Private-by-design access to IBM and third‑party services
Overview
Secure connectivity for hybrid cloud services
IBM Cloud Private Path Service for VPC enables secure, private access to cloud and on-premises workloads using the IBM Cloud private network. Service providers can deploy and expose managed services on IBM Cloud while consumers securely connect from on-premises or within IBM Cloud, without touching the public internet. The result is stronger security, improved compliance, and tighter access control.
Audience
Provider
"I want to provide private connectivity for my services deployed on IBM Cloud, on-premises, or other clouds with granular access control and security."
Consumer
"I want to privately access a service from IBM or my provider, deployed on cloud or on-premises. I don't want providers initiating connections back to my resources, and I want data to traverse within the IBM Cloud network to reduce security risks.”
Features
What IBM Cloud Private Path delivers
- Connectivity
- Scalability
- Granular Control
- Load Balancing
Point-to-point connectivity
Private Path allows targeted, directional connectivity between consumers and provider services in different VPCs, accounts, and on-prem, allowing only consumers to initiate connections to providers.
Scalable and fault-tolerant network load balancer
Private Path network load balancer handles millions of requests per second and supports hundreds of pool members, while ensuring minimal latency and resilience to zone-wide failures.
Granular control over network access
Private Path allows consumers to access only the provider’s Private Path service and not the entire VPC of the provider, enabling granular control over network access.
Policy-based load balancing
Private Path network load balancer allows an application load balancer to be used as a pool member, providing policy-based load balancing and private connectivity to services hosted on-premises and in other clouds.
Use cases
Designed for modern hybrid cloud
IBM Cloud partners and third-party service providers can host their services and applications”—“fronted by a Private Path network load balancer—on IBM Cloud VPC. Consumers access a service through a Virtual Private Endpoint (VPE) gateway in their own VPC.
Private Path network load balancer enables connectivity to a provider’s on-prem service by adding an application load balancer as a pool member. The application load balancer can point to the desired on-prem service instances, connected via Direct Link. Consumers can access a provider’s services hosted on-prem or in other clouds from their VPC.
Consumers can access provider service hosted on IBM Cloud VPC from their on-premises using Direct Link, or from other connected VPCs using Transit Gateway through a VPE gateway deployed in their VPC.
Private Path enables secure connectivity between an IBM Cloud service and a provider’s VPC without compromising security. For example, a serverless VPC can access virtual server instances and applications within the provider’s VPC.
Consumers can access IBM Cloud services through a VPE gateway, keeping traffic within the IBM Cloud backbone and off the internet.
Resources
Everything you need to get started
This blog provides details how IBM Cloud partners and third-party providers can securely deliver services to consumers on IBM Cloud.
This guide offers a high-level overview of the Private Path solution for IBM Cloud and third-party providers and their consumers.
This tutorial walks you through the steps to set up a Private Path service between a provider and a set of consumers using Terraform.