Numerous organizations have utilized several public cloud providers to accommodate their applications for various reasons. This blog post will discuss the different networking connectivity options between Azure and other cloud providers. There are three available methods to establish network connectivity between different cloud platforms. These methods are as follows:
Option 1. Utilize each cloud provider’s private network connectivity services, such as Azure Express Route, with routing managed by the customer.
Option 2. Utilize each cloud provider’s private network connectivity services, like Azure Express Route, with routing managed by the customer’s telco team.
Option 3. Establish VPN connectivity between the network of cloud providers.
We’ll go over each option and its uses. Option 1 is great for customers who want to control network routing and communicate more securely. It allows for private connectivity between cloud providers and removes the public internet for communication.
This choice ensures consistent data transfer rates and accommodates large amounts of data. To use this option, you must set up ExpressRoute circuits and establish private network connections with other cloud providers such as AWS direct connect and Google Cloud Interconnect. To connect an Azure virtual network to another cloud provider’s virtual private cloud (VPC), the private IP address spaces must not overlap.
Option 2 is almost identical to Option 1, except for how telco providers route their networks. It’s ideal for medium-sized customers who want to avoid dealing with network management concerns, and telco providers will do the required.
Option 3 lets you create a direct VPN connection between cloud providers. This connection is beneficial for meeting specific application requirements using a dedicated VPC to VNET or the entire cloud. However, it’s worth noting that Site-to-Site VPN may have lower throughput and higher latency than the ExpressRoute options.
Conclusion: All three options are adaptable when dealing with traditional Azure networks and Virtual WAN topologies. Maintaining DNS resolution between Azure and other cloud providers is crucial, even if it means incurring additional expenses. You can enhance the data path performance between Azure and on-premises networks and other cloud providers by utilizing the FastPath feature of ExpressRoute. The FastPath feature enables network traffic to be directly sent to virtual machines in the virtual network, bypassing the ExpressRoute gateway. When designing FastPath, it is essential to consider its limitations.
Choosing the optimal network connection requires considering various factors like speed, latency, and reliability. It’s important to note that this decision has no one-size-fits-all approach, as it ultimately depends on each organization’s unique objectives and requirements.
Santhosh has over 15 years of experience in the IT organization. Working as a Cloud Infrastructure Architect and has a wide range of expertise in Microsoft technologies, with a specialization in public & private cloud services for enterprise customers. My varied background includes work in cloud computing, virtualization, storage, networks, automation and DevOps.
