Amazon AWS: VPC Flow Logs & Global accelerator

Earlier we discussed about the basics of VPC, VPC peering in our articles.  Today we are going to talk about the VPC Flow Logs & Global accelerator in our article.

VPC Flow Logs
VPC flow logs are used to capture the data traffic going inside and outside of network interfaces in your VPC. This data is stored using amazon cloud watch and can be viewed and retrieved from cloud watch logs.

Note: Flow logs can be created at three different levels:

• VPC level
• Subnet level
• Network interface level.

Direct connect:

It is a cloud service that provides a dedicated connection from your premises to AWS. Using Direct Connect, private connectivity can be established between AWS to your data center or office.

Fig 1.1- Direct Connect

Advantages of the Direct Connect:

• It reduces network cost.
• It results in increased throughput (used where there are high volumes of network traffic).
• Stable, reliable and consistent internet connection then VPN or any other internet providers. 

Global accelerator: 
A global accelerator is used to enhance the performance of local and global users by using accelerators. It directs the traffic to endpoints in a global AWS network. As a result, network availability and performance are increased.

By default, two IP addresses are provided by Global accelerators that can be associated with your accelerator. Own IP addresses can be used as well.

Components of Global accelerator

• Static IP addresses
• Accelerator
• DNS name
• Network Zone
• Listener 
• Endpoint group
• Endpoint

Author : Amandeep Kaur, Network Engineer