Introduction
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For large organizations integrating AWS PrivateLink interface endpoints, the primary challenges include optimizing deployment strategies, reducing endpoint numbers, and managing costs efficiently. A validated method to tackle these challenges is employing AWS Transit Gateway in conjunction with Amazon Route 53 Resolver. This combination allows for effective sharing of AWS PrivateLink interface endpoints across various Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) and on-premises environments. By doing so, businesses can significantly reduce the number of necessary interface endpoints, yielding cost savings and lower operational burdens.
PrivateLink enables secure private connections between your VPC and supported AWS services, Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, or third-party offerings hosted either on AWS or on-premises. Utilizing VPC Interface Endpoints for establishing secure connections can become increasingly intricate and expensive, particularly as organizations expand their infrastructure with additional VPCs and accounts.
Amazon Route 53 Profiles present a new avenue to refine this architecture, allowing for simplified and centralized DNS management across numerous VPCs spanning multiple AWS accounts, thereby making your PrivateLink deployment more scalable.
In this article, we will explore how PrivateLink facilitates secure, private connectivity between your VPCs—whether they reside in the same account, across different accounts, or are integrated with on-premises environments and AWS services. Whether you’re enhancing your infrastructure or optimizing your architectural designs, this guide delivers a practical step-by-step approach to mastering PrivateLink deployments.
Solution Overview
Implementing a centralized PrivateLink deployment using a hub-and-spoke model effectively addresses the complexities tied to scaling PrivateLink across a multitude of VPCs and accounts. As illustrated in Figure 1, PrivateLink VPC endpoints are centralized within a Shared Services VPC. Spoke VPCs in Dev and Prod accounts can access these endpoints through a Transit Gateway or AWS Cloud WAN. Additionally, an on-premises data center can connect to these centralized PrivateLink VPC endpoints via hybrid connectivity using AWS Direct Connect or AWS Site-to-Site VPN.
DNS Management
DNS management plays a vital role when adopting a centralized deployment model. During the setup of a VPC Interface Endpoint for any PrivateLink-enabled service, you have the option to activate private DNS by selecting the “Enable DNS name” option. This action creates an AWS-managed Private Hosted Zone (PHZ), which resolves the public DNS name of the AWS service to the private IP address of the VPC Endpoint. However, this managed PHZ is restricted to the hub VPC and cannot be shared with other spoke VPCs, necessitating the use of custom PHZs, which we will discuss next.
Custom PHZ for PrivateLink DNS Resolution
For VPC-to-VPC and on-premises connectivity, begin by disabling private DNS for the VPC endpoint.
- In the VPC console, select Endpoints and choose the relevant endpoint.
- Click on Actions, then select Modify private DNS name.
- Under Modify private DNS name settings, uncheck Enable for this endpoint.
- Select Save changes.
After disabling private DNS names, create a Route 53 PHZ using the service endpoint name and configure an alias record that points to the AWS service’s VPC endpoint name.
In this example, we are setting up an endpoint for AWS Lambda in the us-east-1 region, resulting in an endpoint that concludes with lambda.us-east-1.vpce.amazonaws.com. Once the custom PHZ is established in the hub VPC, it can be linked to other spoke VPCs, ensuring that all spoke VPCs can resolve the AWS service’s public DNS name to the private IP address of the endpoint. This enables seamless connectivity across multiple VPCs.
Typically, to enable DNS resolution for VPC Endpoints across various VPCs, you would manually associate the PHZ for each endpoint with every spoke VPC. If both the hub and spoke VPCs are within the same AWS account, this can be accomplished via the AWS Management Console. However, for VPCs in different accounts, the process requires using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or SDK, as detailed in the Route 53 developer guide.
To enhance this process and improve scalability, Route 53 Profiles can be employed.
VPC to VPC PrivateLink DNS Resolution Using Route 53 Profiles
The architecture depicted in Figure 5 showcases a single-region workload, featuring Amazon VPCs named Dev VPC in a Dev account and a Prod VPC in a Prod account. These VPCs are interconnected using either Transit Gateway or AWS Cloud WAN. This setup allows Amazon EC2 instances in both the Dev VPC and Prod VPC to securely access Amazon Kinesis and Lambda.
The deployment process utilizing Route 53 Profiles is as follows:
- In the Shared Services VPC, establish VPC Interface endpoints to securely access Kinesis and Lambda through PrivateLink.
- Configure a PHZ for each endpoint.
- Create a Route 53 Profile within the Shared Services Account and associate it with the Shared Services VPC.
- Link both the PHZ for Kinesis and Lambda with this Route 53 Profile.
- To extend the Route 53 Profile to the Dev and Prod accounts, share it using AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM).
Upon sharing, navigate to the Dev and Prod accounts to associate the Route 53 Profile with each VPC in these accounts.
Consequently, the implementation of VPC endpoints for Kinesis and Lambda allows all VPCs to resolve the public DNS names for these services to the respective private IP addresses of their VPC endpoints. This ensures that resources within these spoke VPCs can access Kinesis and Lambda services securely through either Transit Gateway or AWS Cloud WAN via the VPC endpoint in the Shared Services VPC, completely bypassing the public internet.
In the future, when creating new VPC endpoints for any other supported AWS services, the only requirement will be to associate the PHZ for each VPC endpoint with the centralized Route 53 Profile. Once this association is made, all linked VPCs will be capable of resolving the DNS names to these newly created VPC endpoints.
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