What is Amazon VPC? - Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
FeaturesGetting started with Amazon VPCWorking with Amazon VPCPricing for Amazon VPC
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

What is Amazon VPC?

With Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), you can launch Amazon resources in a logically isolated virtual network that you've defined. This virtual network closely resembles a traditional network that you'd operate in your own data center, with the benefits of using the scalable infrastructure of Amazon.

The following diagram shows an example VPC. The VPC has one subnet in each of the Availability Zones in the Region, EC2 instances in each subnet, and an internet gateway to allow communication between the resources in your VPC and the internet.

A VPC with an internet gateway and subnets in three Availability Zones.

For more information, see Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC).

Features

The following features help you configure a VPC to provide the connectivity that your applications need:

Virtual private clouds (VPC)

A VPC is a virtual network that closely resembles a traditional network that you'd operate in your own data center. After you create a VPC, you can add subnets.

Subnets

A subnet is a range of IP addresses in your VPC. A subnet must reside in a single Availability Zone. After you add subnets, you can deploy Amazon resources in your VPC.

IP addressing

You can assign IP addresses, both IPv4 and IPv6, to your VPCs and subnets. You can also bring your public IPv4 and IPv6 GUA addresses to Amazon and allocate them to resources in your VPC, such as EC2 instances, NAT gateways, and Network Load Balancers.

Routing

Use route tables to determine where network traffic from your subnet or gateway is directed.

Gateways and endpoints

A gateway connects your VPC to another network. For example, use an internet gateway to connect your VPC to the internet. Use a VPC endpoint to connect to Amazon Web Services privately, without the use of an internet gateway or NAT device.

Peering connections

Use a VPC peering connection to route traffic between the resources in two VPCs.

Traffic Mirroring

Copy network traffic from network interfaces and send it to security and monitoring appliances for deep packet inspection.

Transit gateways

Use a transit gateway, which acts as a central hub, to route traffic between your VPCs, VPN connections, and Amazon Direct Connect connections.

VPC Flow Logs

A flow log captures information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC.

VPN connections

Connect your VPCs to your on-premises networks using Amazon Virtual Private Network (Amazon VPN).

Getting started with Amazon VPC

Your Amazon Web Services account includes a default VPC in each Amazon Web Services Region. Your default VPCs are configured such that you can immediately start launching and connecting to EC2 instances. For more information, see Get started with Amazon VPC.

You can choose to create additional VPCs with the subnets, IP addresses, gateways and routing that you need. For more information, see Create a VPC.

Working with Amazon VPC

You can create and manage your VPCs using any of the following interfaces:

  • Amazon Web Services Management Console — Provides a web interface that you can use to access your VPCs.

  • Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) — Provides commands for a broad set of Amazon services, including Amazon VPC, and is supported on Windows, Mac, and Linux. For more information, see Amazon Command Line Interface.

  • Amazon SDKs — Provides language-specific APIs and takes care of many of the connection details, such as calculating signatures, handling request retries, and error handling. For more information, see Amazon SDKs.

  • Query API — Provides low-level API actions that you call using HTTPS requests. Using the Query API is the most direct way to access Amazon VPC, but it requires that your application handle low-level details such as generating the hash to sign the request, and error handling. For more information, see Amazon VPC actions in the Amazon EC2 API Reference.

Pricing for Amazon VPC

There's no additional charge for using a VPC. There are charges for some VPC components, such as NAT gateways, IP Address Manager, traffic mirroring, Reachability Analyzer, and Network Access Analyzer. For more information, see Amazon VPC Pricing.