Are the healthchecks that the target group performs routed from outside the VPC (aka from internet) or are generated and routed internally. I am asking this because I don't know if I should open the port for healthchecks from security group at internet level (0.0.0.0) or VPC level (10.0.0.0/16)
Thanks
Health checks from the target group are always routed internally, inside the VPC. However, instead of allowing requests from (10.0.0.0/16) you should actually allow requests from the security group ID that is assigned to the load balancer.
Target groups are part of Load balancer and behind Load balancer you application layer resides either in form of Ec2 or ECS containers or any other application tier component.
Since public/internet user will be interacting with load balancer hence load balancer will SG will be open which mean allows traffic from anywhere.
And to Application tier i.e ec2 or ecs container the traffic is routed from load balancer only which means only traffic from load balancer should be allowed and to do you need to allow traffic from Sg of load balancer.
Related
I'll start with describing the architecture of Application Load Balancer:
We have the Application Load Balancer, which contains a list of one or more listeners. Each listener is associated with one specific port and protocol, so that traffic incoming to the load balancer with this port will be handled by this listener. Then, each listener holds a list of rules. A rule specify conditions and actions - basically where to route traffic to. A listener also must have a default action which will be taken if no other condition is met. Usually, this action will be to route traffic to a specific target group.
A target group is a group of either EC2 instances, IP addresses, other Application Load Balancer, or Lambda function.
Furthermore, when you create an Application Load Balancer, it asks you to specify a VPC and list of 2 or more Availability zones, and for each to specify a subnet.
My question now is: Why does AWS asks you to specify this? As far as I understand, the target groups and the registered targets are where you specify the backend of the load balancer, so why do we need to specify the subnets in the ALB configuration?
EDIT
After experimenting, I found that, if I have a EC2 instance running a web server in AZ 3 for example, and now I create a load balancer and selects AZs 1 and 2, then traffic will not reach the web server on AZ 3 until I add another AZ in the load balancer settings.
So if to accurate my question: If this setting of AZs in the load balancer settings means: these are the AZs in which the Load Balancer will send traffic to, in what scenario should I not choose ALL the availability zones there are?
An Application Load Balancer runs on Amazon EC2 infrastructure. Think of it as an Amazon EC2 instance with pre-loaded software, but you don't actually see the EC2 instance in your own account.
Instead, you will see the Network Interfaces where the Load Balancer connects into the network.
Traffic will come into your network through an Internet Gateway then route within the VPC to the Load Balancer. The Load Balancer will then determine a target to receive the traffic, and will send the request via the Network Interface to the resource in the VPC.
When such traffic flows through the VPC, it is subject to normal Security Groups and Network Access Control Lists (NACLs). Private IP addresses will be assigned for each Network Interface used by the Load Balancer.
The Load Balancer instance runs in multiple AZs. If one AZ has a failure, then the Load Balancer instance in the remaining AZ(s) will continue to run. This is why the Load Balancer wants a connection to the VPC in multiple subnets.
Bottom line: While you might normally think of the Load Balancer as a "blackbox service", it is still just some software running on a virtualized computer that needs logical connectivity to the VPC, and it obeys all the rules of networking within the VPC.
why do we need to specify the subnets in the ALB configuration?
Because the load balancer itself requires physical network interfaces, which are created in the subnets you specify (one network interface per subnet).
When you need ALB you must assign an IP address to it. A subnet is nothing more than a range of IP addresses. By placing an ALB inside a subnet, you define which range of IP you desire to be assigned to this resource. Moreover, These subnets allow you to configure different security layers regards the resource inside the subnet for traffic management.
Your target group is located in another subnet with a different range, whereas you can place your ALB in another subnet with a different range.
I set my load balancer to allow traffic on port 80 to the security group of my EC2 instance, but the load balancer refuses to connect. To do a sanity check, when I allow HTTP traffic from my IP to the load balancer, I'm able to connect seamlessly. I can only access the load balancer from my EC2 instance when I allow all traffic to port 80 on my load balancer. I keep checking back and forth to make sure the security group that the EC2 instance is in is the same as the one that the load balancer should allow, so I know it's not that. What else could be blocking the traffic?
Context: I used a load balancer because I wanted a static address for my EC2 instances to access and I don't want the IP to be dynamic. Basically, behind the load balancer is one coordinator instance that I want to manage jobs for the auto scaling EC2 instances. The load balancer can be internal for the purposes I need it for.
Network traffic between an EC2 instance and a public facing load balancer will go out to the Internet and back, it won't stay within the VPC. Once the request leaves the VPC it loses its association with the source security group, which is why your security group rule isn't working. If the EC2 instance has an Elastic IP address assigned to it, you could try adding that to the load balancer's security group instead.
