The effective interconnection and management of numerous Virtual Data Centers (VDCs) have become crucial for businesses looking to streamline their operations in the dynamic world of cloud computing. The cutting-edge idea of Cross Connect, a powerful feature tapped into the IONOS Cloud environment, helps you to fulfill this requirement.
Cross Connect redefines the paradigm of VDC communication by enabling you to create seamless and secure LAN-based connections across VDCs located in the same IONOS Cloud contract and region. It only uses private LANs to ensure both strong security and high-performance connectivity, supporting a range of different workloads.
This robust functionality is custom made for clients aiming to establish secure connections between multiple VDCs using a single LAN conduit within the IONOS Cloud ecosystem.
Cross Connect provides a safe bridge between two separate data centers located in different physical locations, but within the same region. A private LAN connection is used to secure the connection. By limiting the number of Cross Connects a LAN may belong to, addressing inconsistencies are minimized. This configuration proves highly advantageous for classifying services, reducing potential threats, and preserving data.
Cross Connect employs a network of VDCs. Each VDC can contain several other resources, such as, private LANs, firewalls, switches, or virtual routers. These resources enable connections using established protocols to ensure a secure and reliable connection within the region where the Cross Connect is configured. The configuration of a Cross Connect and its association with VDCs within IONOS's cloud ecosystem establishes a virtual link for securely transmitting data and services across this bridge, thus ensuring speed and security. Businesses can ensure faster and more reliable digital transitions and resource sharing. The availability of IONOS's servers in the metro region enables closer proximity to businesses within the region, resulting in lower latency.
Cross Connect provides network bandwidth comparable to a normal private Network Interface Cards (NICs). You can also access and configure Cross Connect via the Data Center Designer (DCD), Cloud API, and the SDK. To start using Cross Connect, see Overview.
The following components are an integral part of Cross Connect:
Intraconnection of VDCs via private LANs: Allows peering VDCs, which are within the same region and belong to the same contract, via a private LAN connection. This dedicated connection creates a safe channel and safeguards sensitive data.
Connectable VDCs: Allows connecting VDCs within the same region and if they belong to the same contract. In this manner, you can also share resources and functionalities without having to install them in each data center.
Secured connection: Enables authorized users only to create, access, manage, edit, and share the connection. In addition, the feature operates only on a private LAN, thus, securing data transfer.
Virtual Data Center Interconnectivity: Cross Connect enables the creation of dedicated LAN-based links between VDCs, thus connecting disparate data centers. This interconnectivity lays the foundation for collaborative workflows, data sharing, and streamlined application deployment.
Contract and Regional Compatibility: To leverage the Cross Connect feature, the participating VDCs must be associated with the same IONOS Cloud contract and exist within the same geographic region. This constraint ensures data sovereignty, compliance, and optimal performance within a consistent operational context.
Private LAN Utilization: The Cross Connect functionality relies exclusively on private LANs, ensuring the security and isolation of the interconnected VDCs. This privacy-centric approach safeguards sensitive data while promoting a controlled and segregated networking environment.
Unique LAN Association: Each LAN can be designated as a constituent of a single Cross Connect connection. This exclusivity prevents network conflicts and guarantees a clear and dedicated channel for communication between the interconnected VDCs.
IP Range Uniformity: A fundamental prerequisite for establishing a Cross Connect connection is the adherence to a common IP range. The IP addresses used by the VDCs within the Cross Connect must belong to the same IP range, thus minimizing addressing discrepancies and facilitating seamless communication.
Enhanced Data Transfer: Cross Connect revolutionizes data transfer between VDCs by eliminating the need for data to traverse public networks. This results in significantly reduced latency, faster transfer speeds, and a responsive network experience.
Optimized Resource Utilization: By seamlessly linking VDCs, Cross Connect optimizes resource utilization. Workloads can be dynamically distributed across interconnected VDCs, enhancing overall system efficiency and performance.
Simplified Collaboration: The ability to connect VDCs via LANs breaks down collaboration barriers. Teams can work collaboratively across interconnected VDCs, sharing data and applications without the hindrance of physical separation.
