Networking and Content Delivery Notes

 

NAT Instances vs NAT Gateway

 

·       A NAT instance is an EC2 Instance – they are in the community AMIs and are on their way out.

·       A NAT instance will get a public IP. 

·       You must disable the source/destination checks in a NAT instance - *IMPORTANT

·       To allow hosts in the subnet to go to the internet, you would add a route through the NAT instance.

 

Therefore, for NAT Instances:

·       Disable the source/destination check

·       NAT instances must be in a public subnet

·       There must be a route out of the private subnet to the NAT instance in order for this to work.

 

Exam Tips:

·       The amount of traffic that NAT instances can support depends on the instance size.  If you are bottlenecking increase the instance size!!!!!! (I remember this on the quiz).

·       You can create HA using autoscaling groups, multiple subnets in different AZs, and a script to automate failover.

 

NAT Gateways

 

·       They are behind a subnet or security group.

·       They are redundance inside the AZ

·       They are preferred by the enterprise

·       They start at 5Gbps and scale to 45 Gbps.

·       No need to patch them like a NAT instance.

·       They are not associate with a security group.

·       Update the route table for your NAT Gateway.  

·       Have a NAT Gateway in each availability zone.

 

Network ACLs

 

·       By default, a new network ACL denies everything.

·       You have to create both inbound and outbound rules.

·       Ephermeral ports – automatically assigned to connect (temporary) are usually assigned by the server. However add to the ACL.   Ex.  TCP 6,  Port Range 10-24-65535 Dest. 0.0.0.0/0 Action – Allow

·       Rules are evaluated from the top in chronological order – place a deny before and allow. 

·       Network ACLs can have multiple subnets

·       Changes happen immediately

·       Network ACLS act BEFORE a security group!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Exam Tips:

·       Your VPC automatically comes with a default network ACL, and by default it allows all outbound and inbound traffic.

 

·       You can create custom network ACL that denies all inbound and outbound traffic until you add rules.

 

·       Each subnet in your VPC must be associated with a network ACL.   If you don’t explicitly associate a subnet with a network ACL, the subnet is automatically associated with the default network ACL.

 

·       You can block IP addresses using network ACLS, but not with security groups.

 

·       You can associate a network ACL with multiple subnets; however, a subnet can bet associate with only one network ACL at a time.  When you associate a network ACL with a subnet, the previous association is removed.

 

·       You can associate a network ACL with multiple subnets, but a subnet can bet associated with only one.

 

·       Network ACLs contain a numbered list of rules that is evaluated in order starting with the lowest numbered rule.

 

·       Network ACLs have separate inbound and outbound rules, and each rule can either allow or deny traffic.

 

·       Network ACLS are STATELESS!!!!!!!! – responses to allowed inbound traffic are subject to the rules for outbound traffic (and vice versa).

 

Custom VPCs and ELBs

 

·       2 public subnets are required to create a load balancer.

 

VPC Flow logs:

 

·       VPC flow logs log at the:

·       Interface

·       Subnet

·       VPC

 

·       Flow logs are sent to cloudwatch and stored in S3 buckets.

·       You must create a log group (destination log group)

·       Create or select an IAM role when creating flow logs

 

Exam Tips:

·       You can’t enable flow logs that are peered with your VPC unless the peer VPC is in your account.

·       You can tag flow logs

·       You can’t change the configure of a flow log.

·       Not all IP traffic is monitored.

·       Traffic generated by instances when they contact the Amazon DNS server is not logged.

·       If you use your own DNS server, then all traffic to that DNS Server is logged.

·       Windows license activations are not logged.

·       DHCP is not logged.

·       169.254.169.254 for instance metadata is not logged.

·       Traffic to the reserved IP address for the default VPC router is not logged.

 

Bastion Hosts

 

·       Bastion Hosts used to securely administer EC2 instances (using SSH or RDP).  Bastions are also called “jump boxes” in some places.

·       A NAT gateway or NAT instance is used to provide internet traffic to EC2 instances in private subnets.

·       You cannot use a NAT gateway as a bastion host.

 

Direct Connect

 

·       Direct Connect is a dedicated network line from premises to AWS

·       It directly connects your data center to AWS

·       Useful for high throughput workloads (LOTS OF NETWORK TRAFFI)

·       It is a stable, reliable, and secure connection.

 

Exam Tips:

1.       Direct Connect – Console – create a virtual interface (public virtual interface).

2.       Go to the VPC Console ---à VPN Connection

a.       Create a Customer Gateway

b.       Create a Virtual Private Gateway

c.       Attach Virtual Private Gateway to a VPC

3.       Go to VPN Connections

a.       Create a VPN Connection

b.       Select the Virtual Private Gateway and the Customer Gateway

c.       Once the VPN is available, setup the VPN on premise.

