Accessing your AWS instances with Remote.It

Accessing and managing cloud instances like AWS is one of the most important tasks for a developer or a DevOps engineer. As a developer, it can be incredibly difficult to access the cloud resources you need to do your job. Do you have any of these problems?

• Your data source is too large to replicate
• Your data contains PII which you do not want copied to developer’s laptops
• Trouble reproducing an issue because it requires access to a specific datasource with a local running application so you can add debug code or breakpoints to step through

The problem is that today’s networking technologies are not a solution for infrastructure access in the cloud era. We saw this need for our own team. We needed to simplify the barriers to access and management to allow our team to be efficient and increase productivity while maintaining the security concepts of Zero Trust network access (ZTNA).

Access management is especially painful when, as a developer, only needs a resource like a connection to a database. Do you have any of these challenges which get in the way of your ability to develop or debug your applications?

• You’re forced to wait for a DevOps to provide you access
• Providing your IP address which is not flexible when you switch locations. 
• You cannot connect to multiple databases or resources at the same time and are constantly switching between Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) due to subnet collision. 

This type of access was labor intensive for our DevOps team. Do your DevOps struggle with the time and complexity of managing any of the following?

• Onboarding/off-boarding developers
• Maintaining IAM
• Maintaining IP allow lists, especially with remote developers whose IP address change

We knew that Remote.It should be able to solve this, so we banded together to come-up with a ZTNA solution that would not only work for us, but would work for other developers that are having the same issues. We knew the solution needed to be easy to implement and maintain, speeding up the development workflow. 

Together, our developers and DevOps teams collaborated on a solution. Managing cloud resource access at any scale is now easy and comes with the peace of mind that we didn’t inadvertently leave an IP address with access. The local development environment uses the connections as if those resources were running locally. This is networks as code. 

Our solution uses a single line of code and some simple configurations. Remote.It eliminates the need for security groups using inbound rules with IP allow lists or VPNs to easily access the resources you need using an AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance in the same Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This will have Zero Trust network access (ZTNA) without any open ports. Then you can provide access to your resources such as a PostgreSQL database.

Launching an EC2 instance with Remote.It takes only a single line of code, and requires no IAM configuration changes, security groups with inbound rules or VPNs. You will use this EC2 instance as a jump box to reach the resources you wish to access in the same VPC.

What do you need to get started?

• Access to the AWS console to the account and VPC where you will be connecting the resources you need to access
• A Remote.It account
• The Remote.It desktop app

Written instructions: https://link.remote.it/docs/aws

Watch the video: https://link.remote.it/youtube/aws/overview 

You can apply this same method with servers, databases (SQL and no SQL), Kubernetes, docker, web apps, or whatever cloud services you use.

There is no need to worry about connecting and disconnecting from multiple VPNs anymore. You can be connected from anywhere to as many private cloud resources as you need, regardless of region, availability zone, or VPC, even across multiple cloud providers at the same time with no worry of subnet collision. Once you create the connection, it is ready to use on-demand. There is no need to reconnect when your IP address changes or your laptop wakes up from sleep. Remote.It truly is hassle-free networks as code.

Access can easily be managed using individual sharing or organizations if you have teams. 

Learn more about sharing here
Learn more about organizations here

Since we have been using this solution, our teams are more efficient and can spend their time developing rather than dealing with access management. We have received positive reactions from our customers, and they feel this really helped reduce the friction between developers and the devops teams.

For more information about how to use Remote.It, check out the support documentation here.

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Updated June 22, 2022

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