Using Terraform to setup a VPC with two EC2s in private subnets. The setup needs to SSH to the EC2s to install package updates from the Internet and install the application software. To do this there is an IGW and a NAT-GW in a public subnet. Both EC2s can access the Internet at this point as both private subnets are routing to the NAT-GW. Terraform and SSH to the private subnets is done via Client VPN.
One of the EC2s is going to host a web service so a Classic mode Load Balancer is added and configured to target the web server EC2. Using Classic mode because I can't find a way to make Terraform build Application mode LBs. The Load Balancer requires the instance to be using a subnet that routes to the IGW, so it is changed from routing to the NAT-GW, to the IGW. At this point, the Load Balancer comes online with the EC2 responding and public Internet can access the web service using the DNS supplied End Point for the LB.
But now the web server EC2 can no longer access the Internet itself. I can't curl google.com or get package updates.
I would like to find a way to let the EC2 access the Internet from behind the LB and not use CloudFront at this time.
I would like to keep the EC2 in a private subnet because a public subnet causes the EC2 to have a public IP address, and I don't want that.
Looking for a way to make LB work without switching subnets, as that would make the EC web service unavailable when doing updates.
Not wanting any iptables or firewalld tricks. I would really like an AWS solution that is disto agnostic.
A few points/clarifications about the problems you're facing:
Instances on a public subnet do not need a NAT Gateway. They can initiate outbound requests to the internet via IGW. NGW is for allowing outbound IPv4 connections from instances in private subnets.
The load balancer itself needs to be on a public subnet. The instances that the LB will route to do not. They can be in the same subnet or different subnets, public or private, as long as traffic is allowed through security groups.
You can create instances without a public IP, on a public subnet. However, they won't be able to receive or send traffic to the internet.
Terraform supports ALBs. The resource is aws_lb with load_balancer_type set to "application" (this is the default option).
That said, the public-private configuration you want is entirely possible.
Your ALB and NAT Gateway need to be on the public subnet, and EC2 instances on the private subnet.
The private subnet's route table needs to have a route to the NGW, to facilitate outbound connections.
EC2 instances' security group needs to allow traffic from the ALB's security group.
It sounds like you got steps 1 and 2 working, so the connection from ALB to EC2 is what you have to work on. See the documentation page here as well - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/VPC_Scenario2.html
I have just started my career in the IT field and currently learning new technologies like AWS.
I have a small doubt and it will be really helpful for me if anyone can help me with it.
"Can we connect ec2 instance which is having only private IP with the other ec2 instance with a public IP"
In Putty, I have logged into an EC2 instance (With public IP) and tried to ssh into other EC2 instances (which is having only private IP) by mentioning its private IP Address, but I wasn't able to login to that.
Thank you in advance :)
You can do this (providing security groups and network configuration allows).
The first method (and more prefered) is through a private to private connection, just because an instance has a public IP does not mean it is inaccessible from private inbound connections. If they share the same VPC as long as your security groups/NACLs allow inbound from the private IP range you will be able to connect to the instance via its private IP.
If the instances share a different VPC (or even account) you can connect between using either transit gateway or a single peering connection, then whitelist the IP range of the source. A caveat is that these separate networks cannot be peered if they have a crossover in network address ranges (you would need to create a secondary range to deal with this).
The alternative is to use either a NAT Gateway or NAT instance and then bind this to the route table for your instance for the 0.0.0.0/0 route. You would then need to whitelist in the public instances security group the public EIP of the NAT. This is less preferable as it requires communication across the internet.
Our AWS instances are created in a public subnet availability zone and are not able to connect to the internet and SSH. So all the resources are created on the public subnet and one AZ.
I have developed CF nginx template with single VPC and two public subnets, butsecond public subnet instances are unable to connect network and SSH even though I'm giving public IP of the instance in the browser it is not working.
The main issue is instances which are launching in the second public subnet are unable to connect internet system logs are:
Contact the upstream for the repository and get them to fix the
problem
Reconfigure the base URL/etc.
Disable the repository, so yum won't use it by default
Looking at the scenario generally in order to enable access to or from the Internet for instances in a VPC subnet, you must do the following:
Attach an Internet gateway to your VPC.
Ensure that your subnet's route table points to the Internet gateway.
Ensure that instances in your subnet have a globally unique IP
address (public IPv4 address, Elastic IP address, or IPv6 address).
Ensure that your network access control and security group rules
allow the relevant traffic to flow to and from your instance.
To use an Internet gateway, your subnet's route table must contain a route that directs Internet-bound traffic to the Internet gateway. You can scope the route to all destinations not explicitly known to the route table (0.0.0.0/0 for IPv4 or ::/0 for IPv6).
Kindly Refer this AWS Documentation and see what you are missing , as you must have skipped one of the above mentioned things.
I'm putting the instances behind the aws loadbalancer, I have configured the routable and attached the IGW to it, created the loadbalancer and added this instance to the aws loadbalancer every things work well, the endpoint URL of the AWS loadbalancer able to load the HTTP pages
Now i have removed the IGW from the route table and tested it again, the AWS loadbalalncer endpoint URL not able to load the page, but the instace status shows in AWS loadbalancer as inService
Why the IGW is required when loadbalancer is configured over private subnet, it technically Mean it's a public subnet, which is blocking me to create a NAT inatance
A subnet without a default route pointing to the igw-xxxxxxxx Internet Gateway object is, by definition, a private subnet. If you remove the igw from a public subnet, you now have a private subnet.
