Connecting VPCs and VNets and extending on-premise resources to multiple clouds

The challenge

Enterprise customers run servers on premises and in several public clouds, each with its own Virtual Private Clouds or Virtual Networks. The SDN product had to interconnect those networks across Azure, AWS and GCP over secure tunnels and extend on-premise resources into the cloud, and the work involved all of the product's important components and their stakeholders.

What was at risk:

• An SDN product limited to on-premise networks in an enterprise market that runs across multiple clouds

What we did

• Provided a complete team with experience in network engineering: an architect, a project manager, and Python, Golang and UI developers.
• Prepared a Proof of Concept.
• Ensured smooth communication between all stakeholders in a project involving all of the product's important components.
• Delivered CI changes, automated tests and network configuration.
• Changed the PoC into a full-size feature added to the customer's SDN core product.

How it works

The solution deploys Multi Cloud gateway (MC-GW) nodes that interconnect different VPCs and VNets in the various clouds. Four parts make it work.

1. Gateways MC-GW nodes interconnect the Virtual Private Clouds and Virtual Networks in each cloud, and also extend on-premise resources to the cloud.
2. Secure tunneling Secure tunnels use OpenVPN, IPsec and VXLAN simultaneously.
3. Cloud provisioning Terraform provisions the cloud resources on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform, and Packer improves the performance of consecutive provisionings.
4. Deployment Custom Ansible playbooks and Python scripts deploy the custom SD-WAN infrastructure and the customer's SDN solution.