Securely accessing private instances

Any instance or resource living in a private subnet in your VPC will be inaccessible from the Internet. This makes good sense from a security perspective because it gives your instances a higher level of protection.

Of course, if they can't be accessed from the Internet, then they're not going to be easy to administer.

One common pattern is to use a VPN server as a single, highly controlled, entry point to your private network. This is what we're going to show you in this recipe, as pictured in the following diagram:

Accessing private instances securely

Getting ready

We're going to use OpenVPN for this example. They provide a free (for up to two users) AMI in the AWS marketplace, which has OpenVPN already installed and configured. You'll need to accept the terms and conditions for using this AMI. You can do so by visiting the AMI's marketplace page at https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00MI40CAE/.

You need to decide on a password, which will be your temporary...