Redundancy is built by using diverse edge availability domains and different metropolitan areas to avoid a single point of failure. You can mix Dedicated Interconnect, which provides a direct physical link, with Partner Interconnect, which uses a service provider. Spreading these connections across regions provides maximum resiliency against local outages.
A common architecture for managing connectivity is the Hub-and-Spoke topology. In this model, a central hub VPC connects to multiple spoke VPCs and the on-premises network. This allows for centralized security policy enforcement and efficient management of connections using VPC Network Peering or VPN tunnels.
For the most demanding environments, a Hot HA pattern is used where both the cloud and on-premises sites actively serve traffic. This requires Cloud Router to manage global dynamic routing using BGP. If one site fails, the system uses weighted routing to automatically send all users to the remaining healthy environment, resulting in a very low Recovery Time Objective (RTO).
Maintaining seamless operations during a failover also depends on Cloud DNS. Configuring DNS peering and forwarding zones allows for smooth name resolution across the hybrid boundary. Inbound forwarders let on-premises systems resolve cloud addresses, while outbound forwarders let cloud resources find on-premises servers. Health checks ensure traffic is only sent to active, healthy endpoints.
Distinguish Between Dedicated and Partner Interconnect Solutions
Cloud Interconnect provides private network connectivity between your on-premises network and Google Cloud. The two main options are Dedicated Interconnect and Partner Interconnect. Your choice depends on your organization's bandwidth demands and physical location relative to Google's network.
Dedicated Interconnect establishes a direct physical link between your equipment and Google's edge network. This requires your equipment to be located in a supported colocation facility. It is best for very high bandwidth needs, offering 10-Gbps or 100-Gbps circuits and direct traffic flow that bypasses the public internet.
Partner Interconnect is for organizations that cannot physically reach a Google colocation facility. Instead, you connect through a supported service provider that is already linked to Google. This option is flexible, offering capacity from 50 Mbps up to 50 Gbps, and reduces maintenance since you don't manage hardware in a colocation site.
Both solutions use a Cloud Router to manage dynamic routing with the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). This allows your on-premises network and VPC to automatically exchange route information, simplifying network management. You must configure your on-premises routers to peer with the Cloud Router for this to work.
For enhanced security and reliability, you can deploy HA VPN over Cloud Interconnect. This adds IPsec encryption to the private connection and, when configured correctly, provides 99.99% availability. For connecting to other clouds like AWS or Azure, Cross-Cloud Interconnect provides a dedicated physical connection, which is different from Carrier Peering used for accessing Google Workspace.
Evaluate Cloud VPN for Secure Internet-Based Connectivity
Cloud VPN securely connects your on-premises network to your Google Cloud VPC through encrypted tunnels over the public internet. For professional use, High Availability (HA) VPN is preferred because it provides 99.99% service availability by establishing two separate tunnels, ensuring connectivity remains if one path fails.
To manage traffic efficiently, Cloud VPN integrates with Cloud Router, which handles dynamic routing using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). This enables automated route propagation, where the network automatically learns paths between environments. Using BGP also allows for stateful failover, which automatically switches traffic to a healthy tunnel without manual intervention.
In hybrid network designs, Cloud VPN is often used in hub-and-spoke or Shared VPC topologies. In a hub-and-spoke model, a central hub VPC connects to on-premises via VPN and then shares that connection with multiple spoke VPCs. This creates a centralized point for managing security policies and simplifies the overall infrastructure.
Setting up a secure VPN requires careful configuration. You must ensure Pre-Shared Keys (PSK) and encryption ciphers match on both ends of the tunnel. Administrators also need to configure firewall rules to allow necessary traffic and properly advertise custom IP ranges through the Cloud Router so that on-premises systems can find cloud resources.
Maintaining a resilient connection involves monitoring the BGP session status and VPN tunnel health. Troubleshooting tools like the gcloud CLI can help describe the tunnel state and identify issues with IP addresses or ASN numbers. Common steps include verifying PSKs match, checking BGP ASN configurations, and ensuring firewall rules allow traffic on both sides. Regular testing of the failover process ensures the hybrid architecture remains robust during outages.
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