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Use AWS PrivateLink with Aiven services

AWS PrivateLink brings Aiven services to the selected virtual private cloud (VPC) in your AWS account.

In a traditional setup that uses VPC peering, traffic is routed through an AWS VPC peering connection to your Aiven services. With PrivateLink, you can create a VPC endpoint in your own VPC and access an Aiven service from that. The VPC endpoint creates network interfaces (NIC) to the subnets and availability zones that you choose and receives the private IP addresses that belong to the IP range of your VPC. The VPC endpoint is routed to your Aiven service located in one of Aiven's AWS accounts.

You can enable PrivateLink for Aiven services located in project VPC. Before you can set up AWS PrivateLink, create a VPC and launch the services to connect to that VPC. As there is no network routing between the VPC, you can use any private IP range for the VPC, unless you also want to connect to the project VPC using VPC peering connections. This means that overlaps in the IP range are not an issue.

To set up AWS PrivateLink, use the Aiven CLI. You also need the AWS console or CLI to create a VPC endpoint.

Note: Aiven for Apache Cassandra® and Aiven for M3 services do not currently support AWS PrivateLink.

  1. Create an AWS PrivateLink resource on the Aiven service.

    The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for the principals that are allowed to connect to the VPC endpoint service and the AWS network load balancer requires your Amazon account ID. In addition, you can set the access scope for an entire AWS account, a given user account, or a given role. Only give permissions to roles that you trust, as an allowed role can connect from any VPC.

    Use the Aiven CLI to run the following command including your AWS account ID, the access scope, and the name of your Aiven service:

    avn service privatelink aws create --principal arn:aws:iam::$AWS_account_ID:$access_scope $Aiven_service_name

    For example:

    avn service privatelink aws create --principal arn:aws:iam::012345678901:user/mwf my-kafka

    This creates an AWS network load balancer dedicated to your Aiven service and attaches it to an AWS VPC endpoint service that you can later use to connect to your account's VPC endpoint.

    The PrivateLink resource stays in the initial creating state for up to a few minutes while the load balancer is being launched. After the load balancer and VPC endpoint service have been created, the state changes to active and the aws_service_id and aws_service_name values are set.

  2. In the AWS CLI, run the following command to create a VPC endpoint:

    aws ec2 --region eu-west-1 create-vpc-endpoint --vpc-endpoint-type Interface --vpc-id $your_vpc_id --subnet-ids $space_separated_list_of_subnet_ids --security-group-ids $security_group_ids --service-name com.amazonaws.vpce.eu-west-1.vpce-svc-0b16e88f3b706aaf1

    Replace the --service-name value with the value shown either in the Aiven Console > Service settings page > Cloud and network section > Actions > Edit AWS PrivateLink > AWS service name or as an output of:

    avn service privatelink aws get aws_service_name

    Note that for fault tolerance, you should specify a subnet ID for each availability zone in the region. The security groups determine the instances that are allowed to connect to the endpoint network interfaces created by AWS into the specified subnets.

    Alternatively, you can create the VPC endpoint in AWS Console under VPC > Endpoints > Create endpoint. See the AWS documentation for details.

    note

    For Aiven for Apache Kafka® services, the security group for the VPC endpoint must allow ingress in the port range 10000-31000 to accommodate the pool of Kafka broker ports used in our PrivateLink implementation.

    It takes a while before the endpoint is ready to use as AWS provisions network interfaces to each of the subnets and connects them to the Aiven VPC endpoint service. Once the AWS endpoint state changes to available, the connection is visible in Aiven.

  3. Enable PrivateLink access for Aiven service components:

    You can control each service component separately - for example, you can enable PrivateLink access for Kafka while allowing Kafka Connect to connect via VPC peering connections only.

    • In the Aiven CLI, set user_config.privatelink_access.<service component> to true for the components to enable, for example:

      # For ClickHouse

      avn service update -c privatelink_access.clickhouse=true --project $project_name $Aiven_service_name
      # For PostgreSQL

      avn service update -c privatelink_access.postgresql=true --project $project_name $Aiven_service_name
      # For Kafka

      avn service update -c privatelink_access.kafka=true $Aiven_service_name
      avn service update -c privatelink_access.kafka_connect=true $Aiven_service_name
      avn service update -c privatelink_access.kafka_rest=true $Aiven_service_name
      avn service update -c privatelink_access.schema_registry=true $Aiven_service_name

    • In Aiven Console:

      1. On the Overview page of your service, click Service settings from the sidebar.

      2. On the Service settings page, go to the Cloud and network section and click Actions > More network configurations from the menu.

