Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides multi-cloud connectivity between Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). It lets you connect any Google Cloud and OCI resources privately in available paired locations. Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI supports connections at multiple speeds with no data transfer charges for traffic that is exchanged between Google Cloud and OCI. You can provision partner VLAN attachments over these connections to interconnect your VPC networks in Google Cloud and OCI within minutes.
Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI offers the following features:
Ensures the lowest possible latency between both clouds, while keeping traffic private and secure.
Lets you provision connections on demand, with variable speed options for maximum flexibility (1 Gbps, 2 Gbps, 5 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, and 50 Gbps).
Coordinated support from both Google Cloud and OCI to address any issues.
Zero cost data transfers.
Uses pre-provisioned capacity because Google Cloud and OCI build, maintain, and scale multi-tenant private connections between their edge routers in different locations.
Comparison to Cross-Cloud Interconnect
| Feature | Cross-Cloud Interconnect | Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI |
|---|---|---|
| Tenancy |
Connections are fully owned by you and can't be shared across organizations. |
Google Cloud and OCI own ports; connections can be used by multiple customers. |
| Supported speeds |
10 Gbps, 100 Gbps. |
1 Gbps, 2 Gbps, 5 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, 50 Gbps. |
| Cost |
You pay for ports and attachments in both clouds and data transfer out for traffic leaving Google Cloud. |
You pay for Google Cloud partner attachments and OCI virtual circuits. There is no data transfer fee. |
| Performance |
Optimal latency. |
Optimal latency. |
| Support |
Google supports the connection all the way to the OCI demarcation. |
Google Cloud and OCI partner on supporting the solution end to end. |
Before you use Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI
Ensure that you meet the following requirements:
- Be familiar with Cloud Interconnect terminology.
- Have an OCI account and be familiar with the FastConnect partner offering.
How does Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI work?
Google Cloud and OCI build, maintain, and scale multi-tenant private connections between their edge routers in different locations. You can provision partner VLAN attachments over these pre-provisioned connections to connect your cloud networks in Google Cloud and OCI.
The following diagram gives a high-level view of Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI.
VLAN attachment MTU options
We recommend that you use the same maximum transmission unit (MTU) for all VLAN attachments that are connected to the same VPC network, and that you set the MTU of the VPC networks to the same value. For more information about Cloud Interconnect MTUs, see Cloud Interconnect MTU.
Provisioning
To provision a Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI connection with OCI, you start by selecting your paired location, and then ordering Partner Interconnect attachments in the appropriate Google Cloud locations.
OCI utilizes an MTU of 9000. The maximum MTU that Google Cloud supports on VPC networks and VLAN attachments is 8896. You must ensure that whatever value you set for Google Cloud, your OCI VMs use the same value. To debug any MTU issues, see Hanging Connection in the OCI documentation.
Next, you create a VLAN attachment for a Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI connection in your Google Cloud project, which generates a unique pairing key that you use to request a FastConnect virtual circuit from OCI. You also need to provide other information such as the connection location and IP stack type. You can choose the capacity in the OCI console.
After configuring the virtual circuit in your OCI compartment, you activate your connection. The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) session must be established between your OCI Dynamic Routing Gateway (DRG) and the Google Cloud Cloud Router.
For detailed steps to provision a Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI connection, see the Provisioning overview.
Connection activation
After you create a VLAN attachment and OCI configures it, the attachment can't pass traffic until you activate it. Activation lets you check your connectivity with OCI.
Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI always establishes the BGP session between your OCI DRG and the Cloud Router over the VLAN attachments and FastConnect virtual circuits directly.
Because the BGP configuration for Layer 3 connections is fully automated, you can pre-activate your connections (VLAN attachments). When you enable pre-activation, the VLAN attachments are active as soon as the OCI virtual circuit is created.
Basic topology
The following topology diagram shows an example Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI connection.
For connectivity between Google Cloud and OCI, traffic is passed to OCI's network. Their network then routes the traffic to the VPC network. OCI requires that you establish a BGP session with them or configure a static default route to their network.
