AWS Client VPN: Connected with the Cloud

Andreas Wittig – 18 Feb 2021

Everybody talks about remote work those days. A fundamental prerequisite is to provide secure connectivity to your infrastructure. No matter if only a few engineers or users need to access resources within a private network. About two years ago, AWS announced AWS Client VPN, a managed client-based VPN service that allows you to connect users with your VPCs. Over the past two years, the service matured and is worth a look.

AWS Client VPN: Connected with the Cloud

What does AWS Client VPN offer?

  • Managed VPN service based on OpenVPN
  • Secure client-to-site connections (TLS)
  • Multi-AZ + Scales automatically
  • Active Directory, federated authentication (SAML), and certificate-based authentication

By the way, AWS Client VPN starts at USD 150 per month.

What surprised me the most? AWS Client VPN supports SAML for federated authentication. For example, it is possible to integrate with Azure Active Directory to re-use existing users and groups for authentication and authorization into your VPCs via VPN.

AWS Client VPN with Azure Active Directory for authN and authZ

Watch the video

Want to learn more about AWS Client VPN? The following video includes a demo of how to configure AWS Client VPN and Azure Active Directory, among other things.

Check out How to Integrate AWS Client VPN with Azure Active Directory for detailed instructions.

Summary

It is about time to replace handcrafted EC2 instances running VPN servers with AWS Client VPN. Also, AWS Client VPN is the perfect way to connect your remote workers with the Cloud.

Andreas Wittig

Andreas Wittig

I’ve been building on AWS since 2012 together with my brother Michael. We are sharing our insights into all things AWS on cloudonaut and have written the book AWS in Action. Besides that, we’re currently working on bucketAV,HyperEnv for GitHub Actions, and marbot.

Here are the contact options for feedback and questions.