CODEWITHSUNDEEP
amazon-web-servicesamazon-ec2
Nice Guy IT
Nice Guy IT

Reputation: 117

AWS NAT gateway vs public IP for outgoing internet connections

I'm learning AWS and how to configure networking for EC2 instances and have a few questions. I'm using CentOS 7 in t2.micro instances.

  1. The private IP is tied to the NIC in the instance as shown by ifconfig -a. The purpose seems to be a single point of contact for the server. Adding another network interface does NOT add another NIC as shown by ifconfig -a. Since the primary network interface cannot be a static IP, a secondary network interface is necessary for most configurations. For example, to connect the application to the database server, use the static IP assigned to the second network interface. Am I understanding this correctly?

  2. The public IP is shown in the AWS console and provides a means to connect to the instance via SSH, assuming you configure the SG. The public IP also provides a means to access the internet for system updates. This seems to contradict the AWS documentation for NAT. If the public IP already provides internet access, why is a NAT (instance or gateway) needed? This is in reference to system updates which the documentation references.

You can use a NAT device to enable instances in a private subnet to connect to the Internet (for example, for software updates) or other AWS services, but prevent the Internet from initiating connections with the instances. A NAT device forwards traffic from the instances in the private subnet to the Internet or other AWS services, and then sends the response back to the instances.

  1. Is a public IP and private IP are always assigned to each instance? I haven't walked through the process of creating an [new] AMI to verify if there's an option to not have a public IP. If the instance doesn't have a public IP, will the AWS console Connect button still allow you to connect to it to administer the server? Under what scenario will an instance NOT have a public IP? How do you connect to that instance to administer it?

I have read the NAT Gateway documentation and understand much of it. I'm having trouble understanding the pieces that state a NAT gateway or internet gateway is necessary to enable internet access, when it seems this is enabled by default. What am I missing?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 6322

Answers (1)

Mark B
Mark B

Reputation: 201138

I think your confusion stems from your third question. A public IP is not always assigned to an instance. Public IP is an option that you can enable or disable in public VPC subnets, and in private VPC subnets public IP isn't an option at all. For EC2 instances without a public IP a NAT gateway (or NAT instance) is required in order to access anything outside of the VPC.

You may want to place something like a database server in a private subnet so that nothing outside your VPC can ever access it. However you might want the database server to be able to access the Internet to download patches or something, or you may want it to access the AWS API in order to copy backups to S3 or something, in which case you would need a NAT Gateway to provide the server access to resources outside your VPC.

Upvotes: 10

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