From An Architectural Perspective, Sort Out What Deployment Models Are Available For U.s. High-defense Cloud Servers

1.

overall architecture and risk assessment

- first evaluate the assets: number of domain names, ip segments, business ports (such as 80/443/22/3389) and traffic peaks;
- traffic baseline and historical attack peak: for example, the largest historical attack peak of an e-commerce company is 300gbps and the peak connection rate per minute is 2 million;
- availability target (sla) and recovery time target (rto): common targets are 99.95% availability and return-to-source availability within 5 minutes;
- cost/operation and maintenance constraints: a compromise between billing based on bandwidth and billing based on traffic cleaning;
- compliance and delay requirements: us user delay requirements, gdpr/privacy compliance, etc. will affect the implementation plan.

2.

mode 1: single-machine high-defense cloud (high-defense instance)

- definition: purchase a high-defense cloud server with cleaning capabilities in a us computer room, and directly clean the public ip traffic;
- advantages: simple operation and maintenance, direct connection back to the source, fast response; disadvantages: cleaning capabilities are limited to the provider instance level;
- typical configuration: 8 vcpu / 32 gb ram / 2 x 500 gb nvme / 10 gbps bandwidth;
- examples of cleaning capabilities: common high-defense instances can provide cleaning peaks of 100gbps~500gbps (different manufacturers);
- applicable scenarios: small and medium-sized businesses, services with high real-time requirements and predictable attack scale.

model	typical configuration	applicable scenarios
single machine high defense	8vcpu/32gb/2x500gb/10gbps	small and medium-sized businesses, low latency requirements
front-end cdn + cleaning	edge cdn + back-to-origin high-defense example	traffic burst, global users
active-active + multi-region	2x(16vcpu/64gb/1tb/10gbps)	high availability, cross-region disaster recovery

3.

mode 2: front-end cdn/global anycast + back-to-origin high defense

- definition: cdn/anycast is deployed at the edge to absorb and cache traffic, and malicious traffic is cleaned at the edge or forwarded to the cleaning center;
- advantages: strong global absorption capacity, low user-perceived latency, and caching can reduce back-to-origin pressure;
- disadvantages: dynamic content needs to be configured with a return-to-origin strategy, and improper caching may affect the business;
- configuration example: cloud cdn/anycast + back-to-origin high-defense instance (4vcpu/16gb/500gb/5gbps), edge peak absorption can reach 1tbps (depends on cdn);
- typical applications: e-commerce, game distribution, and static resource acceleration for global access.

4.

mode 3: hyperactive multi-region + global load balancing

- definition: deploy active-active instances in multiple availability zones or regions in the united states, and perform traffic distribution and health checks through gslb/slb;
- advantages: strong disaster tolerance, regional attacks can be isolated locally, and read and write separation reduces the impact;
- disadvantages: data synchronization (database/cache consistency) and dns switching delays need to be solved;
- configuration example: active and standby deployment: 16 vcpu / 64 gb / 1 tb nvme / 10 gbps, the database uses asynchronous + semi-synchronous replication;
- practical case: a saas company is active-active in the us east and us west. when encountering a udp amplification attack, it can switch traffic within 30 seconds and minimize the impact on user perception.

5.

mode 4: hybrid cloud (local computer room + cloud cleaning)

- definition: the core business is still placed in its own computer room, and local traffic is directed to the cloud cleaning center through elastic links;
- advantages: retain local control and compliance, and provide elastic cleaning capabilities in the cloud;
- disadvantages: link and return-to-source delays need to be optimized, and the cost involves cross-cloud link fees;
- configuration example: local front-end cluster (4x8vcpu/32gb) + cloud cleaning node (2x16vcpu/64gb), bgp link billing based on peak value;
- real case: a financial institution suffered a syn flood attack with a peak peak of 420gbps. after diverting the traffic to the cloud for cleaning through bgp, the core system experienced no downtime and the effective bandwidth back to the source was maintained at 1gbps.

6.

mode 5: cloud native protection + waf/rate limiting/intelligent scheduling

- definition: multi-layer protection combined with the cloud vendor's waf, rate limiting, abnormal traffic identification and automatic scaling;
- advantages: fine-grained rules, strong application layer protection, and can be linked with ci/cd to automatically issue rules;
- disadvantages: continuous debugging of rules is required to avoid false blocks, and compound attacks require multi-layer coordination;
- configuration example: the front end uses waf policy to intercept owasp top10, and cooperates with the api gateway flow limit (such as 10qps per user per second);
- practical data: after deploying waf, the proportion of malicious requests for a certain api service dropped from 15% before the attack to <0.5%, and the misjudgment rate was controlled within 0.2%.

7.

comprehensive suggestions and implementation steps

- the first step: sort out assets and review historical attacks to determine peak traffic and business priorities;
- step 2: choose an appropriate hybrid strategy (such as front-end cdn + back-to-origin high-defense or active-active + waf);
- step 3: conduct disaster recovery drills and rule acceptance, and verify gslb, bgp traffic diversion and return-to-origin links;
- step 4: monitoring and alarm system, establish traffic baseline and abnormal thresholds (such as connection per minute threshold);
- step 5: on-demand capacity expansion and cost evaluation, combined with bandwidth peak, cleaning peak and sla to determine procurement specifications.