 

AWS Global Accelerator

 

·       AWS Global Accelerator is a service that creates accelerators to improve availability and performance of your applications for local and global users.

·       It uses a static IP address – you can bring your own IP also.

·       Global Accelerator components:

·       Static IPs (2)

·       Accelerator – includes listeners.  Listeners process inbound connections from clients for port and protocol (tcp and udp)

·       A listener has a DNS address.

·       The static Ips are associated with an Availability Zone or Network Zone. (???)

·       Endpoint groups are associated with a region.

·       Endpoints can be:

·       Load balances

·       EC2

·       Elastic Load Balancers

·       Elastic Ips

 

Exam TIPS:

 

·       AWS Global Accelerator is a service in which you create accelerators to improve the availability and performance of your applications for local and global users.

·       You are assigned 2 IP addresses or you can bring your own.

·       You can control traffic using traffic (dials????).  This is done in the endpoint group.

 

VPC endpoints

 

·       VPC endpoints are a way of connecting your VPC to supported AWS services without leaving the AWS network.  No public IP addresses are required to communicate with resources in this service.

·       2 Types:

·       Interface – ENI with private IP

·       Gateway to:

·       S3

·       DynamoDB

·       EC2

·       When you use the VPC gateway, you may need to add the region to your statements (ie; aws s3 ls –region <values>)

 

AWS Private Link

 

·       AWS private link shares applications across VPCs to open an application to other VPCS.  You can either:

a.       Open the VPC up to the Internet

·       Security Considerations

·       Everything in the public subnet is public.

·       There is more to manage.

b.       You can use VPC peering.  You have to manage many different peering connections.

c.       Operate your services in a VPC to another VPC using private link. This is the best option to expose a service VPC to lots of customer VPCs (10s, 100s, or 1000s).

a.       It does not require VPC Peering, route tables, NAT, Internet Gateways, etc

d.       It requires a network load balancer on the service VPC and an ENI on the customer VPC

 

Private Link Exam Tips:

 

·       If you see a question about peering VPCs to 10s, 100s, or 1000s of VPCs think of AWS private link.

·       It doesn’t require VPC peering – no route tables, NAT, Internet Gateways, etc

·       Requires a Network Load Balancer on the service VPC and an ENI on the customer VPC. 

 

AWS Transit Gateways

 

·       A way of simplifying your network architecture – everything can connect to the transit gateway

·       Hub and Spoke Architecture

·       Transitive Peering between 1000s of VPCs and on-premise data centers

·       Works n a regional basis but you can have it across multiple regions

·       You can share it across multiple AWS accounts using RAM resource access manager. (?)

·       You can use route tables to limit how VPCs talk to one another

·       Works with Direct Connect as well as VPN Connections

·       Supports IP multicast (not supported by another AWS service)

·       If there are any questions about simplifying your network topology, thing transit gateway.

 

VPN Cloudhub

 

·       If you have multiple sites, each with it’s own VPN connection, you can use AWS VPN Cloud Hub to connect those sites together.

·       Hub and Spoke Model

·       Low Cost

·       Operates over the public internet but traffic is encrypted.

 

AWS Network Costs

 

·       Requests going in are free

·       AZ to AZ (private) - .01/Gbps

·       AZ to AZ (Internet) – large costs

·       Region to Region – costs even more

·       To save money:

·       Use Private IP addresses over public IP addresses to save on costs. This then utilizes the AWS backbone network.

·       To cut costs:

·       Same AZ grouping using private IP – cheaper but this is a single point of failure.

 

VPC Summary

 

·       Learn to build a VPC by memory

·       Think of a VPC as a virtual datacenter in AWS

·       A VPC consists of:

·       Internet Gateways (IGW)

·       Route tables

·       Network ACLs

·       Subnets

·       Security Groups

·       1 subnet = 1 AZ.

·       Security groups are stateful

·       Network ACLs are stateless

·       No transitive peering

·       When you create a VPC, it is created with a default route table, Network ACLS, and security group.

·       No subnets are created when you create a vpc

·       Zone names in each account maybe different although they have the same name – they are randomized.

·       Amazon reserves 5 Ips within your subnets (REMEMBER THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

·       You can only have one (1) internet gateway per VPC

·       Security groups cannot span VPCs

 

NAT Gateways:

 

·       When creating a NAT instance, disable source/destination check on the instance.

·       NAT instances go in a public subnet

·       There must be a route out of the private subnet to the NAT instance, in order for this to work.

·       The amount of traffic that NAT instances can support depends on the instance size.  If you are bottlenecking, increate the instance size. 

·       You can create HA using autoscaling groups, multiple subnets, in different AZs, and a script to automate failover. 

·       They are behind a security group.

·       A NAT GW is not behind a security group.

·       It supports 5-45 Gbps

·       Automatically has a public IP.