AWS - VPC Peering

Virtual Private Cloud Peering is known as VPC Peering. It is an AWS networking function that provides safe and direct communication between different VPCs. By using the VPC peering feature organizations can establish private connections that facilitate the secure and smooth transfer of resources and data across various VPCs in the AWS Cloud. By establishing communication between different environments and maintaining the integrity of each VPC environment setting, VPC peering makes network management easier.

In the AWS ecosystem, VPC peering is an essential service for creating scalable, networked infrastructure structures. Amazon peering provides an effective way of linking Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) and offers strong networking capabilities inside AWS. In this Article, the complexities of VPC peering are addressed with an effective way of explanation. This article clarifies how to establish smooth communication across different cloud environments in AWS.

AWS VPC Peering Architecture

The following architecture diagram illustrates on usage of VPC peering connections to connect VPCs in your account with a VPC in the third-party account.

AWS VPC Peering Connection Lifecycle

The lifecycle of AWS VPC peering connection involves with serval key stages. Those are discuss as follow:

• Initiation: The life cycle process starts with initating a request to peer two VPCs. This request involves with specifying the VPCs to be peered and their respective settings.
• Approval: After the request is raised, the adminstrator of the receiving VPC have to accept that peering connection. This step involves both the parties to agress the connection establishment.
• Establishment: One Both approved the peering connection, the VPC peering connection is established. This enables the communication between two VPCs, if they were within same network, i.e., allowing instances in one VPC to communicate with other VPC's instance using private IP address.
• Configuration: After once, the connection is established, adminstrator may ensure configuring the route tables and security groups to control flow of the traffic between peered VPCs. This steps ensure the communication should be done in secured and follow with desired network paths.
• Utilization: With this peered connections, the resources within the peered VPCs can communicate with each other seamlessly. This provides various use cases such as data replication, resource sharing and application integration across multiple VPCs.
• Monitoring And Maintenance: Adminstrators continuously monitor the performance and security of the VPC peering connection. They may also perform the maintenance tasks such as updating route tables or adjusting security group rules as needed to optimize the connection's performance and ensuring its reliability.
• Termination ( Optional ): If need arises, the adminstrators can look for terminating the VPC peering connection. This effectively serves as the network link between the VPCs and prevents further communication between them.

How VPC Peering Works: Multi-VPC Connections

Multiple VPC peering connections are allowed for a network toplogy where multiple Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) are interconnected. This provides the granular control over the communication between components or environments within an organization's cloud infrastructure. Each peering operates independent chanels and security configurations between specific VPC pairs. Adminstators can strategically deploy and manage mutiple peering connections to support many use cases such as multi-tiered application architectures, segregated development environments or distributed microservices deployments.

These VPCs can be in different regions and are hence known as inter-region VPC Peering connections.

How to Setup AWS VPC Peering Connections: A Step-By-Step Guide

Step 1: Navigate to VPC Dashbaord

• Sign in to your AWS account with your credentials.

• After Navigate to Console, you look into the following Console Home Page

• Select the VPC service in the search box.

Step 2: Create Virtual Private Network

• Create 2 VPC networks with names test-vpc-1 and test-vpc-2.
• Firstly, Click on the Create VPC button to create VPC.

• Configure the VPC details as shown in the below screenshot.

• Similarly define and create second vpc with name test-vpc-2 . Ensure that the CIDR of test-vpc-1 and test-vpc-2 doesn't overlay.

Step 3: Select "Peering Connections"

• Navigate to VPC Peering, and click on create VPC peering button.

• Provide the accepter VPC name and receiver VPC name.

Step 3: Click "Create Peering Connection"

• After creating the vpc peering connection, it will be in pending status .

Step 4: Accept Peering Connection

• Now, from the myvpc2 aws account, go to vpc peering dashboard, click on the accept request and accept the peering connection.

Step 5: Successful VPC Peering Connection

• After once the myvpc2 network accepts the request, the VPC peering connection will become active in status.

Step 6: Update Route Tables (if necessary)

• Ensure that the route tables for both VPCs are updated to include routes for each other's CIDR blocks, pointing to the peering connection.

