I have an instance in a private subnet in VPC B. I want to direct all of its outbound traffic through a NAT instance that is in VPC A.
VPC A and B are associated with a Transit Gateway and the instances from each VPC can ping each other. The NAT instance is obviously in a public subnet, and I confirmed it works by routing an instance in a private subnet in the same VPC to the NAT Instance's ENI.
I tried adding the respective routes and its not working, the instance in private subnet in VPC B cannot reach internet. There is definitely some fundamental step I am missing, either in the routing or simply the whole concept.
Would really appreciate the assistance or general direction I should check.
High level diagram of env
I sorted it out, it wasn't an issue with routing. I simply didn't set up my NAT instance properly. Once I fixed that it worked (Made sure I had proper NAT rules).
I actually went with a more complex method and created a Customer Gateway and Site-to-Site VPN connection with the NAT Instance and attached that to my TGW.
Related
Using AWS services - I have used VPC and divided it into two subnets(private and public), then created two route tables(private and public), created one Internet gateway and attached to the public route table and one NAT Gateway connected to the private route table also both the route tables are mapped to their respective subnets but the problem is I need to deploy some code in the ec2 instance whose IP should not go without touching NAT Gateway.
I had many articles and also followed youtube but still I am very much confused like how to achieve this and whatever I did is right or wrong.
Also NAT gateway should be attached in private or public?
Also NAT gateway should be attached in private or public?
NAT should be deployed in public subnet. Then for your private subnet, you setup a route to the NAT.
Once this is done, you place your EC2 instance in the private subnet. This way, any internet traffic from the instance will be routed through the NAT.
I have a hub and spoke model for infrastructure with a management vpc and 4-5 different environment vpc, peered to the management vpc.
I already have it set up but currently I only have 1 nat instance and 1 bastion host. Both of which are in the management vpc public subnet.
I wish to connect an instance in an environment vpc in a private subnet to this NAT instance to be able to reach the internet. Is that possible?
Note: I have the NAT/Bastion working correctly in the management vpc. I can reach all servers in both vpc with the Bastion host. I just can't get the above working.
My question is... is it possible? or do I need to set up an NAT in every vpc?
Edge to edge routing through a gateway (including the VPC Internet Gateway or IGW) is an unsupported VPC configuration with VPC peering.
Example: Edge to Edge Routing Through an Internet Gateway
Let's say you have a VPC peering connection between VPC A and VPC B (pcx-abababab). VPC A has an internet gateway; VPC B does not. Edge to edge routing is not supported; you cannot use VPC A to extend the peering relationship to exist between VPC B and the internet. For example, traffic from the internet can’t directly access VPC B by using the internet gateway connection to VPC A.
Similarly, if VPC A has a NAT device that provides internet access to instances in private subnets in VPC A, instances in VPC B cannot use the NAT device to access the internet.
Transit Gateway seems to fit for the case.
Transit Gateway Example: Centralized Router
The following diagram shows the key components of the configuration for this scenario. In this scenario, there are three VPC attachments and one Site-to-Site VPN attachment to the transit gateway. Packets from the subnets in VPC, A, VPC B, and VPC C that have the internet as a destination, route first through the transit gateway and then route to the VPN.
Hope you are all doing good.
AWS allows us to attach a private subnet (created in a Customer VPC) with a route table having route to the internet via internet gateway. Does it make any difference to the instance launched in the private sub-net? or it is as good as having the private subnet not linked to the route table having route to the internet
Regards
AJ
A subnet is not private if it has routes to/from the internet. The instances launched in a private subnet cannot access the internet and cannot be reached from the internet.
For e.g if you have a database instance and you don't want anyone but the instances to access the instance, you can launch the instance in the private subnets.
Also if you want the instances in the private subnet to access internet, you need to setup a Nat Gateway (or a Nat Instance)
Hope this helps
First, we need to know what's the difference between a public subnet and a private subnet.
