Google Cloud Platform Networking for Secure and Private Connections

Google Cloud Platform offers a robust networking system that enables secure and private connections. This is achieved through the use of Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks.

VPC networks provide a logically isolated section of the Google Cloud Platform infrastructure, allowing you to create a virtual network that is separate from the global Google Cloud network.

With VPC networks, you can create custom subnets, routes, and firewalls to control traffic flow.

Google Cloud Platform also supports the use of Cloud Interconnect, a service that allows you to connect your on-premises network to Google Cloud Platform over a dedicated connection.

Load balancing is a key concept in GCP, allowing you to distribute the workload uniformly across a group of servers by distributing the load and responses to each server in the group.

A cluster is a collection of nodes that work together as a single unified computing resource, enabling you to scale your application easily.

In GCP, an area or zone is used to isolate resources for different customer types, their operational requirements, or regulatory restrictions, ensuring that resources are properly segregated.

You can isolate resources in GCP from one another, making it easier to manage and secure your infrastructure.

You can control access to resources by allowing incoming and outgoing traffic, adding an extra layer of security to your network.

GCP networking is based on Google's Andromeda architecture, which allows cloud administrators to create and use software-defined networking elements, such as firewalls, routing tables, and VMs.

Here are some key benefits of using VPCs in GCP:

Cloud Armor provides built-in defenses against infrastructure DDoS attacks, working with Application Load Balancer to protect against such threats.

Cloud Armor benefits from over a decade of experience protecting large internet properties like Google Search, Gmail, and YouTube, offering features like IP-based and geo-based access control.

You can also use Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to isolate resources and manage access to GCP resources deployed in the VPC by configuring the IP address that can access the resources.

Here are some key features of VPC:

VPC firewall rules control traffic coming in and out of VM instances on a network, allowing you to create custom rules for more detailed network resource protection.

You can define firewall rules at the VPC network level and dis/allow connections to or from instances on a per-instance basis.

Cloud Armor is a powerful tool that works with Application Load Balancer to provide built-in defenses against infrastructure DDoS attacks, drawing from Google's decade-long experience protecting massive internet properties.

Google Cloud Armor offers several key features, including IP-based and geo-based access control, which allows you to control who can access your resources based on their IP address or location.

With Cloud Armor, you can also support hybrid and multicloud deployments, making it easier to manage your resources across different cloud platforms.

Pre-configured WAF rules and Named IP Lists are also available, providing an extra layer of security for your resources.

Security Analytics and Operations is another feature that helps you analyze petabytes of security telemetry, giving you valuable insights to improve your security posture.

Here are some of the key features of Cloud Armor:

These features, combined with Google Cloud's expertise in security, make Cloud Armor a powerful tool for protecting your resources from DDoS attacks and other security threats.

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network is a virtualized layer on top of the physical network used by Google Cloud. It provides a secure way to isolate your resources and manage access to them.

A VPC offers several services, including networking, security, and management. You can configure the IP address to control access to your resources within the VPC.

To enable connectivity from Compute Engine VMs to external IP addresses, you need to enable Private Google Access (PGA) on the subnet used by the VM's network interface. By default, VMs have no external IP address assigned to their network interface.

PGA allows connectivity to Google Cloud Developer APIs and services, but it's not supported for certain services like App Engine Memcache, Filestore, and Memorystore. You can find more information about PGA-supported services and configuration steps on the Google Cloud documentation website.

Here's a list of services that are not supported by PGA:

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a virtualized layer on top of the physical network used by Google Cloud. It provides services such as routes and VPCs.

To create a VPN, you'll need to define an External Network construct within the infra tenant. This is where you'll enter the remote IPSec peer details, including the public IP of the remote IPSec device, IKE version, and BGP AS.

The configuration for the external network requires a name, such as "external-vrf", to improve operations. You'll also need to define a VPN network with the remote IPSec device's public IP, IKE version, and BGP AS.

Cisco CNC generates a configuration file for the remote IPSec device to establish BGP peering and IPSec tunnels with the GCP cloud native routers. You can download this configuration file once the external network is created.

To enable inter-VRF routing between external networks and existing user VPC networks, you'll need to enable VPC peering between the user VPCs and the infra VPC hosting VPN connections. This will share the VPN connections to external sites and leak routes received on the VPN connections to user VPCs.

Here's a summary of the steps to create a VPN:

By following these steps, you can create a VPN that allows you to leak routes between external networks and existing user VPC networks. This will enable you to share VPN connections to external sites and advertise user VPC routes on the VPN connections.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers a wide range of network services and technologies to help you build, deploy, and manage your applications.

You can use Google Cloud networking services or technologies, such as Stream Analytics, to get insights from ingesting, processing, and analyzing event streams. This can help you make data-driven decisions and improve your application's performance.

Cloud CDN is a content delivery network for delivering web and video content, which can help reduce latency and improve user experience. It's a great option for applications that require high-speed content delivery.

For load balancing, Google Cloud offers automatic autoscaling of your applications fronted by the load balancer, as well as external and internal load balancing of requests. You can also use pass-through load balancing, proxy-based load balancing, layer 7-based load balancing, and layer 4-based load balancing to direct traffic based on different criteria.

Google Cloud Connectivity offers a variety of options for connecting your infrastructure to the cloud, including Dedicated Interconnect, Partner Interconnect, and Cloud VPN. This can help you ensure uptime, reduce disruptions, and connect from anywhere.

