Whatever your motivations, you want to control its potential for rapid innovation, instant scalability and optimised costs. And it's with a methodical approach that our thinking begins, placing the network component at the heart of Cloud governance. In this article, we'll explore in detail best practice for network design and management within the landing zone. This will include the choice of region, segmentation, connectivity and security.
Network management within the landing zone: How do you choose the region of your Cloud Provider?
The choice of region for the cloud provider is of vital importance. It can be driven by geographical proximity to end users. Opt for a location that minimises latency to ensure that cloud resources can be accessed quickly, offering greater responsiveness to operational needs. This is an essential aspect of the landing zone.
Regulatory compliance is also a determining factor in this choice. Take into account the legal requirements relating to data storage and processing in the different regions. This will ensure that your infrastructure complies with current standards and regulations (GDPR/RGPD, PCI DSS).
To strengthen resilience and disaster recovery, you can opt for multiple regions. Distributing your workloads across different regions ensures redundancy, minimising potential interruptions. This approach guarantees continuous availability of your services, even in the event of major incidents.
What network segmentation should be used for the landing zone?
The main purpose of network segmentation is to ensure logical isolation between different parts of the infrastructure. This practice is important for enhancing the security, performance management and operational flexibility of your cloud environment.
One of the best practices of the landing zone is to use several VPCs (Virtual Private Clouds) or VCNs (Virtual Cloud Networks) to isolate workloads. This segmentation is essential for creating distinct virtual environments, thus limiting the attack surface if part of the network is compromised.
Within each VPC or VCN, the use of subnets or sub-networks enables resources such as load balancers, application servers and databases to be specifically isolated. This provides finer granularity in the management of access and authorisations, enabling precise control over traffic between the various elements of the infrastructure.
In addition to this segmentation, the implementation of ACLs (access control lists) is a recommended practice. Security Lists and Network Security Groups define traffic filtering rules governing communications between network segments. This reinforces security by authorising only the necessary traffic.
Network connectivity and landing zone: how can you facilitate the integration of existing OnPremise infrastructures with Cloud services to ensure they are interoperable?
The main objective of this phase in the landing zone is to guarantee seamless communication between existing OnPremise resources and those hosted in the cloud, while ensuring effective management of access and security.
To achieve this connectivity, you have the option of using VPN connections or dedicated interconnections. VPN connections are particularly useful for establishing secure tunnels over the Internet, offering a flexible solution for businesses that want to extend their network to the cloud securely and affordably. Dedicated interconnects, on the other hand, provide direct, high-performance, secure links between local networks and the cloud provider's networks.
It is important to emphasise that network connectivity is not just limited to the link between onPremise networks and the cloud. It also encompasses communication within the cloud, between different regions, availability zones and services. This connectivity helps to guarantee the continuous availability of services.
As you can see, the aim of this connectivity is to create a unified and coherent environment, which is essential to the success of a landing zone in the cloud.
Guarantee optimum network security and protect sensitive data with the landing zone
The aim of this security stage within the landing zone is to guarantee the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data, as well as to protect against potential threats. One fundamental practice is data encryption using secure protocols. By setting up encrypted connections, you secure communications between the different elements of your cloud infrastructure. This ensures that even in the event of interception, the data remains unintelligible to unauthorised third parties.
Continuous network monitoring helps you to detect any suspicious activity. Using intrusion detection and log monitoring tools, you can quickly identify anomalies and take corrective action. This proactive approach allows you to maintain a high level of security by anticipating potential threats before they become a problem.
This article, focusing on the network side of the cloud landing zone, is part of a series of articles devoted to the cloud landing zone.
