One of the more promising areas of cloud infrastructure is, besides the range of compute and storage services available, cloud based networking. Or more correctly, moving CPE-based network functionality onto VMs, or a virtualized environment, and into the cloud.
For years a number of companies have been utilizing what's been called net-centric service delivery for some managed network services like IP proxy, web caches and Internet firewall, often in dedicated set-up tailored for that one customer.
Going from there and moving networking and traffic management functionality like IP proxy and reverse-proxy, caching, load balancing, firewalling and application acceleration onto cloud-based VMs promises to relieve companies of dedicated installations for these specialised functionalities at smaller or regional business units, and they can equip these smaller office locations with basic IP routers only, that can be managed remotely easily.
Another interesting twist on this approach is that on-prem VMs with these networking functionality, or private clouds with same, can be paired with equal installations and configurations in Amazon AWS, MS Azure or HP SmartCloud, meaning that one can overlay advanced networking functionality and control over the basic, best-effort Internet and in between clouds, creating a virtualized networking environment that can be tailored, stretched and adapted to time of day, week or seasonal kind of fluctuating work-loads.
Some examples of networking functionality being offered cloud style, here using Amazon AWS Marketplace listings:
For years a number of companies have been utilizing what's been called net-centric service delivery for some managed network services like IP proxy, web caches and Internet firewall, often in dedicated set-up tailored for that one customer.
Going from there and moving networking and traffic management functionality like IP proxy and reverse-proxy, caching, load balancing, firewalling and application acceleration onto cloud-based VMs promises to relieve companies of dedicated installations for these specialised functionalities at smaller or regional business units, and they can equip these smaller office locations with basic IP routers only, that can be managed remotely easily.
Another interesting twist on this approach is that on-prem VMs with these networking functionality, or private clouds with same, can be paired with equal installations and configurations in Amazon AWS, MS Azure or HP SmartCloud, meaning that one can overlay advanced networking functionality and control over the basic, best-effort Internet and in between clouds, creating a virtualized networking environment that can be tailored, stretched and adapted to time of day, week or seasonal kind of fluctuating work-loads.
Some examples of networking functionality being offered cloud style, here using Amazon AWS Marketplace listings:
- Check Point Virtual Appliance for AWS - R75.40: "Check Point Virtual Appliance for Amazon Web Services delivers a security cloud computing platform that enables customers to deploy flexible multilayer security in the cloud. It extends the latest security technology to Amazon's cloud, protects assets in the cloud from attacks, and enable security connectivity."
- Riverbed Stingray Traffic Manager 1000L (10 Mbps 1000 SSL TPS) with AppFirewall: "Stingray traffic management solutions provide complete control over user traffic, allowing administrators to accelerate, optimize, and secure key business applications. Now it's possible to deliver these services more quickly and ensure the best possible performance across any deployment platform."
- NetScaler VPX Standard Edition: "Citrix NetScaler is an all-in-one web application delivery controller that makes applications run five times better, reduces web application ownership costs, optimizes the user experience, and makes sure that applications are always available by using advanced L4-7 load balancing and traffic management; proven application acceleration such as HTTP compression and caching..."
- NGINX Plus - Ubuntu AMI: "NGINX is a high performance, flexible, scalable, secure reverse proxy, load balancer, edge cache and origin server. NGINX features include: reverse proxy for HTTP, SMTP, IMAP and POP3"
- Wowza Media Server 3: "Wowza Media Server® 3 is the high-performance, high-value infrastructure software for unified media streaming to virtually any screen"
I'll be looking more closely into cloud based networking in a later posting, including software defined networking (SDN) options.
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