Step 7: Verify Connectivity

• Now, Create an instance on each vpc and try on pinging the private IP of instance on each other instance.
• If they are successfully pinging then you have established VPC peering successfully.

Sometimes we need to allow resources in different VPCs to exchange data based upon the architecture of the service. Regardless of any specific need, using VPC peering is a great way of extending your VPC design.

Note: When you start to have a lot of peering connections between multiple VPCs, in multiple regions, across multiple AWS accounts, managing the connections. When it starts to get difficult, it is time to start looking at moving the existing peering connections to Transit Gateway and managing the connections there.

AWS VPC Peering Latency

AWS VPC Peering generally offers low level latency communication between the peered VPCs that are in same region. The traffic flows over the network, latency is generally minimal making it suitable for real-time applications and services. The latency is generally depends on the factors such as geographical distances between VPCs and potential network congestion which can slightly affect latency. AWS VPC peering is designed for efficient and reliable connectivity with minimal latency for inter-VPC communication.

AWS VPC Peering Bandwith

AWS VPC Peering connections offers scalable and high-bandwidth communication between peered VPCs. The bandwidth between the AWS VPCs depends on type of instances and its network capabilities of communication. AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN connections can be used further for enhancing bandwidth between VPCs and on-premises networks also if needed.

AWS VPC Peering Cross Account

AWS VPC Peering Connection can be establishable across AWS Accounts known as cross-account VPC peering. This feature enables the organizations to establish secure and private ccommunication channels between VPCs that belonging to seperate AWS Accounts within same region. The cross account VPC peering requires explict acceptance from both the AWS Accounts, ensuring the adminstrators to maintain the control over the network access and security policies.

Advantages of VPC Peering

The following are the advantages of VPC peering:

• Seamless Communication: It helps in directing and securing the connection between the VPCs. It facilitates with this in sharing of resources and data transfers.
• Cost Efficiency: On establishing the private network communication based VPC peering removes the need of expensive public internet data transport making cost efficiency.
• Simplified Network Management: VPC peering simplifies the network architecture making it easier of network management and resolving complexities associated with traditional networking.
• Resource Access: VPC peering provides the access to the resources in different VPCs enhancing the efficiency of organizations services across interconnected networks.

VPC Peering Limitations & Rules

VPC Peering mechanism used in cloud for connecting multiple VPCs within same or different regions on the network. Even though it is a powerful tool, It is also comes up with some limitations. The following are the limitations of VPC Peering:

• No Transitive Peering: One of the primary limitations of VPC peering is not supporting temporary peering. Each Peering connection must be established individually to provide communication i.e., If VPC A is peered with VPC B and VPC is peered with VPC , VPC A cannot communicated directly with VPC C through VPC peering connection between A and B.
• CIDR Block Overlapping: For Establishing VPC Peering we have to ensure to maintain non-overlapping CIDR blocks to the VPCs. If CIDR overlaps then peering connection is not possible to establish.
• Limited Support For Transitive Routing: Transitive routing is not crucial for native VPC peering even though several cloud providers have developed features providing limited support on using through transit gateways or shared services.
• Cross Region Limitations: Usually VPC peering is limited to the same cloud Area. You might need to look at alternate options including VPN connection or cloud provider's inter-region peering services, if you need to link VPCs in various areas. This limitation can impact organizations with distributed or globally scattered infrastructure.

Pricing for a VPC Peering Connection

The following tabular format discusses the pricing details of VPC Peering:

AWS VPC Peering vs Transit Gateway

The following is the some of the main differences between AWS VPC peering and Transit Gateway:

Conclusion

In Conclusion, Amazon VPC peering is an Import networking features that is providing by AWS. It is an efficient and secure method to connect different virtual private clouds( VPCs). The concepts of VPC peering have been explained along with facilitating its importance. The implementation steps guide you as instructions for VPC peering. On knowing benefits, drawbacks and real world usecases from this article, we hope you can work your enterprises and improve your infrastructure performances.