A Customer's Guide to Multicloud Networking at Equinix

In today's fast-changing digital world, the idea of relying on a single cloud system that does everything is slowly being replaced by a more flexible approach called the multicloud revolution. This new way of thinking acknowledges that different cloud providers have their own strengths and specialties. Organizations can benefit from this by spreading their tasks across several cloud platforms in an intelligent way.

Understanding the need for multicloud infrastructure

Multicloud infrastructure fundamentally concerns distributing applications between multiple cloud environments, whether public or private clouds. Multicloud allows organizations to take advantage of the strengths of multiple cloud providers and create a hybrid or distributed cloud architecture to build flexible and resilient IT infrastructure. Some of these benefits include:

• Load Balancing: Allows businesses to distribute network traffic across different cloud environments, optimizing resource usage and preventing bottlenecks.

• Redundancy and Fault Tolerance: Enhances the availability and resilience of applications and services by routing traffic across multiple cloud providers. If one cloud provider experiences issues, traffic can be automatically rerouted to ensure uninterrupted operations.

• Performance Optimization: Allows organizations to choose the optimal cloud provider for specific workloads or regions. This ensures the best possible performance by directing traffic through providers with low latency or high bandwidth in a given area.

• Cost Optimization: With dynamic routing, organizations can capitalize on pricing variations among cloud providers. By routing traffic based on cost considerations, businesses can optimize cloud spending and take advantage of cost-effective options.

For more information, check out these references from Megaport: NXP Semiconductors and Fugro Roames

Challenges of supporting multicloud infrastructure

Building and managing a multicloud infrastructure comes with several challenges that organizations need to address. Five significant challenges include:

• Internet Connectivity: Multicloud environments involve multiple cloud providers hosted across different data centers and regions. This can lead to challenges in establishing reliable and high-speed internet connectivity between various clouds, potentially causing latency and connectivity issues that can impact overall performance and user experience.

• Security: Managing consistent security policies, access controls, and data encryption across different cloud providers can be complex. Inconsistent security practices can lead to vulnerabilities and increase the risk of data breaches or unauthorized access.

• Cost (Egress Charges): Data transfer between different cloud providers can result in egress charges, where costs can quickly accumulate as data moves between clouds. This can make cost management and budgeting difficult, especially if there isn't a clear understanding of the data transfer patterns and associated charges.

• Performance: Achieving consistent and optimal performance across different cloud providers can be challenging due to varying infrastructure, network latency, and resource availability. Ensuring that applications perform well across different clouds while maintaining a consistent user experience can be demanding.

• Architectural Consistency: Each cloud provider operates its own network infrastructure with different features, capabilities, and geographic coverage. Ensuring that applications and tools can handle these differences can be challenging.

To achieve the full value of multicloud, you'll need a solution that addresses these challenges.

For more information, check out this example from Megaport: Virtual Hybrid Cloud and MultiCloud Connectivity With MCR

The Equinix Difference

Equinix’s approach to multicloud is based on adaptability. It allows businesses to easily connect to many cloud providers while keeping their systems working well and securely. Equinix has data centers strategically placed all over the world. This makes it easy to exchange data between different cloud systems quickly. This helps organizations use many clouds without worrying about speed or reliability.

As more and more organizations use multicloud strategies to make the most of different cloud providers, Equinix becomes a strategic partner. Equinix helps businesses deal with the complexities of multicloud architecture. Organizations can benefit from the multicloud revolution using Equinix's know-how and connected infrastructure. They can grow larger, reduce risk, and spend less as they work on digital projects.

Equinix offers a solution to the challenges of multicloud implementation. Their platform enables organizations to establish secure and high-speed private connections between different cloud providers, minimizing reliance on the public internet. This approach enhances the reliability and speed of communication between clouds, ultimately improving overall performance. Equinix's data center security measures, including physical security, access controls, and compliance certifications, provide a controlled and secure environment for multicloud deployments. Moreover, by taking advantage of Equinix's direct interconnection services, organizations can reduce egress charges by keeping data transfers within their ecosystem, leading to cost optimization. The platform's emphasis on high-speed, low-latency connections between cloud providers ensures consistent and optimal performance, bypassing the public internet's potential bottlenecks.