Here are some of the key network services offered by GCP:

These services can help you connect your resources, ensure security, and improve performance. By using these services, you can build a scalable and reliable network infrastructure that meets your business needs.

Optimize your network performance and security with Google Cloud's Network Intelligence Center. This powerful tool provides comprehensive network observability and proactive network verification, cutting down troubleshooting time and effort, increasing network security, and allowing for optimization of the overall user experience.

Network Topology allows you to visualize and monitor the health of your network in real-time. This feature is particularly useful for diagnosing and preventing connectivity issues.

Connectivity Tests help you diagnose and prevent connectivity issues, ensuring that your network is always up and running smoothly. With this feature, you can identify and fix problems before they affect your users.

Performance Dashboard provides real-time network performance metrics, giving you a clear view of your network's health. This information is invaluable for optimizing your network and ensuring that it's running at its best.

Firewall Insights help you keep your firewall rules strict and efficient, protecting your network from potential threats. By monitoring your firewall rules, you can identify and fix any issues before they cause problems.

With Google Cloud's Network Intelligence Center, you can optimize your network performance, security, and user experience. By leveraging these powerful tools, you can ensure that your network is always running smoothly and securely.

Here are some key features of Network Intelligence Center:

Google Cloud Platform's network architecture is designed with scalability and flexibility in mind. This allows businesses to easily adapt to changing needs and scale their network infrastructure up or down as required.

Google Cloud's network architecture is built on a global network of data centers and edge locations, providing low-latency and high-bandwidth connectivity to users around the world. This allows businesses to deploy applications and services that are accessible from anywhere.

Google Cloud's network architecture is designed to provide a high degree of redundancy and fault tolerance, ensuring that applications and services remain available even in the event of an outage or failure. This is achieved through the use of multiple data centers and edge locations, as well as advanced network routing and load balancing techniques.

Google Cloud's network architecture supports a variety of networking protocols and services, including TCP/IP, UDP, and DNS. This allows businesses to deploy applications and services that require specific networking protocols or services.

Google Cloud's network architecture is designed to provide a high degree of security and compliance, with features such as firewalls, VPNs, and encryption. This helps to protect sensitive data and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

A route is a virtual networking component that allows you to implement advanced networking functions for your instances, such as creating VPNs. Routes define paths for packets leaving instances, in other words, a route controls how packets leaving an instance should be directed.

You can create routes to specify how packets destined for a particular network range should be handled by a gateway VM instance that you configure and operate. This is useful for directing traffic to specific destinations.

Google Cloud Networking offers several networking services to connect your resources in the cloud, including Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Subnets, Firewall rules, Load balancers, and VPNs.

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network is a virtualized layer on top of the physical network used by Google Cloud, providing services such as network isolation and access management.

To allow connectivity from Compute Engine VMs to external IP addresses used by Google Cloud Developer APIs and services, you need to enable Private Google Access (PGA) on the subnet used by the VM’s network interface.

Private Google Access is not supported for certain services, including App Engine Memcache, Filestore, and Memorystore.

To configure PGA, follow the steps outlined in the Google Cloud documentation, which can be found here: https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/configure-private-google-access.

The list of supported PGA services can be found here: https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/private-google-access#pga-supported.

Here are some key points to keep in mind when configuring PGA:

To provision a cloud native router, you need to enable external connectivity under Region Management. This allows you to specify the region where the router will be deployed.

First, select the region where the cloud native routers will be deployed. This can be the same region as your Cisco CNC or a different region, depending on your needs.

Default values will be used for the IPSec Tunnel Subnet Pool and BGP AS under the Hub Network representing the GCP Cloud Router. This simplifies the provisioning process and gets you up and running quickly.

Cloud native routers can be provisioned in the same region as your user VPCs, but they can also be deployed in a different region to illustrate the ability of having a dedicated hub network with external access.

Verifying the status of your external connectivity is crucial to ensure your network is working as expected. You can verify BGP peering and IPSec tunnels between Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and external devices via the CLI on the IPSec device itself.

To do this, you'll need to check the External Connectivity dashboard in the GCP console, under Hybrid Connectivity. This is where you'll see the status of your IPSec and BGP sessions.

In the GCP console, you can also verify the status of your Cloud Router and HA Cloud VPN gateway, which are automated by Cisco CNC upon definition of the External Network.

Here are some specific ways to verify connectivity in GCP:

Network Performance and Monitoring is a critical aspect of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) networking. It allows you to monitor and troubleshoot your network performance in real-time.

GCP provides a range of tools to help you monitor your network performance, including Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring. Cloud Logging allows you to collect and analyze log data from your network, while Cloud Monitoring provides real-time visibility into your network performance.

Google Cloud's VPC Flow Logs can be used to collect flow logs from your network, which can be used to monitor and troubleshoot network performance issues. These logs can be exported to Cloud Logging for further analysis.

Cloud Network Monitoring provides real-time visibility into your network performance, including latency, packet loss, and throughput. This information can be used to identify and troubleshoot network performance issues.

Google Cloud's Network Load Balancing provides real-time monitoring and logging of network traffic, which can be used to troubleshoot network performance issues. This includes metrics such as latency, packet loss, and throughput.

Google Cloud Platform offers two Network Service Tiers: Premium and Standard. The Premium Tier leverages Google's global network, providing high throughput and reliability.

The Standard Networking Tier is a lower-cost option with network performance comparable to other public clouds, according to Google's documentation.

Here's a comparison of the two tiers:

Google's Premium Tier Network offers improved latency and better bandwidth, with packets spending more time on Google's network and less time bouncing around between different ISPs.