The cloud means businesses don’t need to own their hardware, but you still own your data. One challenge that’s often overlooked when companies plan a switch to the cloud is how their data will get there. The most obvious route is to use the public internet, but while that’s simple, using the public internet doesn’t guarantee the performance and security many enterprises require. For those entities, a direct connection to the cloud may be a preferred alternative.

Direct connections take the public internet out of your cloud architecture. Instead, you rely on a dedicated connection between your premises and the cloud provider. This direct connection can offer better performance—your traffic isn’t sharing the network with every other internet user—as well as better security—your traffic isn’t potentially exposed while it’s in transit.

Kinds of Direct Connections

The kinds of direct connections you can use depend on what the cloud provider you’re using will support. Microsoft Azure cloud supports three kinds of direction connection:

1. Virtual network point-to-point

This kind of connection supports a virtual private network (VPN) with a secure connection between a specific computer and the cloud. Connections use secure sockets tunneling protocol (SSTP) to traverse the public internet, potentially introducing latency. Bandwidths reach up to 100Mbps. This approach is most appropriate for prototyping or a development/test configuration.

2. Virtual network site-to-site

The site-to-site VPN supports secure connections between your on-premises equipment and Azure. Connections use IPsec and traverse the public internet, so there can be unpredictable latency. Bandwidth reaches up to 100 Mbps. Site-to-site VPN can support small production environments.

3. ExpressRoute

ExpressRoute is a Microsoft service that establishes private connections between your premises and the Azure data center using virtual LANs or other technology. These connections are totally separate from public internet services and provide more reliable, faster, and secure connections. Dynamic routing is supported using border gateway protocol (BGP), and bandwidth can reach 10 Gbps. Unlike the other direction connection methods, ExpressRoute includes a redundant connection to provide high availability.

The reliability and performance of ExpressRoute makes it the best choice for enterprise workloads, big data, data migrations, and backup/disaster recovery applications. ExpressRoute is also well-suited for hybrid cloud applications that span your data center and the cloud. You can easily integrate internal resources, such as your Active Directory service, with applications running in Azure.

Make the Right Connection to Microsoft Azure

As a Microsoft Partner, Prescient Solutions has the insight and expertise to help you choose the right connection to Azure and make the most of your cloud deployment. Our team will help you evaluate your needs, design the appropriate solution, and transition your applications to the cloud. If you need ongoing support, we’ll be there to monitor your cloud instances, troubleshoot problems, and expand your deployments to support new requirements. Contact us to learn more about Prescient Solutions and how we can connect you to Microsoft Azure.

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