[PSA] Cost Saving by Migrating from PrivateLink to VPC Peering

We have analyzed the use of PrivateLink (NLB + VPCE) for communication between services on multi-accounts in our organization Traveloka, we find that service-to-service communication that originally used PrivateLink (NLB + VPCE) can be replaced using VPC peering configuration and this is very beneficial in terms of the cost, PrivateLink (NLB + VPCE) will charge us hourly for VPC Endpoint and NLB that we deployed also for data transfer that occurs on that stacks, while VPC peering only charges us for data transfer that occurs on service-to-service communication because there’s no additional instances or resources to be deployed

This implementation uses Traveloka curated Terraform module: traveloka/terraform-aws-vpc-peering
At this time, importing and accepting VPC peering connection in a shared account tvlk-prod will be handle by the Cloud Infrastructure team
It is prohibited from making a connection between different environment or cross-environment
It is prohibited from making a connection to or from mixed environment accounts:
tvlk-dev, tvlk-data, tvlk-midas, tvlk-audit, tvlk-build, tvlk-domain, and tvlk-lab
It is prohibited from making a connection to an external AWS account that not under Traveloka organization

We encourage the product team that used PrivateLink (NLB + VPC Endpoint) to VPC peering for service to service communication (How to create VPC peering connection), we have calculated the potential cost saving by this initiative, here is the detail potential cost saving by migrating from PrivateLink (NLB + VPC Endpoint) to VPC peering: 2020-04-15 - private link

From the above data, we can potentially save $17,727.84 per month by removing PrivateLink stacks which contain VPC Endpoint and NLB and using VPC peering for service to service communication, to see more detail about the data, we have shared the sheet that calculates the potential saving for PrivateLink stacks, 2020-04-15 - private link

The calculation based on assumption we remove the PrivateLink stacks completely which includes NLB, VPC Endpoint Service, and VPC Endpoint

We have created documentation, SOP, and Terraform module to support VPC peering configuration, you can find that document in this link:

[Service Documentation] VPC Peering
[SOP] How to Create VPC Peering Connection
[Terraform module] traveloka/terraform-aws-vpc-peering

The SOP of How to create VPC peering connection, already cover creating VPC peering from scratch and migrating existing VPC peering to Terraform module provided, if you have any questions or helps, please don’t hesitate to contact us through #site-infra-channel

Original Blog Post:
[PSA] Cost Saving by Migrating from PrivateLink to VPC Peering