Equinix Digital Services Overview

Equinix's Digital Services form the cornerstone of an effective multicloud strategy, facilitating seamless connectivity, global interconnection, and network performance optimization.

Equinix also enables customers to seamlessly integrate cloud-adjacent private cloud infrastructure hosted at Equinix into their multicloud networking setup. This holistic approach ensures that our clients can achieve a robust and flexible multicloud network that aligns with their unique needs and goals

Here's an overview of some key services:

Equinix Fabric

Equinix Fabric is a software-defined interconnection platform. It enables organizations to establish direct and private connections to cloud providers, networks, own deployments, and partners within Equinix. This direct connectivity enhances performance, security, and scalability, bypassing the public internet. Equinix Fabric supports multicloud connectivity, automation through APIs, and offers a flexible solution for businesses to adapt their interconnection needs. It's a valuable and fast tool for creating efficient, secure and high-performance connections.

Fabric Cloud Router

Fabric Cloud Router (FCR) is a virtual routing service on Equinix Fabric that enables customers to create resilient, high-performance Layer 3 connections quickly and easily between their clouds, data centers and on-premises resources – all without the costs of owning and operating a vendor-supplied physical or virtual router.

While cloud deployments have become increasingly simple and flexible, many enterprises struggle to find an optimal networking solution to connect between their cloud, data center and on-premise resources with the same cloud-like agility.

When using colocation services at at Equinix, customers must first interconnect to their service destinations using Layer 2 point-to-point services and then configure the networking. This can lead to unnecessary complexity, delays, security risks and resource constraints.

In contrast, FCR offers a streamlined and secure alternative that simplifies networking, reduces delays, and minimizes resource constraints.

Network Edge

Equinix Network Edge delivers Network Function Virtualisation infrastructure (NFVi) that empowers businesses to deploy and manage network functions in a flexible and efficient manner. Customers can deploy essential networking resources such as routers, firewalls, and load balancers in close proximity to the cloud, creating a cloud-adjacent infrastructure that optimizes performance and efficiency.

With a marketplace of leading networking vendors, Network Edge ensures technology consistency with existing deployments. This approach simplifies the management of complex networking configurations, reduces hardware dependency, and provides the agility needed to adapt to changing business requirements.

Equinix Metal

Equinix Metal is a service that offers dedicated, high-performance physical servers in data centers all over the globe. It provides direct access to powerful compute resources without virtualization, thus allowing organizations to tailor their infrastructure, optimize performance, and connect efficiently to other services. It's a solution suited for various applications, emphasizing control and performance.

Use Cases

Consider using Fabric if you have any of these use cases:

• You need to simplify high availability in your cloud.
• You need your vendor to provide high flexibility.
• You want to optimize latency a much as possible.
• You need a high amount of throughput between you cloud environments.

Consider using Network Edge for these use cases:

• You need a solution to assist in simplifying network management.
• You need higher-level functions beyond just routing (firewall, SDWAN, load-balancing).
• You have existing vendors in your environment today and want to maintain consistency.

Consider using Metal if your use cases include:

• You have experience virtualizing network functions.
• You have a specific security policy that you need enforced between cloud environments.

Conclusion

Equinix is your trusted partner on the journey to a successful multicloud future. By taking advantage of Equinix Digital Services, you can harness the power of multicloud architecture, drive innovation, and lead your organization toward unparalleled success.

Equinix supports businesses throughout the onboarding and implementation process, providing expert guidance and assistance. The transition to Equinix's multicloud networking solutions is designed to be seamless, enabling your organization to unlock the true potential of multicloud infrastructure.