There is probably a better way to do what you are trying to do without having your EC2 instance access a public load balancer. Perhaps the load balancer could be converted to an internal load balancer? Or maybe there is a better way for this EC2 server to communicate with the resources behind the load balancer directly somehow. You would need to post more information about your system and your desired goal for help with that.
Hi I am new to AWS and trying to understanding the difference between a load balance, target, target group and security group . I have 2 instances running. Now i want to balance the load coming to these servers. Will load balance be created on a new instance ? what are listeners and how are they different from load balancers?
Yes, the load balancer is an EC2 instance to provide the networking and compute services needed for load balancing. This also means that there is a per hour charge for the load balancer EC2 instance.
A Target Group is used to route requests to one or more registered targets (your backed EC2 instances).
A listener is a process that "TCP Listens" for requests from clients. Common listeners are for receiving requests on port 80 (HTTP) and port 443 (HTTPS). The listeners then forward requests to your Target Group.
A Security Group is a firewall that allows or denies network traffic. A security group sits in front (our around) your load balancer protecting it from traffic that you do not allow (want).
There is a lot of information on the Internet. Here is a link to help you get started.
What Is an Application Load Balancer?
I created an internal network load balancer (NLB) to connect to EC2 instances on a private subnet. I want to restrict access to the EC2 instances only from the network load balancer. I used these instructions https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/network/target-group-register-targets.html#target-security-groups but it did not work.
Basically, I added the IP address of the network interface of the NLB to the security group with my specific port (eg: 8080 10.4.2.9/32) allowed but that did not work. When i switched to all allow (eg: 8080 0.0.0.0/32) it worked, but i do not want other instances to have access to the ec2 instance.
Any ideas on why this is not working?
Thanks
For what you are trying to accomplish, NLB is the wrong load balancer.
NLB is a layer 4 load balancer. This means that the IP address that you see (at the EC2 instance) is the IP address of the client and not the IP address of the load balancer. With NLB you must allow the client's IP address in your security group.
You want a layer 7 load balancer to implement what you want to do (block other systems in your VPC from accessing your EC2 instances directly). This means ALB or the classic ELB.
If you're using a Network Load Balancer, update the security groups
for your target instances, because Network Load Balancers do not
have associated security groups.
If your target type is an IP, add a rule to your security group to
allow traffic from your load balancer to the target IP.
If your target type is an instance, add a rule to your security group to
allow traffic from your load balancer and clients to the target IP.
You can allow traffic in the EC2 instance security group. As your
instance is in private subnet for that you need to lunch load
balancer in the same region but in public subnet.
Know about your use case first.
Best use cases for Network Load Balancer:
When you need to seamlessly support spiky or high-volume inbound TCP
requests.
When you need to support a static or elastic IP address.
If you are using container services and/or want to support more than one
port on an EC2 instance. NLB is especially well suited to ECS (The
Amazon EC2 Container Service).
security-group-load-balancer
new-network-load-balancer-effortless-scaling-to-millions-of-requests-per-second
what-is-a-network-load-balancer
So I set up a proxy server in AWS EC2 (let's say EC2 A) under Elastic Load Balancer with AWS AutoScaling groups... So I have 5 of EC2 : A under this elastic load balancer that has one DNS server endpoint for this proxies.
Through this proxy DNS (e.g. http://myelb.elb.aws.com), I want to send HTTP request from EC2 B.
Then where should I set up the security group?
And what kind of security rules for this program flow?
I tried to add EC2 A to the Elastic Load Balancer but it keeps being OutofService, never got to InService mode.
OutofService indicates that your Elastic Load Balancer is either not ready, or the instances are failing their Health Check. If you point to the little "i" information icon, it will explain why an instance is not InService.
Within your Elastic Load Balancer, take a look at the Health Check tab and confirm that it is configured correctly. It will either be checking a URL (eg /index.htm) or checking a port (eg port 80). If your "A" servers are listening on port 80, the quickest way to pass the health check is to set it to TCP and set the Healthy Threshold to 2 attempts.
Your Security Groups should have these settings:
A Security Group on your Elastic Load Balancer (eg ELB-SG) that allows incoming traffic either from the whole Internet (0.0.0.0/0) or at least from your "EC2 B" instance (specifically, it should allow traffic where the source is the name of a security group associated with your B instance).
A Security Group on your "EC2 A" instances that allows incoming traffic from the security group on your Load Balancer (ELB-SG).
If you are worried that your Security Groups are incorrectly configured, start troubleshooting by opening up access to the entire Internet (0.0.0.0/0) and, once you have confirmed connectivity, progressively reduce access to the above settings.