How to Connect to Private EC2 Instance/Database via Bastion Host (2024)

We don’t want some of our resources to be accessed from the internet, so we create them in a private subnet. This is an important part in terms of security, but we also need access to these resources over the internet.

For example, we created an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance or an Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) Database (DB) instance in a private subnet. A private subnet is not attached to (Internet Gateway) IGW and is not reachable from the internet. These resources don’t have public IPs so we can’t connect them from local computers. What are the solutions for connecting private resources in Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

The best solution is to connect your private resources via Virtual Private Network (VPN) or AWS Direct Connect. But if you don’t have VPN or Direct Connect to AWS, you can use a Bastion Host (Jump Box) instead.

I will show how to connect to a private EC2 instance from a terminal, an RDS DB instance from a terminal, and from MySQL Workbench.

First of all, we need to create one of the common relational database MySQL RDS DB instance and an EC2 instance in a private subnet, and an EC2 instance in a public subnet. All these resources must be in the same VPC. If they are not in the same VPC you need to create a VPC Peering connection between VPCs.

A. Connecting to a private EC2 instance with a terminal via Bastion Host

1. Creating an EC2 instance in a public subnet as a Bastion Host:

• Select “Amazon Linux 2 AMI”,
• Instance type “t2.micro”,
• Select your custom VPC and public subnet,
• Add tag “Name = Bastion_Host”
• In the security group section, select My IP as the source for the SSH connection.
• Select your key pair and launch your instance.

2. Creating an EC2 instance in a private subnet:

• Select “Amazon Linux 2 AMI”,
• Instance type “t2.micro”,
• Select your custom VPC and private subnet,
• Add tag “Name = Private_Instance”
• In the security group section, select custom and paste the security group of the public instance (Bastion Host).
• Select your key pair and launch your instance.

Edit your “config” file under ~/.ssh/ folder and paste the content below:

vi ~/.ssh/configHost bastion-host
HostName <Public IP address of Bastion Host>
User ec2-user
Port 22
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/<key pair>
IdentitiesOnly yesHost private-ec2
HostName <Private IP address of private EC2 instance>
User ec2-user
Port 22
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/<key pair>
IdentitiesOnly yes
ProxyJump bastion-host

We can connect to the private EC2 instance with the following command due to the ProxyJump in the config file:

ssh private-ec2

B. Connecting to a private RDS DB instance with the terminal from Bastion Host:

1. Creating an EC2 instance in a public subnet as a Bastion Host:

• Select “Amazon Linux 2 AMI”,
• Instance type “t2.micro”,
• Select your custom VPC and public subnet,
• Add tag “Name=Public_Instance”
• In the security group section, select My IP as the source for the SSH connection.
• Select your key pair and launch your instance.

2. Creating a MySQL RDS DB instance in a private subnet:

• Master username = “admin”
• Master password = “12345678”
• DB instance class “db.t2.micro”,
• Select your custom VPC,
• Public Access = No
• Select default VPC security group

Select your RDS DB instance, click the “VPC security groups”, change the inbound rule’s source option to “Custom”, enter the private IP address of the Bastion Host and click “Save rules”.

Open your terminal and run the command below for SSH tunneling:

ssh -i “<key pair>” -N -L 3306:<DB endpoint>:3306 -p 22 ec2-user@<Public IP address or DNS of Bastion Host>

ssh -i "adesso.cer" -N -L 3306:database-1.ccswxi20cprx.us-east-1.RDS.amazonaws.com:3306 -p 22 [email protected]

After running this command, open a new terminal and try to connect to the MySQL RDS DB instance with the below command:

mysql -u admin -h 127.0.0.1 -p

Enter the password of the MySQL RDS DB instance and connect to the database.

Another option to connect the MySQL RDS DB instance from a terminal is using the config file. Open ~/.ssh/config file and paste the content below:

vi ~/.ssh/configHost tunnel-to-RDS
User ec2-user
Port 22
Hostname <Public IP address of Bastion Host>
LocalForward 3306 <DB endpoint>:3306
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/<key pair>Host tunnel-to-RDS
User ec2-user
Port 22
Hostname 44.201.66.76
LocalForward 3306 database-1.ccswxi20cprx.us-east-1.RDS.amazonaws.com:3306
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/adesso.cer

Open your terminal and run the command below for ssh tunneling:

ssh tunnel-to-RDS

This command will open an SSH tunnel and you can connect the database with the below command:

mysql -u admin -h 127.0.0.1 -p

Enter the password of the MySQL RDS DB instance and connect the database.

C. Connecting to a private RDS DB instance with MySQL Workbench from Bastion Host:

Open your MySQL Workbench and click MySQL New Connection “+” icon.

Enter a name for your connection and select “Standard TCP/IP over SSH” as the Connection Method. Then fill in the fields according to the information below:

• SSH Hostname = <Public IP address of Bastion Host>,
• SSH Username = ec2-user,
• SSH Key File = Select your key file from your local computer,
• MySQL Hostname = <DB Endpoint>,
• MySQL Server Port = 3306,
• Username = admin,
• Password = 12345678

Click the “Test Connection” button. You need to see “Successfully made the MySQL connection” on the pop-up window. Choose “OK” for saving connection. Then you can connect your database using an SSH tunnel.

Congrats. You have access to your private resources in the AWS account from your local computer.

Some resources must have limited access to the Internet, especially in terms of security. Therefore, these resources are created in private subnets and do not have Public IPs. If there are no services such as VPN or Direct Connect that allow us to access resources over Private IP, we can generally access these resources through Bastion Hosts. In our article, we have shown several ways how we can access an EC2 instance and RDS created in a private subnet from our local computer through Bastion Host.