HPC in the Cloud: A Cloud Without the Internet

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August 09, 2011

A Cloud Without the Internet

For those who have considered tapping Amazon Web Services for public cloud services but have been hesitant due to security concerns, there might be a new on-ramp to the public cloud.

Amazon announced this week that it would use Equinix datacenters as a private networking hub linked directly to EC2, which offers a more secure way to connect to the cloud by removing the most often-cited “fear factor”—the public internet.

In essence, this means that there are special facilities located in the EC2 infrastructure that have been contracted for by a private company that remain separated from the multi-tenant cloud.

According to Adam Selipsky, VP of Amazon Web Services, “We have heard consistently over time that companies don’t want to use the public Internet for workloads involving compliance-sensitive data.” Aside from helping to alleviate some of these concerns, the concept of a virtual private cloud means that customers will have more control over issues like latency and the amount of bandwidth they use as well as the overall reliability of the services.

He adds that this complements another feature AWS added earlier last week called the Identify and Access Management service, which permits existing identity management systems to be used directly by the AWS account holder. In other words, this gives a company the ability to decide who can use the account and to offer multiple levels of access for accepted users.

Instead of using a VPN or the Internet to move data, users are now able to create their own private network that feeds to the high-speed, private link to the closest AWS datacenter.

As the primary partner for its new Direct Connect service, Amazon chose Equinix, which operates 90 high-performance datacenters on networking hubs in 37 markets around the world.

As Information Week reported this week, “The first operative connection is in Equinix’s Ashburn, Virginia facility, linked to EC2’s U.S. East datacenter in Northern Virginia. By going through Ashburn, customers will have their data and workloads transported into EC2 over all private connections, avoiding any use of the Internet."

Full story at InformationWeek

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