AWS Transit Gateway is a networking service that uses a hub-and-spoke model to connect on-premises data centers and Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) to a single gateway.
We will cover everything you need to know about AWS Transit Gateway in this blog:
- Overview
- Network Manager
- Benefits
- Use Cases
- Monitoring
- Why should we use Transit Gateway?
- Transit Gateway Vs VPC Peering
- FAQs
What is AWS Transit Gateway?
It links your on-premises networks and Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) via a central hub. This streamlines your network and gets rid of tricky peering arrangements. It performs the role of a cloud router, making new connections just once.
As you expand internationally, inter-region peering links AWS Transit Gateways via the AWS global network. Your data is automatically encrypted and never transmitted over a public internet connection. Due to its central location, AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager has a distinct perspective of your whole network and can even connect to Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) devices.
Transit Gateway Network Manager
As a regional resource with high availability, AWS Transit Gateway will be set up in two regions and connected by inter-region peering.
AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager makes use of other AWS services, particularly Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon VPC Flow Logs, to manage and monitor AWS-based networks. These services are used to compile and display near real-time metrics like bandwidth usage on AWS Transit Gateway attachments, packet flow count, packet drop count, and other details about IP traffic routed through AWS Transit Gateway.
Network Manager provides a comprehensive view of your private network. All of your AWS Transit Gateways, both on-premises and in all AWS Regions, are visible on the AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager dashboard. It offers a logical and geographical overview of the connections and resources in your network, along with connection status.
How does it work?
Benefits of Network Manager
- Centralized Network Monitoring: Network Manager includes events and metrics for monitoring the quality of your global network, both on-premises and in AWS. Changes in topology, routing, and connection status are specified by event alerts.
- Global Network Visibility: Utilize the AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager dashboard to visualize and manage your whole global network. You will receive alerts from Transit Gateway Network Manager when connections are lost, availability changes occur, and your on-premises and AWS Region sites are performing poorly.
- SD-WAN Integration: Network Manager integrates seamlessly with SD-WAN solutions from Cisco, Aruba, Silver Peak, Aviatrix, and Versa Networks, providing a unified interface for managing your global network across AWS and on-premises locations. These SD-WAN management consoles are set up to create AWS Site-to-Site VPN connections from your premises to AWS automatically.
Use Cases of Network Manager
- Quickly add on-premises locations: Network Manager’s SD-WAN partners make it simple to add new on-premises locations to your network. Your SD-WAN devices can automatically provision AWS Site-to-Site VPN connections.
- Respond to connectivity problems: Network Manager provides event notifications from a single interface, giving you a comprehensive view of what is going on in your network. You can identify and troubleshoot network problems more quickly than if you used multiple tools.
- Identify global network issues: Network Manager allows you to monitor network activity in multiple locations from a single dashboard. You can compare activity and spot inconsistencies between on-premises and AWS locations, as well as issues that affect multiple locations differently.
Benefits of Transit Gateway
1. Easier connectivity: It streamlines network design by acting as a cloud router. As your network expands, the difficulty of managing incremental connections does not cause you to lag. AWS Transit Gateways can be connected through inter-Region peering when creating global applications.
2. Flexible multicast: AWS Transit Gateway multicast support allows the same content to be distributed to multiple specific destinations. This eliminates the need for costly on-premises multicast networks and reduces the bandwidth required for high-throughput applications like video conferencing, media streaming, and teleconferencing.
3. Improved security: The AWS global private network is used to route traffic between an Amazon VPC and an AWS Transit Gateway, which is not available to the general public. All traffic is encrypted through AWS Transit Gateway inter-Region peering, which also removes the chance of a single point of failure or bandwidth bottleneck. This helps to prevent common exploits and distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults.
4. Better visibility and control: You can easily monitor your Amazon VPCs and edge connections from a single console with AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager. AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager, which is integrated with popular SD-WAN devices, assists you in quickly identifying issues and responding to events on your global network.
Use Cases of Transit Gateway
- Deliver applications around the world: It enables you to create applications that span thousands of Amazon VPCs. This entails deploying new applications without having to update massive route tables to establish peering relationships. Everything is simpler to install, manage, and troubleshoot.
- Rapidly move to a global scale: Everything connected to an AWS Transit Gateway is shared across AWS Regions with inter-region peering. VPCs, DNS, Microsoft Active Directory, and IPS/IDS are all included.
- Smoothly respond to spikes in demand: You can use this to quickly add Amazon VPCs, AWS accounts, VPN capacity, or AWS Direct Connect gateways to meet unforeseen demand without having to deal with complex connections or massive routing tables.
- Host multicast applications in the cloud: You can host multicast applications using AWS Transit Gateway’s multicast feature without redesigning your application or modifying your on-premises network. Your multicast applications scale based on demand, eliminating the need to purchase and maintain specialized hardware to support peak application loads.
Monitor your transit gateways
You can monitor your transit gateways, analyze traffic patterns, and troubleshoot issues with the following features.
- CloudWatch metrics: You can use Amazon CloudWatch to retrieve metrics, or statistics, about data points for your transit gateways as an ordered set of time series data. These metrics can be used to ensure that your system is performing as expected.
- Transit Gateway Flow Logs: Transit Gateway Flow Logs can be used to collect detailed information about network traffic on your transit gateways.
- VPC Flow Logs: VPC Flow Logs can be used to collect detailed information about traffic to and from VPCs connected to your transit gateways.
- CloudTrail logs: You can use AWS CloudTrail to collect detailed information about transit gateway API calls and store it as log files in Amazon S3. These CloudTrail logs can be used to determine which calls were made, the source IP address from which the call originated, who made the call, when the call was made, and so on.
Why should we use Transit Gateway?
Without AWS Transit Gateway: Scale increases complexity. Within each VPC, you must maintain routing tables and connect to each onsite location using separate network gateways.
With AWS Transit Gateway: Your network is more efficient and scalable. AWS Transit Gateway routes all traffic to and from each VPC or VPN, and you can manage and monitor it all from a single location.
Transit Gateway Vs VPC Peering
Frequently Asked Questions
AWS Transit Gateway complies with which compliance programs?
AWS Transit Gateway inherits Amazon VPC compliance and meets PCI DSS Level 1, ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, FedRAMP Moderate, FedRAMP High, and HIPAA eligibility standards.
What is a global network?
In the AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager service, a 'Global Network' object represents your private global network in AWS. Your AWS Transit Gateway hubs and their attachments, AWS partner SD-WAN network virtual appliances, and on-premises devices, sites, links, and connections are all included.
Is IPv6 supported by AWS Transit Gateway?
Yes, AWS Transit Gateway allows you to connect Amazon VPCs with IPv6 CIDRs.
Related Links/References
- AWS Free Tier Limits
- AWS Free Tier Account Details
- How to create a free tier account in AWS
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-CO3
- Amazon Elastic File System User Guide
- AWS Free Tier Account Services
- AWS Route 53 Introduction
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