VPC

Virtual Private Cloud

AWS Architecture Overview

What is a VPC

• Logically, a VPC is your datacentre in the cloud
• Complete control over network i.e. ip addresses and subnets
• A VPC spans availability zones but not Regions
• VPCs can contain multiple subnets
• EC2 instances are launched inside a VPC
• They can be 'peered' with other VPCs to allow for communication without going over the internet. Transitive peering is not allowed
• ie. A -> B | B -> C | A !-> C

Internet Gateway

• Allows for communication between the VPC and the internet
• Used as a target by route tables
• The scope of traffic through an internet gateway can be configured to certain IP addresses or allow all

Subnet

• A subnet is a part of a larger network, in this case, a VPC
• Subnets cannot span availability zones
• If a subnet doesn't have a route to the VPCs internet gateway, then it is a private subnet. 
• If a subnets traffic is routed to an internet gateway, then its a public subnet
  • In order for instances in the public subnet to accept traffic, they must also be assigned an elastic IP address
• If a subnet has its traffic routed to a virtual private gateway, then it is a VPN only subnet

VPC and Subnet Sizing

• The size of a VPC cant be changed after its been created, it can contain between 16 to 65,536 IP addresses
• The CIDR block of a subnet can be the same as the VPC (for single subnet in the VPC) or smaller, for a subsection (for multiple subnets)

NAT

• If we have configured security for our private subnet correctly, we will have no outbound or inbound access to / from the internet
• This makes installing software / configuring packages impossible
• NAT allows us to safely access the internet from our instances in our private subnet
• NAT hides the source of traffic, making all outbound requests appear as if they're coming from the NAT itself

NAT Instance

• EC2 Instance managed by the user
• Must run in a public subnet
• Internet traffic from the private subnet is routed through this instance via routing tables
• Remember to disable source / destination check

NAT Gateway

• Service provided by AWS
• Internet traffic is routed through the gateway via routing tables
• No maintenance is required by the user, all managed my EC2

Access

Security Groups

• Applied at an Instance level
• Whitelist only (allow)
• Stateful (return traffic automatically allowed)
• All rules are evaluated
• Applies to an instance in a security group if that security group is applied

Network ACLs

• Operates at a subnet level
• Black & White list (Allow & deny rules)
• Stateful (return traffic must be explicitly allowed)
• Automatically applied to all instances in a subnet

Elastic Load Balancers

• Application load balancer
  • Layer 7 load balancer
  • Makes decisions at the application layer (http[s])
  • Supports path based routing
  • Can route to different ports on the same EC2 instance
• Classic load balancer
  • Layer 4 load balancer
  • Makes decisions at the TCP / SSL layer

Bastion Server

• A hardened server allowing SSH or RDP connections from the outside world
• Used as a jumpbox to access private resources. Our private resources can be configured to allow access from only our bastion server
• Typically very secure in terms of who it will allow incoming connections from

Questions?