Building Your Hybrid Cloud with VeeamPN

As in nature, Cloud Computing comes in several different types; Private, Public, Community and Hybrid.  The best Cloud Computing deployment for you can depend on your use case. But in my opinion, the hybrid cloud is more spread,

and often is the best choice for organizations. It provides more options in more situations and can be adapted to suit your Cloud Computing deployment. You can take advantage of the different options offered in this multi-cloud deployment type. Not every workload is suitable for hosting on every cloud type; security, system or application compatibility will often influence design decisions.

On My last blog post for this year, and before we all depart on our holidays, I will share with you the method I used to build my own true hybrid cloud with the new Veeam product, Veeam Powered Network; or, for short, VeeamPN.

There are many use cases and deployment types in Cloud Computing; so, to make this blog post relevant, I will share my use case before I run through the Veeam deployment and implementation process.

My Use Case

As a solution architect, I need a diversity of computing power and types to be able to simulate a customer’s infrastructure deployment and workload. Therefore, I am running several labs located in different locations; at my home, my friend Liverpool office (In2Networks) and also installed on Azure and AWS Public clouds. However, when I am visiting customers to demonstrate product functionality, I need access to all these labs from my laptop. I want easy access, without the need to flip between different types of VPN clients, or using Public IPs. (I am keen to reduce the cost and complexity of using public IPs on Azure and AWS.) Express Route and Site-to-Site VPN is also something I will not deploy due to their cost.

All these challenges and more went out the window when I acquired VeeamPN. Since deploying the VeeamPN, I have been able to connect all my labs together with the Site-to-Site VPN functionally provided by VeeamPN, and my laptop connects to the VeeamPN using an OpenVPN client to site connection to simultaneously access any of my labs VM.

Now, let’s run through the Deployment steps.

Deployment

To accomplish my planned design, I will deploy the VeeamPN hub on Microsoft Azure and VeeamPN Site Gateway on each of the sites, or Labs:

1. Deployment of the Veeam PN for Microsoft Azure:

From Azure Market Place, search for “Veeam PN for Microsoft Azure”; then follow the Azure VM deployment process. After the deployment has completed, obtain the Public IP address, and then log in to the VeeamPN WebGui.

2. Configure the VeemPN on Azure as a Hub:

To connect all my labs and laptop to each other, first, I have to deploy the first VeeamPN deployment as a Hub. The VeeamPN hub is the core component in the VPN infrastructure; it provides VPN connections and services to remote sites and users. All traffic in the VPN is routed through the network hub.

The configuration of the hub is simple, starting with following the guided setup after the first login. After the initial configuration has finished, you will be able to start creating a client connection to each site where you need a connection. Let’s demonstrate the type of connections; the first Site-Site VPN to my home lab, and the second to my laptop.

We will start a site-to-site connection by browsing to the Clients option; then click add:

At the options for “Select client’s type, chose the Entire-Site radio button.

On the Site step, enter your site name and the network address subnet:

The second connection site will follow the same steps; but at the “Select client’s type” options, we will select the “Standalone computer” radio button.

The last step is to download the configuration files. I will import these into my VeeamPN Site Gateway, and to my laptop OpenVPN client:

3. Connect each site to the Hub

After the hub has been configured, it is time to connect my labs to it. The deployment starts by downloading the Veeam OVA (Open Virtual Appliance) package from the Veeam Software website, or directly from the Hub under Clients – Download Appliance. The link will redirect you to the Veeam website.

Import the OVA package to your hypervisor (VMware).

After the OVA package has been deployed, log in using the WebGui. By default, the username is “root”, and the password is “VeeamPN”.

At the login prompt, you will be asked to change the password:

At the “Initial Configuration/Chose installation type” options, and as this is a Gateway deployment, I must select the “Site gateway” radio button.

Next, we import the configuration .xml file previously downloaded from the Hub:

And that’s it. The two appliances will connect with each other and provide you with a VeeamPN Site-to-Site VPN connection

Summary

It’s a short blog post this time, as the configuration to set up a VeeanPN Site-to-Site connection is very simple and straightforward.  I was surprised at how easy the steps were to set this up, but I am impressed with the functionality of the Veeam Site-to-Site VPN connection. More than that, it is saving me money!

One last topic I wish to share; you can deploy the VeeamPN over a fresh Linux deployment if you follow the steps on the blog of my colleague Anthony Spiteri . I used these steps from his blog to deploy the VeeamPN on my AWS public subscription.

I hope you enjoyed the blog. Happy Holidays and I hope to see you all back again next year to see more of my blog posts.