      3. In the Network configuration window, click Add configuration options. In the search field, enter privatelink_access. From the displayed component names, select the names of the components to switch on.

        Aiven Console private link configuration

      4. Click the toggle switches for the selected components to switch them on. Click Save configuration.

    As a result, PrivateLink connection details are added to the Connection information section on the service Overview.

    It takes a couple of minutes before connectivity is available after you enable a service component. This is because AWS requires an AWS load balancer behind each VPC endpoint service, and the target rules on the load balancer for the service nodes need at least two successful heartbeats before they transition from the initial state to healthy and are included in the active forwarding rules of the load balancer.

Acquire connection information​

If you have one private endpoint connected to your Aiven service, you can preview the connection information (URI, hostname, or port required to access the service through the private endpoint) in Aiven Console > the service's Overview page > the Connection information section, where you'll also find the switch for the privatelink access route. privatelink-access-route values for host and port differ from those for the dynamic access route used by default to connect to the service.

note

You can use the same credentials with any access route.

Use CLI to acquire connection information for more than one AWS PrivateLink connection.

Each endpoint (connection) has a PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID, which you can check using the avn service privatelink AWS connection list SERVICE_NAME command.

To acquire connection information for your service component using AWS PrivateLink, run the avn service connection-info command.

  • For SSL connection information for your service component using AWS PrivateLink, run the following command:

    avn service connection-info UTILITY_NAME SERVICE_NAME --privatelink-connection-id PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID

Where:

  • UTILITY_NAME for Aiven for Apache Kafka®, for example, can be kcat.

  • SERVICE_NAME for Aiven for Apache Kafka®, for example, can be kafka-12a3b4c5.

  • PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID can be plc39413abcdef.

  • For SASL connection information for Aiven for Apache Kafka® service components using AWS PrivateLink, run the following command:

    avn service connection-info UTILITY_NAME SERVICE_NAME --privatelink-connection-id PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID -a sasl

Where:

  • UTILITY_NAME for Aiven for Apache Kafka®, for example, can be kcat.
  • SERVICE_NAME for Aiven for Apache Kafka®, for example, can be kafka-12a3b4c5.
  • PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID can be plc39413abcdef.
note

SSL certificates and SASL credentials are the same for all the connections. You can use the same credentials with any access route.

Update the allowed principals list​

To change the list of AWS accounts or IAM users or roles that are allowed to connect a VPC endpoint:

  • Use the update command of the Aiven CLI:

    avn service privatelink aws update --principal arn:aws:iam::$AWS_account_ID:$access_scope $Aiven_service_name
    note

    When you add an entry, also include the --principal arguments for existing entries.

  • In Aiven Console:

    1. click your service from the Services page.
    2. On the Overview page, click Service settings from the sidebar.
    3. On the Service settings page, go to the Cloud and network section and click Actions > Edit AWS PrivateLink.
    4. In the Edit AWS PrivateLink window, enter the principals to include in the Principal ARNs field and click Save.

Deleting a privatelink connection​

  • Using the Aiven CLI, run the following command:

    avn service privatelink aws delete $Aiven_service_name
    AWS_SERVICE_ID             AWS_SERVICE_NAME                                        PRINCIPALS                         STATE
    ========================== ======================================================= ================================== ========
    vpce-svc-0b16e88f3b706aaf1 com.amazonaws.vpce.eu-west-1.vpce-svc-0b16e88f3b

  • Using Aiven Console:

    1. Click your service from the Services page.
    2. On the Overview page, click Service settings from the sidebar.
    3. On the Service settings page, go to the Cloud and network section and click Actions > Delete AWS PrivateLink .
    4. In the Confirmation window, click Delete.

This deletes the AWS load balancer and VPC service endpoint.