Amazon introduces Elastic Network Interfaces for cloud instances
Flexible configuration options allow more connection control
By Mikael Ricknäs | Published: 13:00, 28 December 2011
Amazon Web Services has introduced Elastic Network Interfaces, which are attached to instances in a private cloud to allow for more flexibility when configuring the system.
What Amazon has done is separate IP addresses from the instances, or virtual servers, running in a Virtual Private Cloud.
The Virtual Private Cloud feature lets enterprises provision a private, isolated section of Amazon's cloud where they can launch resources in a virtual network of their own creation, including choosing an IP address range and configuring subnets, route tables and network gateways.
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Enterprises can use the Elastic Network Interfaces to set up dual-homed network appliances or create a back-end management network for their public facing instances. It is also possible to move an interface from one instance to another, which results in network traffic being redirected to the new instance.
To make the ENIs easier to use, Amazon has also upgraded its Management Console to handle them.
This is the second time this year the company has improved the networking features associated with the Virtual Private Cloud feature. Originally, Virtual Private Clouds made it possible to connect an existing data centre with isolated computing power in Amazon's cloud using an encrypted VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection.
The network features Amazon added in March expanded the ways they can be used, including the ability to create a public-facing network for web servers, while back-end systems are placed in a private network with no Internet access.