Placing an Internet-facing load balancer (ELB) in such a private subnet is incorrect.
It sounds as though you are making a commonly-made -- but incorrect -- assumption that the ELB should be configured in the same subnets as the instances behind it. This is also incorrect.
Provision the ELB in public subnets, without regard to the subnets the instances behind it were placed in.
In summary:
Internet-facing ELB requires a public subnet for placement.
NAT instance requires a public subnet for placement.
The instances that use these services (NAT and ELB) belong in different -- private -- subnets, different subnets than the ELB and NAT instances.
ELB and NAT can be placed together in the same subnets, or separately, as long as the subnets are public (have the IGW as their default route) and are in the same availability zones.
I believe you cannot do anything without the IGW attached to the routing table where the subnet is attached to.
Another way to do this is to spin off a NAT instance(can be found in AWS marketplace) in the public subnet, add it to your private route table where your original instance is on (0.0.0.0/0 - instanceid) all the traffic will be routed through the NAT instance.
Here mainly we have to see two things, provided subnet for the elasticloadbalancer is public or private.
Every VPC should have one IGW to connect to the public, every trafic should go through the IGW only. If VPC connected to the IGW, IGW distribute internet to the all instance which are in that VPC, if route table changed to the particular rt, internet traffic can send to only that instance. Here in ELB instance is in service because both are in the same VPC and can communicate each other means checks the status. This IGW will work main role when we are using the NAT.
Always we provide ip range for the IGW or rt as 0.0.0.0/0, it represents as public.
The following link will explain more : http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_Scenario2.html
This small explanation might be helpful for someone.
Let me cover your two questions
the AWS loadbalalncer endpoint URL not able to load the page, but the instace status shows in AWS loadbalancer as inService
This is the default behaviour of load balancer , since internally load balancer and your instance may be in the same VPC so they are able to communicate that is why loadbalancer is showing inService status.
Second question Why the IGW is required when loadbalancer is configured over private subnet, it technically Mean it's a public subnet, which is blocking me to create a NAT inatance
You need IGW if you want to access any resources especially EC2 , Loadbalancer from internet. however if you put your load balancer in private subnet it means IGW is not associated with the subnet having loadbalancer in it and hence this load balancer is not accessible outside your VPC that is reason that you were not able to load your page.
NAT instance is usually used when you want your private subnet instances should be able to initiate request over internet and has nothing to do with normal load balancing setup unless and untill you want dont want to install any updates from internet to your instance.
You are trying to access webpage publicly and removing the route entry IGW from the loadbalncer subnet.
The Subnet without IGW will become Private, Hence you can't access it.
First, a subnet with route table that route traffic via the internet gateway (IGW) is a public subnet. An IGW is required because the subnets created in AWS VPC are internal IPs and as internal IPs are not routable via the internet, traffic to and fro EC2 instances that belongs to an internal IP needs a way to complete these request. This is where an IGW comes into play. The IGW allows your EC2 instance to make outbound request to the internet and allows other user/client to make inbound request to your ec2 instance.
A public subnet are group of IPs (called subnets) in your VPC that allows internet traffic to and fro your ec2 instance. A subnet without an Internet gateway is a private subnet. As you already guess no traffic is allowed in or out.
That said, instances in VPC which are in Private subnet still need to initiate an outbound request to the internet to download software or perform update. In this case you have to create and attach a NAT gateway or NAT instance to the private subnet. NAT Gateway and NAT instance only allow outbound traffic to the internet but not the the other way round. In some cases you might want your production EC2 to be in the private subnet and ELB in public subnet for security reason.
ELB usually belong to the public subnet so it reachable from the internet as is your case as well.
TO answer some of your question - when you deleted the IGW from the route table, your ELB automatically becomes a private subnet as such your web page stops loading.
Also, you could still see the ec2 instance behind the ELB as InService even when you deleted the IGW because the ELB and EC2 instance can communicate via the internal IP as they are in same network or VPC.
The ELB needs a route to the internet in order to send you the response over internet.. As simple as that.
Configure your ELB in public subnet, regardless of where your instances are present.
Basically there are two types of load balancers.
1)Internal
2) External
Internal load balancers are those which are launched in a private subnet which will be accessible only internally by the instances on same vpc of the internal elb
External load balancers are which are accessible over the internet which should be launched in a subnet which has internet gateway attached to it and which has route table configured properly to route the requests.
If you attach an internet gateway to a subnet it becomes a public subnet.Also if you create a load-balancer which you need to be accessible from internet it should be a External load balancer and aws will not allow it launch in a private subnet.The instances are showing in service because its communicating internally using private ip-address.
I realize the normal way to do this is use a Bastion Host or a VPN, but I (my boss) would like to know how to connect to a RDS instance in a private subnet via a public NAT instance.
I have a NAT instance with EIP, and wide open inbound rules
I have 2 private subnets with traffic defaulting via the NAT
The DB Security group is set to allow traffic from the NAT SG
I don't know what I'm missing - any tips appreciated.
You'll have to setup a bastion client on the public subnet and then login to that first. Then, once connected to the bastion client, you'll be able to access the RDS instance.
alternatively, you could setup a VPN (check out OpenVPN) in the public subnet, then once you've established a VPN connection, you'll be able to connect to the RDS instance using the private IP.
You can't initiate connection from the outside internet to a private subnet.