What is Amazon VPC Lattice?
Amazon VPC Lattice is an application networking service that reduces the complexity of service-to-service communication in AWS. The service abstracts the network configuration and provides service discovery, traffic management, authentication, and observability for communication between your applications.
VPC Lattice solves a common problem in multi-account and multi-VPC architectures: services in different VPCs or accounts need to communicate, which traditionally requires VPC Peering, Transit Gateway, or PrivateLink. VPC Lattice simplifies this through a unified abstraction layer at the application level.
Core Features
- Service Networks: Logical groups of services that can communicate with each other
- Auth Policies: IAM-based authorization at the service level
- Weighted Routing: Traffic distribution between different target groups (e.g., for canary deployments)
- Cross-VPC/Account: Service communication without VPC Peering or Transit Gateway
- Multi-Compute: Support for EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda, and IP targets
Typical Use Cases
Microservice Communication: Connect microservices across VPC boundaries without setting up VPC Peering. VPC Lattice handles service discovery, load balancing, and authentication.
Multi-Account Architectures: Enable services in different AWS accounts to communicate with each other. Service Networks can be shared via AWS RAM (Resource Access Manager).
Gradual Migration: Route traffic weighted between old and new service versions. VPC Lattice supports canary deployments and blue/green migrations at the network level.
Benefits
- Simplified service communication without network complexity
- No sidecar pattern or service mesh installation required
- IAM-based security at the service level
- Compute-agnostic: EC2, containers, and Lambda in one network
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with Amazon VPC Lattice: designing application networking architectures, migrating from service meshes, and implementing secure cross-account communication.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Amazon VPC Lattice?
Amazon VPC Lattice is an application networking service that simplifies communication between services across VPCs and accounts. It provides service discovery, load balancing, authentication, and authorization at the application level.
How does VPC Lattice differ from a service mesh?
VPC Lattice is a managed application networking service that does not require a sidecar proxy pattern. Unlike service meshes like Istio, no additional containers need to be injected into your pods. Network configuration is done through AWS APIs.
Can VPC Lattice work with different compute platforms?
Yes, VPC Lattice supports EC2 instances, ECS containers, EKS pods, Lambda functions, and IP-based targets. You can connect services on different compute platforms with each other.