Public Subnet means this subnet has an Internet Gateway attached to it.
Private Subnet means this subnet has a NAT Gateway attached to it.
And the Internet Gateway can have both inbound and outbound but the NAT only can have outbound to the Internet.
And A NAT will be built in a public subnet but attach to a private subnet.
You can have lots of public/private subnets at the same time and attached NAT or IGW for them, but the IGW only can have one in each VPC.
In some use cases, we will not attach any kinds of NAT and IGW for a subnet. that's because it might be a database subnet and won't expect it to communicate with the Internet.
Normally, we will use a subnet with NAT attached for our application such as EC2 or ECS, Internal Load Balancers.
On the other hand, we will use a subnet with IGW attached for Internet-facing Load balancers, Nginx, Apache.
AWS VPC Design:
https://aws.amazon.com/tw/answers/networking/aws-single-vpc-design/
I think the hidden magic here is that the instance in the private subnet needs a public IP to communicate with outside, we never ever think this an issue in our lives. When our computer connect to the router, it get access to internet without any issue, why it works so smoothly? All because the router handles everything for us, including allocating a private IP for us, making recursively DNS query for us, and the most important, translating the private IP using the router's public IP so that our computer can communicate with the outside bidirectionally.
Let's go back to this AWS VPC scenario, you attached a route table with a default route to the Internet Gateway to your private subnet, which makes it looks like a public subnet. However, the instances still have no public IPs, and, not like our router, the Internet Gateway of AWS VPC doesn't do NAT works! So how can an instance with no public IP and no NAT access the internet? It's impossible.
I have a AWS Lambda function which:
checks a Redis Elasticache instance,
if the item is not found in the cache, goes to Google Places API service.
The Redis instance is in a private subnet; so, to fetch it, I added the VPC and the subnet in which the instance resides. I also specified the security group which allows all the outbound traffic. The Network ACL is the default one which is supposed to all the inbound and the outbound traffic.
When adding VPC to Lambda function like that via the console, it prompts:
When you enable VPC, your Lambda function will lose default internet access. If you require external internet access for your function, ensure that your security group allows outbound connections and that your VPC has a NAT gateway.
So, in the Route Table of the private subnet, I added a NAT gateway too. However, at the point where the Google Places API service call is made from the Lambda function it is always doomed to result in timeout.
In short, I doubt that the NAT gateway properly allows internet access of the Lambda function. How can I check what goes wrong with it?
Do NAT Gateways log the calls or the call attempts being tried through it somehow in CloudWatch etc.?
I want to elaborate on the answer from #vahdet. I was losing my mind trying to reconcile how the NAT Gateway was supposed to be in the public and private subnets simultaneously. It seemed like the official AWS documentation here was wrong, but of course it's not. There is a very subtle detail that myself and others have missed.
The NAT Gateway has to be "hot-wired" across two different subnets simultaneously in order to bridge private addresses to a public one that is internet facing.
First, I tried to put the NAT Gateway in the same route table as the IGW, but of course that doesn't work because you can't have two identical routes (0.0.0.0/0) with different targets.
The guide was saying to put the NAT Gateway in the route table for the Private Network, which I did, but that didn't seem to work.
The critical detail I was missing was that the NAT Gateway has to be created in a public subnet. The documentation actually says this, but it seems confusing because we are later told to put the route for NAT Gateway in the private table.
Both things are true. Create the NAT Gateway in the public subnet and then only add a route table entry in the private route table.
The documentation tells you to create the following network resources in the VPC:
two new subnets
two new route tables
one new NAT Gateway
I already had a route table and some subnets, so I tried to only add one new subnet and one new route table and this is where I got into trouble. It really was better to create two of each as documented.
Here's what it the subnets look like for me:
subnet-public 10.8.9.0/24 us-east-1a
subnet-private 10.8.8.0/24 us-east-1a
Then create the NAT Gateway in subnet-public.