Redundancy and SLA
Depending on your availability needs, you can configure Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI to support mission-critical services or applications that can tolerate some downtime. To achieve a specific level of reliability, Google has two prescriptive configurations:
- Establish 99.99% availability for Partner Interconnect (recommended)
- Establish 99.9% availability for Partner Interconnect
We recommend that you use the 99.99% availability configuration for production-level applications with a low tolerance for downtime. If your applications aren't mission-critical and can tolerate some downtime, you can use the 99.9% availability configuration. When you use Google Cloud's 99.99% availability configuration, there is higher availability with a multi-region deployment versus a single region one.
For the 99.99% and 99.9% availability configurations, Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI uses the Cloud Interconnect service level agreement (SLA). Since Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI is a shared responsibility model between Google Cloud and OCI, the Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI SLA covers Google Cloud's infrastructure up until the point that it's transferred to OCI.
99.99% availability topology
For the highest level availability, we recommend the 99.99% availability configuration. Clients in the OCI virtual cloud network can reach the IP addresses of virtual machine (VM) instances in the selected region through at least one of the redundant paths. If one path is unavailable, the other paths can continue to serve traffic.
99.99% availability requires at least four VLAN attachments across two metros, one in each edge availability domain (metro availability zone). You also need two Cloud Routers (one in each Google Cloud region of a VPC network). Associate one Cloud Router with each pair of VLAN attachments. You must also enable global routing for the VPC network.
Create an equal number of OCI FastConnect virtual circuits in the paired OCI location for the Google Cloud VLAN attachments.
Balancing egress traffic with redundant VLAN attachments
When you have a redundant topology similar to the 99.99% configuration, there are multiple paths for traffic to traverse from the VPC network to your on-premises network.
Google Cloud uses ECMP to balance the egress traffic across connections. To use ECMP, the Cloud Routers used by the VLAN attachments must receive the same announcement with equal cost (the same CIDR range and the same MED values).
All VLAN attachments operate on Dataplane v2. Google Cloud balances the traffic between the VLAN attachments based on the configured capacity of each VLAN attachment.
Create redundant connections with sufficient capacity
The Best practices document describes best practices for creating redundant connections that have sufficient capacity in a failover scenario. Following these practices helps ensure that events such as planned maintenance or hardware failures don't cause loss of connectivity.
IPv6 support
Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI supports IPv6 traffic for Layer 3 connectivity. You have the option to create an IPv4 and IPv6 (dual stack) VLAN attachment.
Dual-stack Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI VLAN attachments must use separate IPv4 and IPv6 BGP sessions. Multiprotocol BGP (MP-BGP)—IPv4 + IPv6 route exchange—on a single BGP session isn't supported.
To support IPv6 traffic in a Partner Cross-Cloud Interconnect for OCI connection, your IPv6-enabled networks must have the following:
Include dual-stack subnets within IPv6-enabled Virtual Private Cloud networks.
Assign internal IPv6 ranges to the subnets. For more information, see IPv6 subnet ranges.
Configure IPv6 addresses for VMs and instance templates within the subnet.
For more information about configuring IPv6 within a subnet, see the following:
To create a custom mode VPC network with internal IPv6 addresses, see Create a custom mode VPC network with a dual-stack subnet.
To create a subnet with IPv6 enabled, see Add a dual-stack subnet.
To enable IPv6 in an existing subnet, see Change a subnet's stack type to dual stack.
To create or enable VMs with IPv6, see Configure IPv6 for instances and instance templates.
For information about using internal IPv6 ranges in your VPC network and subnets, see Internal IPv6 specifications.
After you configure IPv6 in your VPC network, subnets, and VMs, you can configure dual-stack VLAN attachments.
Considerations
When you create Google Cloud resources in a specific location, you must create OCI resources in a paired OCI location.
Billing
There are no data transfer charges on any traffic transiting cross-cloud connections between paired locations.
What's next?
- To find answers to common questions about Cloud Interconnect architecture and features, see the Cloud Interconnect FAQ.
- To find out more about Cloud Interconnect, see the Cloud Interconnect overview.
- To learn about best practices when planning for and configuring Cloud Interconnect, see Best practices.
- To find Google Cloud resource names, see the Cloud Interconnect APIs.