About Aviatrix Hybrid Cloud Edge

Overview

Aviatrix Hybrid Cloud Edge is an enterprise grade solution that enables customers to extend the Aviatrix Cloud Networking architecture to the edge of their networks for consistent and repeatable architecture, management, visibility, security, and control. This cloud-out architecture enables enterprises to leverage the Aviatrix Platform’s ubiquitous support for edge connectivity. The result is a high performance encrypted, seamless connectivity to edge locations such as data centers, colocations, remote sites and provider locations such as Equinix and Megaport.

Why is cloud capable secure edge important?

During their public cloud journey, IT leaders often ask themselves, “How do we — as securely and as seamlessly as possible — bring public clouds closer to end-users and services that continue to reside on-premises. Applications are developed at pace and scale, and the ability to connect public cloud outward to the edge of on-premises becomes reliant on infrastructure that needs to always be available, performant, scalable, secure, and cost efficient.

Key challenges:

  • Encryption is a key challenge and setting up traditional IPSec networks is prone to errors and often don’t meet performance requirements. Implementing MACSec is complex and requires specific hardware support.

  • Installation and setup of on-premises network edge infrastructure is often time-consuming and costly, resulting in significant delays.

  • Network automation (in cloud vs on-premises) is different, which increases the time to onboard.

  • The on-premises network architecture and cloud teams may be disconnected, creating unnecessary delays and dissatisfied end consumers.

  • Fragmented stacks in cloud and on-premises increase troubleshooting time and resources that need to be engaged. This fragmentation leads to network downtime and increased MTTR.

  • More tools to maintain for monitoring, troubleshooting, and visibility increase overhead and support costs.

  • Security risks due to lack of consistent security policies and procedures between cloud and on-premises can compromise the network and create an ever-expanding attack surface.

  • Crowded and inconsistent management consoles because of network stacks that are different across cloud and on-premises, which also increases challenges to troubleshoot problems. IT teams need trained experts in each cloud and technology concerned.

IT leaders have accepted that public cloud infrastructure is a separate entity to on-premises data center infrastructure — not only physically separate, but also organizationally separate. They are linked with private circuits either directly or via a colocation, but with different governance, operational models, controls, and feature sets.

If you manage to solve the challenges, one key thing remains. You will be without an edge infrastructure that looks, feels, and behaves like a VPC, VNet, or VCN.

What are the benefits of Aviatrix Hybrid Cloud Edge solution?

With clouds as a new home for business-critical applications, modern enterprises have pivoted their architectural and operational center of gravity to the cloud.

Aviatrix Hybrid Cloud Edge solution leverages Aviatrix cloud native network and network security software for customer edge locations. Its cloud-out architecture enables it to extend the cloud operating model out to on-premises. That means your branch locations, collocations, and on-premises must be secure, operational and networked the same as another VPC or VNet. This allows security posture, policies, and controls to remain consistent end-to-end and gives the impression of the cloud being closer to the end users and services that reside in the data center.

edge benefits

The solution enables enterprises to have the same governance, consistent cloud network and security controls between public cloud and on-premises, but with enterprise grade visibility and management into the edge locations. If the cloud edge is a data center or branch external to the cloud, you get a unified network stack within cloud and on-premises with complete network visibility and single console to manage and operate the network in cloud and on-premises.

Aviatrix Hybrid Cloud Edge solution offers advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, with the ability to track network performance and security metrics across multiple cloud platforms making it easy to identify and address issues before they impact the performance or security of your cloud environments.

Aviatrix Hybrid Cloud Edge solution is a powerful software-defined cloud networking solution that offers advanced networking and embedded security features for edge locations. It offers:

  • A single way of doing things. It extends the cloud model to on-premises, allows VPCs and VNets to be extended into the data center, Equinix colocation, or remote branch locations while retaining the cloud operational model and bringing the end users and services closer to the cloud.

  • Simple zero-touch provisioning. You can deploy Aviatrix Hybrid Cloud Edge solution either by using Terraform or its easy-to-use Aviatrix CoPilot to improve time to deploy for applications and workloads without worrying about the underlying environment.

  • Cloud centric management and advanced analytics capabilities. This makes it easy to retain consistent end-to-end (cloud to edge) networking and security policies and controls. The result is an overall reduction in complexity and cost of managing multiple cloud platforms.

  • Complexity extraction. This leads to reduced skill set requirement — no multi-vendor, SDWAN, X Y Z clouds, simplicity that empowers agility. In summation:

  • Go-to platform for all hybrid connectivity.

  • Centralized control plane across multicloud networks and edge locations reducing operational complexity.

  • Single pane of glass for cloud visibility, monitoring, and troubleshooting.

  • Encrypted connectivity and routing between multicloud networks with a private path that uses standard architecture.

  • High Performance Encryption (HPE) support over public and private networks.

  • Zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) for automated Edge deployments.

  • Multiple form factors to support various edge requirements.

What does Aviatrix Hybrid Cloud Edge solution comprise?

The solution comprises the following components:

  • The Aviatrix Edge Transit Gateway deployed as a virtual network function in edge locations. The Edge Transit Gateway provides high performance encryption across datacenters, connectivity to partner locations via IPSec, establishes encrypted connectivity to and across provider locations such as Equinix and Megaport and to multiple clouds. It seamlessly integrates with cloud environments and provides efficient routing for resilient architectures. Edge Transit Gateway advanced features provides support for network segmentation, NAT, and visibility to efficiently operate and manage hybrid cloud environments. See About Aviatrix Edge Transit Gateway.

  • Aviatrix Edge Spoke Gateway deployed as a virtual network function in edge locations. The Edge Spoke Gateway provides high performance encryption from on-premises to cloud and supports features such as Aviatrix Distributed Cloud Firewall (DCF) for L4 filtering. It is suitable for deployment that are primarily edge to cloud. It seamlessly integrates with cloud environments and provides efficient routing for resilient architectures. Leverage features such as network segmentation, VLAN connectivity to LAN networks and visibility across edge to cloud for robust hybrid cloud connectivity solution. See About Aviatrix Edge Spoke Gateway.

  • Aviatrix Controller and CoPilot deployed in cloud to provide the unified management and control plane.

What are the Aviatrix Hybrid Cloud Edge use cases and design patterns?

The solution provides hybrid and multicloud connectivity over private and public networks.

See:

What edge platforms are supported?

You can deploy Aviatrix Edge Transit and Edge Spoke Gateways on these platforms:

How do I deploy Aviatrix Edge Transit and Edge Spoke Gateway?

See: