Amazon has managed to create a solution that lets your private cloud directly connect to their public cloud via a service called Virtual Private Cloud. Through gateways on both enda secure VPN connection is setup enabling the connection between the two clouds.
The concept behind this new service is great. It really lets you extent your private cloud with all the nice features that the public cloud has to offer, but then as a private section in the Amazon public EC2 cloud.
This opens up the possibilities of cloud extension such as :
- Cloud burst; Being able to add extra capacity to your cloud without having to add more hardware to your private cloud
- Lab Cloud; Not using capacity in your private cloud for testing purposes. Enabling this in a Virtual Private Cloud.
- Business Continuity Cloud; In case of a disaster / failure of your private cloud continue your services in a Virtual Privat Cloud.
As you can see there are a lot of possibilities for adding “public private cloud” to your private cloud. Thing is that it needs to be easy to connect to, which in my opinion Amazon did by adding commonly used gateways (Checkpoint, Juniper, Vyatta, etc. ). The thing that worries me is the bandwidth that is needed between the internal private cloud and Amazons Virtual Private Cloud. Ah well, it’s a first step. Lets see what the future brings us.
Fo more information on the Virtual Private Cloud by Amazon go here.