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Key aspects

• Removed the complexity of configuration.
• All or partial traffic option.
• UDP is the default protocol with a fall back to TCP over 443 if the UDP port is blocked.
• Configurable certificate key size.
• Minimized downtime thanks to our custom resilience feature.
• No more stress to recreate all the users if you lose the server.
• The downtime minimized to the time it takes to boot the EC2 Instance and mount the EFS drive.

Example use cases

Your imagination is your limit, but here are some ideas that are worth considering:

• Route all the traffic over the VPN server for remote workers.
• Secure offline resources in a private subnet and allow partial traffic for employees to access them.
• Connect two or more offices together with a secure link.

Additional details

Resilience

Our VPN Server has built in resilience to make sure that you don't lose all your users, lose the VPN configuration, or lose connectivity by a changing IP. For this to work, you'll need to allocate an Elastic IP and create an EFS Drive.

Security

This product was designed for public access, but we recommend you don't allow SSH connections from the public Internet. Expose only the VPN ports and allow SSH access from the local subnet once you make your first profile for yourself.

Complete feature list

This section lists all the features of this product for easy referencing.

Deploy Automatically

What will be deployed

• 1x EC2 instance with 0x4447 custom AMI:
  • 1x IAM Role.
  • 1x IAM Policy.
  • 1x Security Group.
  • 1x Instance profile.
  • 1x Elastic IP.
  • 1x Elastic IP Association.
• 4x CloudWatch Alarms:
  • CPU Burst.
  • CPU Load.
  • Disk Usage.
  • EC2 Instance Recovery.
• 1x SNS Topic:
  • 1x SNS Policy.
  • 1x Topic Subscription.
• 1x CloudWatch Dashboard for instance overview.
• 1x EFS drive:
  • 1x Mount target.
  • 1x Security group.
• 1x Backup:
  • 1x Plan.
  • 1x Role.
  • 1x Selection.
  • 1x Vault.

Deploy Manually

Before launching our product, you'll have to do some manual work to make everything work correctly. Please follow these steps (the steps are generally described since Cloud experience is expected):

Custom Role

Before you can set the UserData, you have to attach a Role to the Instance with a Policy that has this Document:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:DetachVolume",
        "ec2:AttachVolume"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "ec2:DescribeVolumes",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

This Policy Document will give the Instance the ability to attach the EFS drive to itself. The "Resource": "*" is stated this way intentionally, since the action is not resource specific.

Managed Policy Recommendation

We also recommend adding the following policies managed by AWS to the role:

• arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy
• arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore

EFS Drive

When creating an EFS drive, make sure to do the following:

• Create the drive in the same AZ as the EC2 instance.
• Make sure to set the correct Security Group on the drive. The drive needs to be able to talk on port 2049 with the instance.
• Same goes for the EC2 Instance.

Bash Script for UserData

Our product needs a few dynamic values custom to your setup. To get access to these values our product checks for the content of this file /home/ec2-user/.env. By using the UserData option that AWS provided for each EC2 Instance, you can create the .env file with ease by referencing the bash script from below - make sure to replace the placeholder values with your own.

#!/bin/bash

echo EFS_ID=PARAM_EFS_ID >> /home/ec2-user/.env
echo EASYRSA_KEY_SIZE=EASYRSA_KEY_SIZE >> /home/ec2-user/.env

Security Group

Our product configuration in the AWS Marketplace already has set all the ports that need to be open for the product to work. But if for whatever reason the correct Security Group is not created by AWS, bellow you can find a list and descriptions of all the ports needed:

• 22 over TCP for remote management.
• 443 over TCP for VPN connections.
• 1194 over UDP for VPN connections.
• 2049 over TCP for EFS to be mounted.

The First Boot

The boot time of our product will be slower than if you started an instance from a clean AMI, this is due to our custom code that needs to be executed in order to prepare the product for you. This process can take a few minutes longer than usual.

Connecting to the Server

To connect to the server: get it's IP, connect to the instance over SSH with the username ec2-user, while using the private key you selected at deployment time. If successfully connected, you should be greeted with a custom MOTD detailing the product information.

User Management

How to create a user

Run this command to send all the traffic through the VPN:

sudo ov_user_add -u USER_NAME -t all

Run this command to send only the traffic for the remote network through the VPN:

sudo ov_user_add -u USER_NAME -t partial

How to copy the profiles locally

Every time you do so, a new .ovpn file will be created in the openvpn_users folder located in the ec2-user folder. You can copy the new file to your local computer using the SCP command, like so:

scp -i ./ssh.key ec2-user@SERVER_IP:/home/ec2-user/openvpn_users/USER_NAME.ovpn .

How to delete a user

Just run the following command:

sudo ov_user_delete -u USER_NAME

How to list all the users

Since every time you create a user a .ovpn configuration file is created, you can just list the content of the openvpn_users folder, like so:

ls -la /home/ec2-user/openvpn_users

The output is the list of all the users you have available for your VPN server.

VPN Clients

• Desktop
  • Windows
  • MacOS
  • Linux
• Mobile
  • iOS
  • Android

Final Thought

Test the setup

Before you go into production, make sure to test the product. This ensures that you get used to how it works.

Security Concerns

Below we give you a list of potential ideas to consider regarding security, but this list is not exhaustive – it is just a good starting point.

• Expose to the public only the ports needed for clients to connect to the VPN
• Block public SSH access
• Allow SSH connection only from limited subnets
• Ideally allow SSH connection only from another central instance
• Don't give root access to anyone but yourself

Backup Your Data

Make sure you regularly backup your drive(s). One simple solution would be to use AWS backup.

How To

How to change the instance type

If you need more memory and CPU capacity, you can change your instance type to a bigger one. To do so, follow these instructions:

1. Go to the CloudFormation console
2. Click on the stack that you want to update.
3. Click the Update button.
4. Keep the default selection and click Next
5. On the new Parameters page, change the instance type from the drop down.
6. Click Next till the end.

Wait for the stack to finish updating.

How to restore from a backed up EFS drive

Restoring from a backed up EFS drive is not straightforward due to how AWS restores the drive. By design AWS restores the data (even on a new and empty drive) in special folders called: aws-backup-restore_timestamp-of-restore. Meaning they do not recreate the original folder structure. Check how AWS restores EFS Backups to learn more.

This means you have to reorganize the drive before you use it with our product. To do so, you have two options:

1. Launch a temporary EC2 Instance, mount the drive and reorganize it.
2. Or you can reorganize it using our SFTP Server - Single User Setup product.

Make sure all the resources are in the same VPC, subnet, and have the correct Security Groups.

F.A.Q

These are some of the common solutions to problems you may run into:

Not authorized for images

My CloudFormation stack failed with the following error API: ec2:RunInstances Not authorized for images:... in the Event tab.

The product is misbehaving

I did follow all the instructions from the documentation.

sudo cat /var/lib/cloud/instance/user-data.txt

UserData seams ok

The UserData reached the instance, and yet the product is not acting as it should.

sudo cat /var/log/messages | grep 0x4447

Issue with remote access

Unable to access the server over SSH.

Issue with user management

The below error indicates that this instance failed to mount your EFS drive.

sudo ov_user_add -u USER_NAME
No such file or directory

You will also see the following message in your dmesg.

amazon/efs/mount.log:2020-09-04 23:29:58,803 - ERROR - Failed to mount fs-90d252e8.efs.us-east-2.amazonaws.com at /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa: retu Connection timed out"

Support

If the above section has not helped you come up with a solution to your problem, feel free to get in touch with us, we'll try to help you out the best way we can.

Feedback

If you have any feedback regarding our products, feel free to reach us through our feedback page.