In our previous unit, we built a single VPC. But what happens when you have multiple VPCs, perhaps for different departments or applications, and they need to communicate?

By default, VPCs are completely isolated from each other.

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Can you think of a reason why a company might have a separate VPC for its development and production environments?

VPC Peering allows you to create a direct network connection between two VPCs. This lets resources in each VPC communicate with each other using private IP addresses, as if they were on the same network.

Think of it like building a secure, private bridge between two separate neighborhoods.

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How do you think VPC Peering compares to connecting VPCs through the public internet in terms of security?

A key benefit of VPC Peering is that the traffic always stays on the AWS global private network. It never traverses the public internet, which makes the connection highly secure and low latency. You can even peer with VPCs in other AWS accounts or other regions.

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What is a major advantage of keeping traffic off the public internet?

Now what if you need to connect your on-premises data center to your AWS VPC? This is a common requirement for a hybrid cloud architecture. AWS provides two main options for this: AWS Site-to-Site VPN and AWS Direct Connect.

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Why might a company want to connect its existing data center to the cloud?

AWS Site-to-Site VPN creates a secure, encrypted connection between your on-premises network and your VPC over the public internet. It's a quick and easy way to establish a secure connection for hybrid cloud scenarios.

This is like creating a secure, armored tunnel for your data to travel through the internet.