Cloud Agnostic Data Centers - Smart Architecture Part 3

Cloud Agnostic Data Centers

The classic approach to networking typically involves building facilities with cages and rows of bare metal servers and network gear to establish connectivity. An alternative is to use Cloud Service Providers as the "New Data Center". Using a small footprint of network hardware and direct connections, organizations can build IP backbones that establish routing with cloud providers to route virtual networks.

Using a cloud agnostic approach, companies can strategically build network POPs within close proximity to cloud providers offering direct cross connects. A simple network model can be used to route traffic to and from a POP with standard Internet transit. An edge and core layer of routers is used to manage routing decisions at the POP, and an aggregation layer can be used to establish local cross connects to build routing peers. This model allows an organization to peer privately with AWS, Azure, IBM, GCE, or any other cloud provider offering similar services.

Once the network is live and peering is established, the virtual network built in the cloud is then routed using the IP backbone of the network. A virtual network in AWS East can talk to a virtual network in Azure Central all over the same private IP backbone, as if those virtual networks were actual data centers. Once this connectivity is in place, all virtual instances within the cloud provider are essentially just a server within the network.

Each cloud has networking limitations that organizations will need to creatively work around to meet their needs, but basic configurations, such as building NAT translations or using your own IP space, are simple advantages that can be implemented. This model allows for a small and cost efficient network footprint when compared to building traditional data centers as the data center burdens are consumed by the cloud provider.

Another benefit of this model is that control of the network is maintained by the organization. All routing decisions, IP space, QoS policies, etc. can be handled within the network layer which provides additional flexibility. Depending on the use case of the network, the total footprint can be as small as a single 45RU cabinet filled with only the necessary hardware needed to build the model and establish connectivity.

So What?

Over the past decade, the public Internet and cloud computing have truly gone global, with even the smallest business in the most remote part of the world leveraging the ability to spin up compute and storage with the likes of Amazon Web Services, IBM SoftLayer, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. This new ubiquitous capability, coupled with the increasing focus on DevOps automation and user-friendly software applications, has deeper implications for the delivery of real-time communications over the Internet.

Quality of service and reduced costs are the main benefits to an organization’s ability to deliver diverse, resilient and redundant real-time communications associated with the adoption of these technologies. Network automation, building select peering relationships and deploying cloud-agnostic points of presence all contribute to increased quality of service. The start-up investment cost and effort for implementing these strategies has decreased dramatically in recent years and will continue to do so in the coming decades.

This post is an except of the original article  published by Channel Vision in July-August edition written by Ian Reither and Jason Craft.

FAQ

What is a cloud-agnostic networking solution? A cloud-agnostic networking solution abstracts connectivity, security, and routing so applications run consistently across multiple clouds. It relies on open standards and portable payloads where distinctions like SMS vs MMS show how media types affect transport and policy across heterogeneous networks.

What does cloud agnostic mean? Cloud agnostic means a system can run on any public or private cloud with minimal rework. It favors portable tooling, open protocols, and decoupled services to avoid vendor lock-in.

What are the 4 types of cloud services? The four types are Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, Software as a Service, and Function as a Service. They map to layers of control from low-level compute and networking to fully managed applications and event-driven functions.

What is cloud networking with an example? Cloud networking connects users, services, and data across regions using virtual networks, routing, security, and load balancing delivered as cloud services. An example is a global engagement platform that routes traffic across provider-neutral networks while delivering rich media through MMS messaging to end users.

Why choose cloud-agnostic networking over single-cloud? It reduces vendor lock-in and improves resilience by failing over across providers. Teams also optimize cost, meet data residency needs, and place workloads closer to users for lower latency.

Which tools and patterns enable cloud-agnostic networking? Common building blocks include SD-WAN or cloud WAN, service mesh, anycast DNS, global load balancers, identity and policy, Infrastructure as Code, and deep observability. Application edges benefit from standardized message schemas, reflected in messaging types, which decouple services and ease movement between clouds.

How should data and traffic flows be designed for portability? Use event-driven architectures with publish-subscribe, idempotent APIs, consistent retry policies, and circuit breakers to handle variable network paths. For fan-out behavior, understanding group versus broadcast semantics as in MMS group or broadcast messaging helps map patterns to scalable, cloud-neutral routing.