New to cryptocurrency? Check this out for a quick primer. One of the giant debates, often a significant source of criticism, is Bitcoin’s energy efficiency (or lack thereof). This criticism may also be expanded to any other currency, or blockchain backed technology that leverages proof-of-work as a consensus mechanism. Innovation is inherent in technology. New ideas, methods, and optimizations come along to take something, add new features, and make it more efficient. One such optimization is proof-of-stake which brings a greener look to consensus. How much can it help?
In Part 1, we laid out our foundation. In Part 2 and Part 3 we connected various networks (both cloud and on-premises) and provisioned NGFWs that scale to real-time capacity. By default, networks connected to our corporate segment have full-mesh connectivity to each other. Let’s build some policies in code that can work with the groups we created to produce logical micro-segmentation that mirror a few real-world use cases.
Check out Part 1 and Part 2 where we put together a scalable foundation and connect cloud networks from AWS, Azure, and GCP. For Part 3, we will bring on-premises back into the spotlight and connect some sites over Cisco SD-WAN and IPSEC.
In Part 1, we started with a scalable foundation that can adapt over time as the business grows and adjusts to changing markets. With Alkira’s Network Cloud, we take a cloud native approach in enabling our customer’s transformation. No appliances need to be provisioned in remote VPCs or VNets, and no agents need to be installed on workloads. Getting started is as easy as kicking off a build pipeline. For Part 2, let’s connect some networks from AWS, Azure, and GCP.
HashiCorp’s Terraform needs no introduction. It is all but the de facto vehicle for delivering cloud infrastructure, and for a good reason. What Terraform did for Multi-Cloud Infrastructure as Code, is precisely what Alkira does for the network. What happens when you use these two platforms together to deliver networking in and across clouds? If providing network services in code faster than ever before sounds interesting, this multi-part series is for you. Need a quick primer on Alkira? You can read up here.
Effectively automating infrastructure is no longer a luxury but a staple in the enterprise move through future transformation. I wrote a blog recently about using Terraform with Packer together, and wanted to take this thought further with breaking down Terraform Modules and getting well connected with Terraform Cloud. I recently put together a simple module for building base infrastructure in AWS for the purpose of testing Alkira Network Cloud. Let’s dive in!
This is going to be a gigantic pivot from my usual topics of writing. If you are interested in learning something about cryptocurrency, stay put. The goal is to make this unbiased and thought-provoking while shedding light on what seems like a world of confusion and misinformation.
In Part 1, we went over some fundamentals. For Part 2, we will examine Azure network design patterns based on cloud maturity and organization size. The concept of design patterns was first introduced by Christopher Alexander and has profoundly influenced many technical disciplines.
Is cloud networking complicated, or is it just different? In building your infrastructure in the cloud, end-to-end system complexity increases exponentially. As enterprise applications mature, the foundational infrastructure and networking used to host and transport them must evolve. One obvious crux of networking is blast radius - you cannot easily modify it without down-time.
Manually provisioning infrastructure slows down application delivery, isolates knowledge, can hamper operations teams, and doesn’t scale. Automating infrastructure provisioning can address these challenges by shifting manual process into code. Hashicorp has products spanning the infrastructure, security, and application stack that can unlock that cloud operating model and deliver applications faster.
Azure Private Link enables access to hosted customer and partner services over a private endpoint in an Azure virtual network. This means private connectivity over your own RFC1918 address space to any supported PaaS service while limiting the need for additional gateways, NAT appliances, public IP addresses, or ExpressRoute (Microsoft Peering).
