Inter-Region VPN Connection Made Easy in AWS!

Introduction

Its time to wave good bye to lengthy and complex setups for VPN connections. In the AWS re:Invent 2017, AWS had announced a feature which allows us to make connection between VPC’s across two different regions. With this, AWS also added few new services in the list and some mind-blowing features to the current service portfolio. You can check out the announcements here CloudThat Twitter Account .

So far, we could setup peering connection only within the same region and whenever there was a need to connect VPCs across different regions, the process used to be complex and lengthy. There are several options in the market to setup peering connection with different regions like Openswan, OpenVPN, etc. , but you still need knowledge to configure them properly to make the connection.

Few questions came to my mind when I heard about this update, some of them are:

1. How to setup the connection?
2. How will I be charged?
3. Do I need third-party tools anymore?

I am assuming that you have prior knowledge of VPC and how-to setup peering connection between two VPCs within a region and if you know that, then these steps will be very simple for you. To make it inter-region you must select an option which says that you want to make a connection with a VPC of different region, and that’s it!

How to setup the connection?

Let’s setup an Inter-Region VPC connection and discuss the changes:

• Go to your AWS console, select VPC and from the left side options, select ‘Peering Connections’ and click on ‘Create Peering Connection’ then provide a name to the connection and a source VPC.
  In the Region section, please select ‘Another region’ and specify the VPC Id of that region. If you want to create a connection with a different account, select the option ‘Another account’ and specify the Account Id. Now click on ‘Create Peering Connection’. Now, we can make connection with different account and different regions.
  
  Note: Please pay attention while creating the VPC range and make sure that the VPC ranges are not overlapping with each other, else you will get a failed connection status
• Now, let’s switch to the other region and accept the peering connection.
  
  Click on ‘Actions’ and select ‘Accept Request’ to establish the connection. A message will pop-up asking you to verify the VPC Id’s and ranges you already selected and accept the connection.Note: You must select the peering connection to accept the request.As soon as you accept the request, you will see the connection status will change to Active.
  And its done! By now we have an Inter-Region peering connection ready. But, how to delete this connection?To delete the connection, select the connection and click on ‘Actions’ and then click on ‘Delete VPC Peering Connection’.
  Make sure you have checked the box at the bottom left corner to delete the route table entries for this peering connection.

How will I be charged?

No extra charges for this, Inter-Region data transfer rates (i.e. data out charges) will be applied for the connection.

Do I need third-party tools anymore?

Well, the answer is yes. Based on the last announcement, this feature is available only in AWS US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon) and EU (Ireland).

But, nothing to worry, we have experts who can help you to setup connection with different regions. To get expert help, visit www.cloudthat.com.