It will be pending for a couple of minutes, which is important, because it must go to available status before it can be referenced in a route table entry.
Here are the route tables:
route-table-public
10.8.0.0/16 local
0.0.0.0/0 igw-xyz
subnet-association: subnet-public
route-table-private
10.8.0.0/16 local
0.0.0.0/0 nat-abc
subnet-association: subnet-private
Do you see what happened there? It's really subtle. The NAT Gateway is cross-wired. It "lives" in the public subnet it was created in, but all traffic in the private subnet gets routed to it.
If you create the NAT Gateway in the private subnet like I did at first, then the NAT Gateway is just as isolated as everything else in the private subnet, and has no way to route traffic out to the internet. It must be created in the public subnet to have internet access, because it must have an IP address inside the public subnet. My NAT Gateway got an internal IP of 10.8.9.127 and an external IP in the 54.X.X.X range.
By making the NAT Gateway the 0.0.0.0/0 route in the private routing table, we are telling all non-10.8.0.0/16 traffic to go straight to the NAT Gateway, even though it isn't actually inside the private subnet.
The VPC itself knows how to bridge traffic across its own subnets, and is able to send the 10.8.8.X traffic to the NAT Gateway's 10.8.9.X IP. It then acts as a bridge, and translates all of that traffic across it's internal IP to its external IP. Because it is in a public subnet that is in a route table with an internet gateway, the external IP has a clear path to the internet.
Now my private VPC lambda in subnet-private has verified internet access through the NAT Gateway.
The following steps are required
An IAM role with full VPC permission assigned to your lambda function.
VPC with public and private subnet
while creating a NAT Gateway
a)the subnet has to be public subnet
b)Elastic IP creat a new one or allocate one
Create the route table and add another route with target as our NAT gateway we created above.
And your lambda should be happy now
The problem for my case turned out to the fact that, I had created the NAT Gateway in the private subnet.
Make sure you place the NAT Gateways in the public subnet.
By the way, there are metrics but no direct logging records available in CloudWatch for NAT Gateway.
I am trying to setup a nice and secure VPC for my lambda and RDS work. Essentially, I want my lambda to hit a site, get some data, and shove it into a database.
In isolation the parts all work. However the second I go to harden everything it all falls apart. Here is what I do:
Disable "Publically Available" from the RDS instance
Change the RDS instance to only accept connections from inside the VPC using the security group
Associate the lambda with a VPC (this kills the internet access)
Following this tutorial I created a NAT gateway, deleted the internet gateway from the VPC subnet, and replaced it with the NAT. Now, as expected, nothing can talk inbound, but things can talk outbound.
At this point I knew I needed a bastion instance, so I fired up an EC2 instance.
The EC2 instance is set to the same subnet the RDS and Lambda are on, and unfortunately this means that I have a problem - the NAT gateway is currently soaking up all the traffic via 0.0.0.0/0, which means there's no room for the internet gateway. Without the internet gateway I (obviously) can't SSH into my bastion instance so I can jump to access my RDS database.
How can I configure this all correctly? My guess is that I need to split the subnet up somehow and make a private and public subnet, the public having the bastion and internet gateway in it. However, I'm not sure how this will all work so the bastion instance can still properly jump to the RDS.
I'm really quite new to setting up AWS services so I'm hoping I didn't mess anything up long the way.
Following this tutorial I created a NAT gateway, deleted the internet
gateway from the VPC subnet, and replaced it with the NAT. Now, as
expected, nothing can talk inbound, but things can talk outbound.
Short Answer
The short answer is you shouldn't have "Killed the Internet Gateway"; thats not a step in the link you provided :) Leave the internet gateway as is in your current subnet. You're going to need a public subnet and the one that was routing 0.0.0.0/0 to IGW is an example of one you can could use.
