Prerequisites

Check my previous guide on creating Amazon VPC resources

Key Pair

Create a new key pair for connecting to EC2 instances

• Name: dev-kp

• Key pair type: RSA

• Private key file format: .pem

Security Groups

Public EC2

Create a security group for Public EC2 instance allowing SSH connection from anywhere

You may need to restrict SSH connection only from your corporate VPN

• Security group name: dev-pub-vm

• Description: dev-pub-vm

• Inbound rules: SSH from anywhere
  - 0.0.0.0/0

Private EC2

Create a security group for Private EC2 instance allowing SSH connection from only Public subnets

• Security group name: dev-pvt-vm

• Description: dev-pvt-vm

• Inbound rules: SSH from public subnets
  - 10.0.0.0/19
  - 10.0.32.0/19

EC2 Instances

Public EC2

Create a new instance by clicking the Launch an instance button

• Name: dev-pub-vm

• AMI: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Select instance type and Key pair for our instance

• Instance type: t2.medium

• Key pair: dev-kp

Configure Network settings for our instance

• VPC: dev-vpc

• Subnet: dev-pub-1

• Firewall (security groups): dev-pub-vm

For configuring storage, proceed with the default values

Once everything is ready, click on Launch instance button and our instance will be created

Verify the instance is up and running

Copy the public IP of the instance and connect to it using SSH

$ chmod 400 dev-kp.pem

$ ssh -i dev-kp.pem ubuntu@3.235.42.161

ubuntu@ip-10-0-7-213:~$ ping -c 1 google.com
PING google.com (142.251.16.138) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from bl-in-f138.1e100.net (142.251.16.138): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=1.99 ms

--- google.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.994/1.994/1.994/0.000 ms

Private EC2

Create a new instance by clicking the Launch an instance button

• Name: dev-pvt-vm

• AMI: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Select Instance type and Key pair for our instance

• Instance type: t2.medium

• Key pair: dev-kp

Configure Network settings for our instance

• VPC: dev-vpc

• Subnet: dev-pvt-1

• Firewall (security groups): dev-pvt-vm

For configuring storage, proceed with the default values

Once everything is ready, click on Launch instance button and our instance will be created

Verify the instance is up and running

Copy the PEM file to dev-pub-vm via scp

$ scp -i dev-kp.pem dev-kp.pem ubuntu@3.235.42.161:/home/ubuntu dev-kp.pem

Login to public instance

$ ssh -i dev-kp.pem ubuntu@3.235.42.161

ubuntu@ip-10-0-7-213:~$ ls
dev-kp.pem

Connect to private instance via SSH

ubuntu@ip-10-0-7-213:~$ ssh -i dev-kp.pem ubuntu@10.0.86.45

ubuntu@ip-10-0-86-45:~$ ping -c 1 google.com
PING google.com (172.253.62.101) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from bc-in-f101.1e100.net (172.253.62.101): icmp_seq=1 ttl=103 time=2.45 ms

--- google.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.454/2.454/2.454/0.000 ms

That's all for now

Reference

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/concepts.html

Next Steps

Checkout my guide on configuring Pritunl VPN for accessing AWS private resources