Virtual private cloud

A virtual private cloud (VPC) is an on-demand configurable pool of shared computing resources allocated within a public cloud environment, providing a certain level of isolation between the different organizations (denoted as users hereafter) using the resources. The isolation between one VPC user and all other users of the same cloud (other VPC users as well as other public cloud users) is achieved normally through allocation of a private IP subnet and a virtual communication construct (such as a VLAN or a set of encrypted communication channels) per user. In a VPC, the previously described mechanism, providing isolation within the cloud, is accompanied with a VPN function (again, allocated per VPC user) that secures, by means of authentication and encryption, the remote access of the organization to its VPC cloud resources. With the introduction of the described isolation levels, an organization using this service is in effect working on a 'virtually private' cloud (that is, as if the cloud infrastructure is not shared with other users), and hence the name VPC.

VPC is most commonly used in the context of cloud infrastructure as a service. In this context, the infrastructure provider, providing the underlying public cloud infrastructure, and the provider realizing the VPC service over this infrastructure, may be different vendors.

Amazon Web Services launched Amazon Virtual Private Cloud on 26 August 2009, which allows the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud service to be connected to legacy infrastructure over an IPsec virtual private network connection.

In AWS, VPC is free to use, however users will be charged for any virtual private networks (VPN) they use. EC2 and RDS instances running in a VPC can also be purchased using Reserved Instances, however will have a limitation on resources being guaranteed.

Google App Engine supported similar functionality via their Secure Data Connector product which was launched on 7 April 2009. Google deprecated this service on 14 March 2013 and no longer accepts new signups. The service is expected to continue running for existing users until (at least) 20 April 2015.

Microsoft Azure offers the possibility of setting up a VPC using Virtual Networks

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