Connect VMware SD-WAN Edges to AWS Transit Gateway

Products

• VMware

Issue/Introduction

VMware SD-WAN™ provides high performance and cost-effective access to both Private datacenters and cloud-based services by aggregating available WAN connections such as Internet broadband, MPLS private lines, and wireless LTE. VMware SD-WAN performs dynamic, application-aware, per-packet link steering and path conditioning to deliver enterprise-class quality for the most demanding applications over the SD-WAN overlay. Features like Automated Bandwidth Discovery, Continuous Path Monitoring, Error and Jitter Correction allows SD-WAN to find the optimal path for steering traffic and to provide the best user experience. 

As more and more enterprises leverage the cloud for their business-critical applications, SD-WAN plays an increasingly important role in providing that highly reliable, cost effective and optimized connectivity to those applications. 

In this article we will see a sample architectural design on how customers can leverage VMware SD-WAN capabilities for their AWS workloads. 

Environment

VMware SD-WAN

Resolution

SD-WAN in Transit Gateway Architecture

AWS Transit Gateway (TGW) acts as the central network hub that interconnects VPCs and on-premises networks. In this design the VPCs connect to TGW through a VPC attachment and the SD-WAN Edge connects to TGW through one or more VPN connections. The SD-WAN Edge aggregates and creates overlay tunnels from branch and on-premises networks using either broadband internet or Direct Connect (DX) as the underlay and connects to AWS workloads through the VPN attachment to TGW. 

This simplifies network architecture, reduces complexity of managing incremental connections and increases operational efficiency with centralized management and provides scalability.