AWS - LOAD BALANCER to host a server in Private subet

Question

I currently having some issues trying to run a chat server in a private subnet that can have traffic in a out to the internet. I do not want to use a NAT Gateway.

I thought you could use a load balancer one with a public facing IP (Elastic IP) then route traffic to my server in the private subnet. I'm trying to mimic a VPN so I can host the can server in private subnet.

Chat a chat server be hosted within a private subnet on AWS?

if anyone could help would be great.

Answer 1

then route traffic to my server in the private subnet.

Not without NAT you won't. You either need a NAT gateway or a NAT instance (be it prepackaged or something you've set up yourself). Routing from public subnets to private subnets needs NAT and private subnets by definition cannot route to the internet.

Answer 2

If you create a load balancer for inbound access it will need to be located in a public subnet, with a route table configured to use an internet gateway for the 0.0.0.0/0 route.

By doing this you can forward traffic from a public realm to the private server, this could be HTTP traffic, SQL traffic etc.

For any outbound traffic to the internet you need to use a NAT, without this traffic cannot be routed outbound to the internet for a private instance when using IPv4.

It would not however be a replacement for a VPN. Any applications you want to remain private should not allow inbound traffic via a load balancer.