Data Security and Compliance: Private LAN usage ensures that sensitive data remains within a controlled environment. Cross Connect helps meet data security standards and regulatory compliance requirements by keeping data transfers confined to the secure IONOS Cloud infrastructure.
Scalability and Flexibility: Cross Connect accommodates evolving business needs by offering a scalable approach to network expansion. As organizations grow, new VDCs can be seamlessly integrated into the ecosystem, ensuring that the network infrastructure aligns with changing demands.
Disaster recovery strategies: One of the notable advantages of Cross Connect is its vital role in disaster recovery and data backup. By linking disparate VDCs in the region, organizations can easily meet their business continuity and disaster recovery strategies.
Enhanced VDC Communication and Collaboration: Cross Connect's fundamental purpose is to elevate the communication and collaboration capabilities of VDCs. By establishing LAN connections with substantial bandwidth, Cross Connect effectively reduces latency and accelerates data transfers between interconnected VDCs. This dynamic connectivity is vital for organizations seeking to optimize their workflows and operational efficiency.
Security and Isolation: The utilization of private LANs in the Cross Connect framework inherently contributes to a heightened level of security and isolation. The isolated LAN connections between VDCs offer a fortified environment for data exchanges, shielding sensitive information from potential security threats that might exist in a shared network context.
Resource Utilization and Workload Optimization: Through the seamless integration of VDCs facilitated by Cross Connect, resource utilization becomes more optimized and adaptable. This interconnectedness allows for efficient load balancing and resource allocation across VDCs, enabling businesses to achieve greater performance and cost-effectiveness.
Cross Connect is a natural fit for sharing secure information between VDCs that belong to IONOS's Cloud ecosystem in a specific region. It acts as a backup and recovery tool, and ensures continued business connectivity and reduced latency, and a secure data transmission.
The price and overhead of managing resources individually rises with the installation and administration of each data center.
Within the regional hub, you can provide access to centralized resources or functionality while concealing crucial information. For example, consider creating two VDCs— VDC1 for the sales team and VDC2 for the operations team. Add centralized functionalities, such as a firewall and a Virtual Private Network (VPN), network security, identity and access management to VDC2. Connect the isolated VDCs, VDC1 and VDC2, using Cross Connect. In such a scenario, the sales team (VDC1) can only access the centralized resources from the IT operations team data center (VDC2) without additional infrastructure and administration. Still, the critical data of the sales and operation teams remain hidden. Moreover, upon scaling, the centralized resources can be shared via all the new data centers without the need for extra infrastructure or management. Thus, Cross Connect is cost efficient.
Multiple organizational structures can exist within an organization. It becomes increasingly challenging to oversee several organizational structures as a business expands and to give roles and privileges in order to effectively manage resources.
Consider that your organization is handling multiple teams and each team works on separate projects. If you want a project (let's call it P1) to be accounted for separately, an ideal approach is to create a separate VDC for P1 and similarly have distinct VDCs for each team or project tightly coupled using Cross Connect over private LANs. This automatically creates a separate section on the IONOS bill each month for VDC P1 and all the associated VDCs. That way, you can have custom labels for resources, instances, cost centers, etc. Moreover, you can also:
achieve an organizational separation for organizational, financial (cost and billing), and user management purposes. For example, you can configure VDC-Core for core infrastructure, VDC1 for production servers, VDC2 for development resources, VDC3 for monitoring services, etc.
assign relevant permissions to limit external users or partners via the User Manager. With valid permissions, they can create or manage the services. Additionally, Cross Connect can be used to provide access to functionality provided by such managed VDCs.
allot specific privileges to a department. You may permit a project department to establish several data centers, for instance. After that, a distinct data center is established by the project department solely for project accountability.
This section lists the limitations of Cross Connect:
Ensure all NICs used for the Cross Connect connection are within the same IP range. You may also consider using your own DHCP server as an option. For the time being, we recommend that you verify the IP addresses of the VDCs manually. IONOS is constantly working to improve the existing products and implement an automatic check to verify the IP addresses automatically in the future.
An IP address may not be used in more than one instance.
You can use a Cross Connect to connect between all your VDCs in the following regions only: gb/lhr, and de/fra. Other regions may have restrictions on the connectable VDCs.