The work involved is placing your NAT gateway in the Public Subnet, placing your bastion host in the public subnet, placing your lambda function in the private subnet, routing traffic in the private subnet to the NAT gateway in the public subnet, and providing your lambda function with access to your security group by putting it in its own lambda security group and "white listing" the lambda security group in the inbound rules for the security group protecting your database.
Background
Below I have an expanded answer providing background as to public/private subnets, granting internet access to private subnets, and allowing lambda access through security groups. If you don't feel like reading the background then jump to very end where I give a bullet point summary of the steps you'll need.
Public Subnet
A public subnet is one in which traffic originating outside your VPC, or destined for a target outside your VPC (internet), is routed through an internet gateway (IGW). AWS gives you initial default public subnets configured this way; you can identify them in the console by looking at their route table and seeing that under "destination" you find "0.0.0.0/0" targeting an IGW. This means a public subnet is more of a design pattern for "internet accessible" subnet made possible by simply configuring its default route to point to an IGW. If you wish to create a new public subnet you can create a new route table as well that point internet traffic at an IGW and link that route table to your new subnet. This is fairly easy in the console.
Private Subnet
A private subnet is a subnet with no IGW and not directly reachable from the internet, meaning you cannot connect to a public IP address of a system on a private subnet. With the exception of the AWS pre-configured default subnets, this is how new subnets your manually create are setup, as black boxes till you specify otherwise.
Granting Internet Access to Private Subnet
When you want things in your private subnet to be able to reach out to external internet services you can do this by using an intermediary known as a NAT gateway. Configure a route table the same as in the public subnet with the only difference being traffic destined for 0.0.0.0/0(Internet) you target for a NAT gateway sitting inside the public subnet. That last part is critical. Your NAT gateway needs to be in the public subnet but your private subnet is using it as the target for external traffic.
Security Group Access for Lambda
One simple way to allow your lambda function through your security group/firewall is to create a security group just for your lambda function and configure the security group protecting your RDS so that it allows traffic from the lambda security group.
In other words, in security group settings you don't have to specify just IP addresses as sources, you can specify other security groups and this is a pretty neat way of grouping items without having to know their IP address. Your lambda functions can run in the "Lambda Security Group" and anything protected by a security group that you want them to access can be configured to accept traffic from the "Lambda Security Group". Just make sure you actually associate your lambda function with the lambda security group as well as place it in the private subnet.
Lambda VPC Steps in a Nutshetll
Create a new NAT gateway and place it in the public subnet. This
point is important, the NAT gateway goes in the public subnet ( a
subnet whose route table routes 0.0.0.0/0 to an IGW)
Create a new subnet, you can call it Private-Lambda-Subnet. Unlike
the
default pre-configured subnets AWS gives you, this new subnet is
immediately private out of the box.
Create a new route table and link it to your Private-Lambda-Subnet
In the new route table for your private subnet add an entry that
routes 0.0.0.0/0 to a target of the NAT gateway. This is how your
private subnet will indirectly access the internet, by forwarding
traffic to the NAT which will then forward it to the IGW.
Your bastion host and anything else you want to be be publicly
accessible will need to be in the public subnet. This is probably
where you already have your RDS instances, which is fine if they are
firewalled/security group protected.
Create a new security group for your lambda function(s). You can
call it LambdaSecurityGroup.
Configure the inbound rules of your RDS guarding security group to
allow traffic from the LambdaSecurityGroup. This is possible because
you can use other security groups as sources in the firewall
settings, not just ip addresses.
You need a public subnet (default route is the Internet Gateway) and a private subnet (default route is the NAT Gateway). The NAT Gateway, itself, goes on the public subnet, so that it can access the Internet on behalf of the other subnets for which it is providing services. The bastion also goes on the public subnet, but Lambda and RDS go on the private subnet.
Anything can talk to anything on any subnet within a VPC as long as security groups allow it (and Network ACLs, but don't change these unless you have a specific reason to -- if you aren't sure, then the default settings are sufficient).