Question

Difficulty: HardManaging Storage and Data Transfer Costs

A company has a multi-VPC architecture in the `us-east-1` Region. VPC A contains a fleet of EC2 instances in three Availability Zones processing telemetry data. These instances stream 300 TB300\text{ TB} of data monthly to a centralized analytics platform running in VPC B (also in `us-east-1` across three Availability Zones). Currently, both VPCs are attached to an AWS Transit Gateway, and all traffic between VPC A and VPC B is routed through the Transit Gateway. The company wants to reduce the data transfer costs for this traffic without sacrificing performance or security. Which solution is the most cost-effective way to achieve this goal?

  1. A
    Deploy a single NAT Gateway in one Availability Zone of VPC A, and configure the VPC A route tables to route all traffic destined for VPC B through this NAT Gateway. Configure the Application Load Balancer in VPC B to have public IP addresses and accept traffic over the internet.
  2. B
    Keep the AWS Transit Gateway connection but enable appliance mode on the Transit Gateway VPC attachments for both VPCs. Implement Transit Gateway Connect peers using Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnels to compress the data before transmission.
  3. Establish a VPC Peering connection between VPC A and VPC B. Update the route tables in both VPCs to route the traffic between VPC A and VPC B through the peering connection. Associate the Route 53 Private Hosted Zone for the ingestion service in VPC B with VPC A to enable DNS resolution over the peered connection.Answer
  4. D
    Establish a VPC Peering connection between VPC A and VPC B. Update the route tables in both VPCs to route the traffic between VPC A and VPC B through the peering connection. Create a Route 53 Private Hosted Zone for the ingestion service in VPC B, but do not associate it with VPC A, relying instead on standard public DNS resolution.

Answer

Establish a VPC Peering connection between VPC A and VPC B, update the route tables to route traffic through the peering connection, and associate the Route 53 Private Hosted Zone in VPC B with VPC A to enable DNS resolution.
Establishing a VPC Peering connection is the most cost-effective solution because VPC Peering does not charge any data processing fees. For 300 TB300\text{ TB} of data transfer monthly, this eliminates the $0.02 per GB data processing charge imposed by AWS Transit Gateway. Furthermore, data transfer over VPC Peering within the same Region is free if it remains within the same Availability Zone. Associating the Route 53 Private Hosted Zone in VPC B with VPC A allows the instances in VPC A to resolve the private DNS names of the ingestion service.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the current data transfer costs using AWS Transit Gateway.
The current architecture incurs a data processing fee of 0.02perGBforalltraffictraversingtheTransitGateway.For0.02 per GB for all traffic traversing the Transit Gateway. For 300\text{ TB}( ( 307,200\text{ GB})ofmonthlydatatransfer,thisamountsto) of monthly data transfer, this amounts to 307,200 \times 0.02 = 6,144$ USD per month in data processing fees alone.
To establish a cost baseline and identify the primary cost driver that needs to be minimized or eliminated.
2
Evaluate alternative regional routing options to reduce data processing charges.
Establish a VPC Peering connection between VPC A and VPC B. Unlike Transit Gateway or Interface VPC Endpoints (which charge 0.01perGB),VPCPeeringhas0.01 per GB), VPC Peering has 0$ data processing fees. Data transfer over VPC Peering is free when traffic remains within the same Availability Zone.
VPC Peering is the most cost-effective connection type for high-volume data transfer between two VPCs in the same Region.
3
Configure DNS resolution across the peered VPCs.
Associate the Route 53 Private Hosted Zone in VPC B with VPC A.
Instances in VPC A must be able to resolve the private DNS hostnames of the ingestion service in VPC B. Without this association, DNS resolution will fail, preventing connectivity even if routing is established.

Key Concept

VPC Peering vs. Transit Gateway costs and Route 53 Private Hosted Zone multi-VPC association
Estimated Time:3m 0s
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