized to establish communication between different environments, such as production and development, or between different tiers of an application stack. This enables controlled access and collaboration between environments while maintaining proper security boundaries.
- Alignment with the Well-Architected Framework
The VPC peering within the Region, across the regions, and across the AWS accounts can help set up the true hub and spoke model, ensuring the environment is aligned with best practices given by the well-architected framework. With the right type of peering and User Defined Routes, the workloads across the network and accounts can be protected from unauthorized access. This helps in achieving the security pillar best practices from the well-architected framework.
How to setup the VPC Peering
- Prerequisites
1.1 Read the limitations of VPC peering before considering the specific type of peering connection. Read more about the VPC peering limitations here.
1.2 Ensure both VPCs do not have overlapping IPs.
- Create a peering connection within the same account and the same Region
1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Peering Connections.
3. Choose Create peering connection.
4. Configure the following information, and choose Create peering connection when you are done:
5. Name: You can optionally name your VPC peering connection.
6. VPC ID (Requester): Select the VPC in your account with which you want to create the VPC peering connection.
7. To Select another VPC to peer with, choose My Account and select another VPC in your account.
8. (Optional) To add a tag, choose Add new tag and enter the tag key and value.
9. Choose Actions, Accept request.
10. When prompted for confirmation, choose Accept request.
11. Choose Modify my route tables now to add a route to the VPC route table so that you can send and receive traffic across the peering connection. For more information, see Update your route tables for a VPC peering connection.
- VPC Peering across the regions in the same AWS account
1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Peering Connections.
3. Choose Create peering connection.
4. Configure the following information, and choose Create peering connection when you are done:
5. Name: You can optionally name your VPC peering connection. Doing so creates a tag with a key of Name and the value you specify.
6. VPC ID (Requester): Select the requester VPC in your account with which to request the VPC peering connection.
7. Account: Choose My Account.
8. Region: Choose Another region and select the Region for the accepter VPC.
9. VPC ID (Accepter): Select the accepter VPC.
10. In the Region selector, select the Region of the accepter VPC.
11. In the navigation pane, choose Peering Connections. Select the VPC peering connection you created, and choose Actions, Accept request.
12. When prompted for confirmation, choose Accept request.
13. Choose Modify my route tables now to add a route to the VPC route table so that you can send and receive traffic across the peering connection. For more information, see Update your route tables for a VPC peering connection.
- VPC Peering across AWS accounts in the same Region
1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Peering Connections.
3. Choose Create peering connection.
4. Configure the information as follows, and choose Create peering connection when you are done:
5. Name: You can optionally name your VPC peering connection. Doing so creates a tag with a key of Name and a value you specify. This tag is only visible to you; the owner of the peer VPC can create their own tags for the VPC peering connection.
6. VPC ID (Requester): Select the VPC in your account with which to create the VPC peering connection.
7. Account: Choose Another account.
8. Account ID: Enter the ID of the AWS account that owns the accepter VPC.
9. VPC ID (Accepter): Enter the ID of the VPC with which to create the VPC peering connection.
- VPC peering across the account and across the regions
1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Peering Connections.
3. Choose Create peering connection.
4. Configure the information as follows, and choose Create peering connection when you are done:
5. Name: You can optionally name your VPC peering connection. Doing so creates a tag with a key of Name and a value you specify. This tag is only visible to you; the owner of the peer VPC can create their own tags for the VPC peering connection.
6. VPC ID (Requester): Select the VPC in your account with which to create the VPC peering connection.
7. Account: Choose Another account.
8. Account ID: Enter the ID of the AWS account that owns the accepter VPC.
9. Region: Choose Another region and select the Region where the accepter VPC resides.
10. VPC ID (Accepter): Enter the ID of the VPC with which to create the VPC peering connection.
AWS VPC Peering Demo
This video will guide you to setup network peering between two or more VPCs within the same region in AWS Cloud.
