You are here: Understanding the Double-Take Cloud solution > Virtual private network (VPN)

Need help? Contact Double-Take Software technical support

Virtual private network (VPN)

Amazon EC2 supports either SSL/TLS or L2TP/IPSec, both of which offer secure encrypted communication. EC2 does not support the Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) protocol; as such, PPTP cannot be used.

Encryption

It is strongly recommended that encrypted communication be used when communicating to the cloud. OpenVPN is pre-installed on the Double-Take AMI and may be used; however, any supported encryption method is permitted.

OpenVPN supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption, which is now known as Transport Layer Security (TLS). SSL/TLS is traditionally considered a higher-level inter-application encryption mechanism. A common example is a web browser authenticating a web server over HTTPS using certificate authority features of SSL/TLS.

When implemented within VPN software, SSL/TLS can provide a true encrypted tunnel that allows any application to communicate securely over the Internet and is easy to manage.