VPCs Flashcards
From a resilience perspective, what is the difference between a NAT instance and a NAT gateway?
A NAT instance are individual EC2 instances, NAT Gateways are highly available and spread over multiple AZs
What do NAT instances and NAT gateways allow?
NAT instances and NAT gateways allow your private subnets to access the internet.
What is a VPC?
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a logically isolated section of AWS where you can launch resources in your own virtual network.
What is a Bastion or jump box used for?
A Bastion is an instance in a public subnet that allows you to ssh to an instance in your private subnet.
What is VPC peering?
VPC peering is the connection of one VPC to another via a direct network route.
VPC peering means that instances behave as if they were on the same private network
Can VPC peering occur between regions?
Yes you can peer VPCs between regions
Can subnets in a VPC span availability zones?
No subnets cannot span availability zones.
1 subnet = 1 availability zone
How do you enable an instance in your private subnet to access the internet using a NAT Gateway?
You use a route table update to link your private subnet to the NAT Gateway which has access out to the internet
By default, does a new NACL deny or allow all traffic?
By default a new NACL denies all traffic
Are NAT Gateways or Instances resilient?
NAT Gateways are resilient.
NAT Instances are single EC2 instances with specially configured routing tables. They can also become overwhelmed if they are dealing with the traffic for thousands of other EC2 instances
On what does the amount of traffic that a NAT instance can support depend?
The size of the instance determines the amount of traffic that a NAT instance can support
Where is a NAT instance in relation to a security group?
A NAT instance will be behind a security group
Do you need to patch NAT instances and NAT gateways?
You need to patch NAT instances but not NAT gateways
Are NAT gateways redundant?
NAT gateways are redundant inside an AZ.
However if you have instances in multiple AZs and they share one NAT instance in a single AZ, then an outage in that AZ will mean no internet connectivity. You should use a NAT gateway in each AZ.
When creating a new VPC does the default network ACL allow or deny all outbound and inbound traffic?
A default NACL automatically allows all outbound and inbound traffic.
Do custom NACLS by default allow or deny all inbound and outbound traffic?
By default, all custom NACLS deny all inbound and outbound traffic
What is the flow of traffic when using Global Accelerator?
Traffic from the user client > Edge Location > Global Accelerator > Endpoint Group > Endpoint
Do you have to associate a subnet with a NACL?
Yes all subnets need to be associated with a NACL. If you don’t assign a NACL, then the default NACL gets associated.
Do you block IP addresses with NACLs or Security Groups?
You block IP addresses with NACLs and not Security Groups
What is the link between NACLs and Subnets?
You can associate a NACL with multiple subnets, but each subnet can only be associated with one NACL at any time.
Do NACLs or Security Groups have a numbered list of rules that is evaluated in number order?
NACLs have a numbered list of rules that is evaluated in number order
What are VPC Flow Logs?
VPC Flow Logs is a feature that enables you to capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network instances in your VPC.
How is VPC Flow Log data stored?
VPC Flow Log data is stored using CloudWatch.
At what levels can VPC Flow Logs be created?
VPC Flow Logs can be created at VPC, Subnet and Network Interface levels.
Can you enable VPC Flow Logs for peered VPCs?
You can only enable VPC Flow Logs for peered VPCs if they are in your account.
Can you change the configuration of a VPC Flow Log once created?
No you cannot changed the configuration of a VPC Flow Log once created.
What IP traffic is not monitored by VPC Flow logs?
Traffic not monitored by VPC Flow Logs includes:
- Any traffic to AWS DNS servers
- Any Windows traffic for licence activation
- Traffic to and from 169.254.169.254 for instance metadata
- DHCP traffic
- Traffic to the reserved IP address for the default VPC router
What is a Bastion Host?
A Bastion Host is a specially hardened computer on a network designed and configured to withstand attacks.
It generally contains minimal applications or services and is generally used in order to connect to instances in a private subnet from a public subnet.
What is the difference between Bastions and NAT Gateways / NAT Instances?
Bastions are used to securely administer EC2 instances in private subnets. NAT Gateways / Instances are used to enable internet access to EC2 instances in a private subnet.
What is Direct Connect?
AWS Direct Connect establishes a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS without traversing the internet.
When would you use Direct Connect?
You would use Direct Connect for high throughput workloads and to provide a stable, reliable and secure connection.
What is Global Accelerator?
Global Accelerator directs traffic to optimal endpoints over the AWS Global network to optimise performance and availability.
Rather than hopping across multiple networks, Global Accelerator allows you to leverage the AWS Network directly.
What are the components of Global Accelerator?
The Global Accelerator components are:
- 2 Static IP addresses to associate with your accelerator
- Accelerator
- DNS Name
- Network Zone
- Listener
- Endpoint Group
- Endpoint
What is a Listener?
A Listener processes inbound connections from clients to Global Accelerator based on port range and protocol that you configure.
You tell a listener on what port numbers you want to listen
What AWS services can endpoints be?
Endpoints can be:
- Network Load Balancers
- Application Load Balancers
- EC2 instances
- Elastic IP addresses
What is a VPC Endpoint?
A VPC Endpoint enables you to connect your VPC to supported AWS services without needing an Internet Gateway, NAT device or VPN connection.
What are the two types of VPC Endpoint?
Interface and Gateway Endpoints are the two types of VPC Endpoint.
What services do Gateway Endpoints currently support?
Gateway Endpoints currently support S3 and DynamoDB.
What is an Interface Endpoint?
An interface endpoint is an elastic network interface (ENI) with a private IP address that serves as an entry point for traffic destined to a supporting AWS service.
What is AWS PrivateLink?
AWS PrivateLink is a way to expose an application in your VPC to tens, hundreds or thousands of customer VPCs
What is required to enable PrivateLink?
PrivateLink requires a Network Load Balancer on the Service VPC and an ENI on the customer VPC.