Abstract
Due to its numerous benefits, virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) are increasingly being implemented by various businesses and companies. They can provide the best of private and public Clouds, being isolated and secured on a consistent and scalable public platform. For the company, VPC is a suitable solution for the urgent issue of storage lack.
The company acquired and predicted to get more customers with the increase in sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. This increase will soon go over the limit of the current physical server system. This issue will lead to purchasing new equipment, renting a new space, and moving these servers.
During this complex setup process, many problems and risks may arise, in addition to greater costs. This inconvenience contrasts with VPC’s cost reduction potential and benefits in terms of the possibility of customer buying preferences analysis, which may lead to more future profits. Thus, the company is recommended to implement VPC. The setup of VPC is quite straightforward but not without challenges. However, these challenges are still worth transferring to VPC.
Introduction
A cloud can be described as a network of servers that store data. It can run codes, host websites, store data, and other functions. A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a virtual cloud that is secure and isolated while hosted within the public Cloud. VPC can do the same things as a regular Cloud (Lehwess, 2021). The only difference between the two is that VPC is hosted by a public Cloud provider, which can make establishing, running, and maintaining the Cloud easier (Yang et al., 2018).
Therefore, the main goal of this project is to create a VPC for the company. The company produces surgical masks, respirators, barriers, and other medical safety products for wholesale customers. Currently, the customer list is on the company’s private servers. However, the capacity of the servers is limited. Despite the company’s young age and market share, its sales have been experiencing a sudden increase. Thus, with an increasing number of customers, this project aims to establish VPC and transfer the customer database to a newly created VPC to expand the data storage capacities.
Statement of Need
The company has experienced unprecedented growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the demand for surgical masks and other protective equipment skyrocketed. The demand for its main products, surgical masks and N95 respirators, is predicted to grow even further. The market is to expand even more in the next ten years. For the company, these figures mean the potential for an increase in customers and, consequently, the need for customer database storage.
The company’s current data storage arrangement is running out, which may lead to a stop in the operation if not addressed. The company can purchase more physical servers to store more data on the private Cloud. However, the solution is costly, as the servers, their implementation, and constant maintenance are expensive.
Moreover, the current server room would not be able to accommodate more equipment, which prompts the need for more space. This need for space may mean additional costs for the rent and move of this equipment. Thus, VPC presents a cheaper and easier alternative.
On top of cost savings, VPC has multiple benefits compared to traditional private Cloud and server arrangements. It combines the best of two worlds: the scalability and convenience of a public Cloud and the privacy and security of a private one. For the company, in particular, it provides a reduced risk of data loss and faster deployment.
The additional servers’ setup will take time, on top of the delivery wait and move. Moreover, there is a potential for data loss if the servers are handled poorly during transportation. VPC can provide greater cost savings, security, and reduced risks.
Assumptions
The main assumption that was made during the modeling of this plan is that the sales of the company’s products will continue to increase. Another assumption is that these increased sales will be fueled by the increase in customer base. Both assumptions are reasonable based on the company’s past performance and market trends. The company’s sales and customer base have simultaneously been increasing throughout the pandemic, with the prediction of further increases in the next five years. As mentioned above, the predicted market conditions only support these assumptions.
Description of Current Infrastructure
The main component of the migration to the VPC is the customer database. It is currently stored on the company’s physical servers. The data primarily includes information on the customers, contracts on the sale of the products to the particular customer, and other relevant details on the customer’s buying preferences. All of this data needs to be transferred to VPC.
Moreover, the information on the customers’ buying preferences has the potential for expansion, as the capabilities of VPC will allow for AI-driven analysis automation (Aly & Webb, 2019). This change also has the possibility of raising the company’s profits. Thus, VPC’s initial data storage limit should accommodate the above-mentioned information and these needs. With the company’s growth, VPC’s storage can be expanded unlimitedly.
Cloud Service Providers
There are three main competitive options for VPC providers, including Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. All of these providers allow the building of VPC based on their data center and network architecture to varying degrees. Moreover, some of the providers offer additional services for data analysis, which may be necessary for the company to increase profits in the future, as mentioned before.
One example of the seamless integration of additional services is AWS, as it has one of the best client support for Cloud building and management (Webb & Aly, 2020). AWS prices seem to be fair compared to competitors like Google Cloud, and the customer service is truly on-demand. However, the OS requires multiple installations and dual upgrades, which can slow down the process.
On the other hand, Microsoft Azure has different benefits and drawbacks. One major benefit is its high availability with multiple data centers across the globe compared to competitors that mostly focus on the Western market. However, compared to AWS, Azure lacks seamless integration and requires specific platform expertise and management. Among the competitors, Google Cloud is one of the most reliable and fast providers, and it does not have the issues of multiple upgrades like AWS. However, as mentioned above, its services remain one of the most expensive options.
Challenges Encountered
The VPC creation process presents a number of difficulties, such as sophisticated networking, distributed redundancy for NAT instances, and IP address problems. First of all, VPC on AWS requires an elastic IP address, which is different from the public Cloud’s more simplistic process of setting up public IP. Moreover, these elastic IP addresses are not free and limited to five per AWS account. Without elastic IP, it is impossible to make it publicly addressable once it is launched, as it lacks the default IP.
Another challenge is to consider NAT instances carefully when building them into pathways to remote services (Sood, 2018). If only a stand-alone NAT instance is employed, the whole system may crash if it goes down. This issue with NAT instances leads to another point on networking. It is about the need to construct the VPC from the ground up using NAT, VPN, and ACL (Mahaveerakannan et al., 2020). It is quite different from any other programming, like in the case of firewalls, routes, and switches.
Conclusion
Even though the VPC building process is quite complex, it is simpler and more efficient than traditional server and Cloud services. The process involved several obstacles, such as difficulties with IP addresses, ensuring distributed redundancy for NAT instances, and navigating intricate networking configurations. However, the benefits for the company are overwhelming and worth the build. VPC will provide expanded storage, cost savings, and the possibility of greater profit with the integration of additional AWS AI-driven analysis services.
As the company is in a critical situation of running out of storage space, it is crucial to implement the cloud solution now to prevent the stoppage of operations. This slowdown can be caused due to the possible delays in setting up more physical servers. Moreover, the servers will require more spending and pose more risks of data loss in case of mishandling. On the other hand, VPC can be launched immediately, providing more opportunities for easier growth, expansion, and improvement.
References
Aly, O., & Webb, J. (2019). Quantitative Empirical Research Study to Examine the Relationship between the Acceptance of the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and the Adoption of the VPC. Available at SSRN 3504399. Web.
Lehwess, M. (2021). Public Cloud Architecture. In Future Networks, Services and Management (pp. 213-243). Springer, Cham. Web.
Mahaveerakannan, R., Suresh Gnana Dhas, C., & Rama Devi, R. (2020). Cloud-Based Healthcare Portal in Virtual Private Cloud. In Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies (pp. 1071-1080). Springer, Singapore. Web.
Sood, S. K. (2018). SNA based QoS and reliability in fog and cloud framework. World Wide Web, 21(6), 1601-1616. Web.
Webb, J., & Aly, O. (2020). Relationship Between Acceptance of Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Adoption of VPC: An Empirical Study. IUP Journal of Information Technology, 16(1), 19-76. Web.
Yang, D., Wei, H., Zhu, Y., Li, P., & Tan, J. C. (2018). Virtual private Cloud based power-dispatching automation system—Architecture and application. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 15(3), 1756-1766. Web.
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