#Aviatrix Secure Edge makes it simple to extend cloud networking and security to the edge!
During their public cloud journey, IT leaders often ask themselves, “How do we — as securely and as seamlessly as possible — bring public cloud/s closer to end-users and services that continue to reside on-prem.
The very nature of doing this creates new challenges — applications are being developed at pace and scale, and therefore the ability to connect public cloud outward to the edge of on-prem becomes reliant on infrastructure that needs to always be available, performant, scalable, secure, and cost efficient.
Short reminder of some of the key challenges:
- Installation and setup of on-prem network edge infrastructure is often very time-consuming and costly, resulting in significant delays.
- Network automation (in cloud vs on-prem) is done differently, which causes increased time to onboard.
- The on-prem network architecture team may be disjointed from cloud teams, creating unnecessary delays and dissatisfied end consumers.
- Fragmented stacks in cloud and on-prem 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 protocols and policies between cloud and on-prem can compromise the network and create an ever expanding attack surface.
- Crowded and inconsistent management consoles as the network stacks are very different across cloud and on-prem, which also leads to increased frustration when it comes to pinpointing problems. Last but not least this means that IT teams needs to have trained experts in each cloud and technology concerned.
So in general, IT leaders have accepted that public cloud infrastructure is a separate entity to on-prem datacentre infrastructure — not only physically separate, but also organisationally separate. They are linked together with private circuits either directly or via a colo, but with very different governance, operational models, controls, and feature sets.
And, even if you do manage to solve some or all the challenges, one key thing remains.
You still won’t have an edge infrastructure looking, feeling and behaving like a VPC, VNet, VCN, etc.
Until now that is!
Aviatrix recently released Secure Edge i.e., Aviatrix cloud native Secure Network and Network Security software for customer edge locations.
Why have they done this?
With cloud as new home for business critical applications, modern enterprises have pivoted their architectural and operational center of gravity to be the cloud; not the data center.
Basically what this does is to extend the cloud operating model out to on-prem. This means your branch locations, colo’s and DC’s should look like just another VPC, VNET that must be secured, operationalised and networked as such. This allows security posture, policies, and controls to remain consistent end-to-end with the added feeling that cloud is now closer to the end users and services that reside in the datacenter.
Aviatrix Secure Edge is supported on several flavors such as VMware, KVM and other x86 form factors to make it most flexible for customer to deploy and operationalise with zero touch approach.
Aviatrix Secure Edge approach means enterprises can have the same governance, consistent cloud network and consistent security controls between public cloud and on-premise, but with the added differentiators of enterprise grade visibility and management into the edge locations.
Why is this important? It’s important because if the cloud edge is the datacenter or branch external to cloud, you now get a unified network stack within cloud and on-prem with complete network visibility and single console to manage and operate the network in cloud and on-prem — creating one operational model with bottlenecks removed.
If using Equinix colo, Aviatrix Secure Edge creates a secure overlay network from single cloud or multiple clouds to customer edge in the Equinix fabric. This results in a highly resilient, secure, automated, and cost-effective network, whilst also allowing for a unified network stack within cloud and extended to the edge in Equinix.
You also get complete network visibility and a consistent set of operational resources to manage and operate the network across cloud and Equinix environments.
Aviatrix Secure Edge offers advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, with the ability to track network performance and security metrics across multiple cloud platforms. This makes it easy to identify and address issues before they really start to impact the performance or security of your cloud environments.
How do you onboard Aviatrix Secure Edge?
It’s easy, with no IT expertise required to connect and deploy the Secure Edge. It’s all done via simplified deployment and automation. The underlying edge hardware be it VMware, KVM, or customer x86 hardware, is orchestrated via cloud as zero touch provisioning. Aviatrix Secure Edge software is managed via same Aviatrix controller that manages your cloud network infrastructure and can also be deployed to multiple devices at scale.
This model of onboarding drives agility, lower cost, and full-time equivalent (FTE) efficiencies because it also allows for a single Terraform automation stack across cloud and on-prem, creating faster deployment and onboarding of connectivity from on-prem to cloud, and on-prem to multi cloud.
To conclude, Aviatrix Secure Edge 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-prem i.e. allows VPCs, VNets, etc. to be extended into the datacentre, Equinix colo, or remote branch locations whilst retaining the cloud operational model, and bringing the end users and services closer to the cloud.
- Simple zero touch provisioning — Secure Edge can be deployed either via Terraform or with its easy-to-use Aviatrix cloud controller helping to improve time to deploy for apps and workloads without worrying about the underlying environment.
- Cloud centric Management and advanced analytics capabilities, making it easy to retain consistent end-to-end (cloud to edge) networking and security policies and controls. This results in an overall reduction in complexity and cost of managing multiple cloud platforms.
- Complexity extraction leading to reduce skill set requirement — no multi vendor, SDWAN, X Y Z clouds, etc…simplicity that empowers agility.
If you would like to know how to deploy Aviatrix Secure Edge in Equinix, watch this short video: https://vimeo.com/808543199
Want to know how to deploy Aviatrix Secure Secure Backbone in Equinix, watch this short video: https://vimeo.com/807799351/fa69eba036
If you would like to know more about Aviatrix, click this link: https://aviatrix.com/