Technical Works : AWS Quick Labs - Introduction to Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Introduction to Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

VPC provides an isolated network section of AWS resources in a virtual network. Where we can have complete control of the network, address, subnets, and route tables. Here we are going to describe how to configure a VPC.

Creating an Amazone VPC

1) Go to VPC dashboard from the AWS services, click on Start VPC Wizard button.

2) Select simple public subnet option.

3) Give a VPC name for your VPC and leave the default IP CIDR which will use to assign to the local instances (We can even change the IP address range). Then leave the other default settings and click create VPC button.

4) Click ok to close the status.

5) You can see the created VPC in 'your VPCs' tab

6) Select the created VPC to see the details, here we can find the DNS status as enabled.

7) To see the internet gateway status, go to 'Internet gateways' tab on the left pan. Here we can find that there is one internet gateway for the new VPC and a default gateway.

8) To see the routing table settings go to 'Route Tables' tab, there is a default routing table and a custom routing table. The new VPC which we have created is associated with the custom routing table. Select the routing table with 'No' status in the main column, to see the details.

The first table is for the instance to communicate inside the network and the second one with the 0.0.0.0/0 address means it is for communicating with the outside of the network.

Setting Up Security Group

The security group is the firewall in the VPC. You can create groups and add inbound and outbound rules for the group, which can be associated with the instance later.

1) Go to the Security Group tag in the left pan in VPC, then click 'Create Security Group' button.

2) Give a name and description then select the created VPC then click Create button.

3) You can now see the created security group. When you create a security group all the ports will be blocked by default, we have to allow certain ports which have to be used in the VPC. For that, we have to go to the inbound rules and click another inbound rule and add HTTP, instanceHTTPS, SSH, RDP and give the source as 0.0.0.0/0 as shown below.Then click save button.

4) Go to Outbound rules button and remove the rule so that all the outbound ports will be open on the network.

Launching an EC2 Instance

The workstations (computers) are called the Instance in the AWS, here we are creating a Linux instance.

1) Go to services then go to EC2 then click Instance button.

2) Select Amazone Linux AMI from the list.

3) In the configure Instance screen select the previously created VPC

4) leave the default storage and click next

5) Give a name for the instance in the value column.

6) Select the security group which we have created from the list and click next.

7) Click launch button

8) Select the existing key pair, this key will be used to connect to the instance. Then click launch instance to finish.

9) You can view the instance inform the Instance tab on the left pan, also you can see the status of the instance.

Attaching an Internet Gateway to VPC

1) Navigate to Elastic IPs on the let pan, and click on 'Allocate New Address'

2) Select Elastic IP address from the list and from and from the action button select Associate Address.

3) Select the instance ID and select a private IP address to associated with the Elastic IP, then click Associate.

4) Now we have given a local IP for the Instance and it got associated with a public IP address, now the instance will be able to connect to the internet.