Here is a challenge. How do you connect the simplest version of a secure public cloud
environment that exercises an organization’s muscles, demonstrates the viability of
cloud services, and engages all necessary stakeholders?
Some might recognize this description as the methodology for our Minimum Viable
Cloud (MVC). The simplest way to connect resources in such an environment has been
through a hub-and-spoke network – using peering technologies to exchange traffic over
separate networks. The wheel-like design replicates data center functions by providing
low-latency access to remote services in these networks including, for example, Active
Directory (AD), the Domain Name System (DNS), security and firewall devices, logging
and monitoring, build servers, and bastion hosts.
The hub-and-spoke model used to be the simplest and most direct way to connect
resources. When banks and other large enterprises started using the cloud to build IaaS-
based workloads in a single region, the hub-and-spoke network worked crisply and effi-
ciently. Now that more organizations are building cloud-native applications and deploy-
ing to multi-cloud environments, network management is becoming too complex for the
traditional hub-and-spoke model, where connectivity between spokes provided by net-
work peering.
SUMMER 2019 | THE DOPPLER | 19