If you’re building and managing applications in public cloud providers like GCP or AWS, chances are you’ve heard of VPC peering. This blog post explains what VPC peering is, why you’d want to use it, and, if you’re using CockroachCloud today, how you can get started with our new VPC peering functionality.
First thing’s first - a virtual private cloud (VPC) is a logically isolated, virtual network within a cloud provider. A VPC peering connection is a networking connection between two VPCs that enables you to route traffic between them using private IP addresses. VPC peering allows you to deploy cloud resources in a virtual network that you have defined. Instances in either VPC can communicate with each other as if they were within the same network. Data can be transferred across these resources with more security.
Since releasing CockroachCloud, our database-as-a-service, a year ago, we’ve continued to add new features and functionality. With the most recent update, CockroachCloud now provides you with the ability to directly peer your GCP VPCs with your CockroachCloud cluster’s VPC.
Before, CockroachCloud required you to authorize networks that could access the cluster, typically including your application server’s network in a production environment, as well as your local machine’s network in a development environment. This process was clunky and also had some limitations when running applications in Kubernetes.
Now, VPC peering gives you a faster and smoother user experience. You can sidestep the old requirement of allowlisting IP addresses within CockroachCloud before you’re able to connect (though that IP allowlist option is always available if the need arises).
If you are running on AWS, hang tight. The ability to securely connect AWS VPCs with CockroachCloud via AWS PrivateLink is coming soon.
With VPC peering, you can securely connect your GCP applications with your CockroachCloud clusters. You can learn more in our VPC peering documentation and sign up here to get started. And if you have any questions, feel free to swing by our community Slack Channel.
We’re excited to see what you build with CockroachCloud!