Table of Contents
Multi Cloud is a new buzz word which uses multiple clouds for optimized delivery of connectivity and network services between cloud workloads and applications. It comprises connectivity to on-premises, cloud, and edge services. The entire hosting is on cloud for multi cloud architecture which includes network services such as routing, switching , security and management of the network. This is different from earlier approaches wherein data center infrastructure was on-premises and security and network management remained on cloud.
Today we look more in detail about Alkira multi cloud networking solution, its architecture, features and use cases.
What is Alkira Multi Cloud Networking?
Each public cloud is unique in itself. Transitioning from single cloud architecture to multi cloud architecture creates its own complexities and challenges. Multi Cloud network security policy enforcements across clouds, network segmentation, extension from on-premises to SD/WAN across multiple clouds, multi cloud governance, elasticity to accommodate on demand capacity requirements etc. all need to be well thought out.
Alkira multi cloud networking unifies clouds, sites, and users. Alkira was founded in 2018 by Amir and Atif khan who are the creators of SD-WAN market with Viptela which was acquired by Cisco in 2017. Alkira is a fully cloud-based networking, edge-to-cloud, enterprise level network having built in networking and routing services. It is delivered as a service and 100% cloud based.
Features
Connect Everything – Alkira let’s connect clouds, sites, users and SD-WAN fabric automatically. Remote access is delivered securely , on prem cloud connectivity with resiliency and disaster recovery. Spanning and auto scaling network services can be done from preferred vendors.
Unify Everything – unification of users, sites and clouds. Effective troubleshooting of sprawl of tools and interfaces. It has built in monitoring, alerts, packet capture and insights. It has built in overlapping IP address detection and fixing down into every VPC.
Scale Everywhere – it can be fully integrated into CI/CD pipeline for operational agility. Entire edge, core and cloud network can be provisioned with a common workflow. Unified policy posture can be delivered across entire on premises and cloud networks.
Alkira Cloud Exchange Platform
Alkira Platform is Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) with a unified platform it enables to manage products and services. As a unified platform cloud exchange points (CXPs) are similar to an interconnected brain. It is a globally distributed multi-cloud point of presence, which offers a full routing stack and services of networking. Highly elastic and highly available regional entry points for everything you need to connect.
Network segmentation is addressed in a unique way wherein they pull in VPC and VNets policy from a specific cloud provider into the platform. There is no need to install and manage additional appliances in every cloud provider. Logical groups can be defined as managed things against a policy. All segments, groups and policies can be used across clouds, remote sites, data centres or any other network you wish to connect via this platform. Alkira’s approach to micro-segmentation involves groups.
Group pools are a collection of connectors that require common policy handling. Intent based policy of Alkira lets administrators implement granular control of intra-segment traffic based on 6-tuple or application-based traffic enforcement and identification. Groups can be mapped to auto scaling set with NGFWs for consistent security policies deployment across.
The three major cloud providers – Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google cloud are having their own Flavors in services marketplace. Alkira focuses on a marketplace based on network-based appliances and services. As of now only the marketplace is limited to adding Palo Alto firewalls.
Palo Alto firewalls can be set up and used across all clouds and sites and can be deployed using Panorama’s existing instance and configured to auto scale as load is increased.
Server management post cloud era is made simpler. With changes committed at source, AzureDevOps builds and does application packaging, release artifacts are produced with associated triggers, Ansible installs application + middleware and infrastructure provisioning is done using Terraform.
Quick tip!
The global multi-cloud segment market is estimated at USD 9.94 billion in the year 2023.