AWS Site-to-Site VPN

User Guide
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide

AWS Site-to-Site VPN: User Guide

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide

Table of Contents
What is Site-to-Site VPN ..................................................................................................................... 1
Concepts ................................................................................................................................... 1
Working with Site-to-Site VPN ..................................................................................................... 1
Pricing ...................................................................................................................................... 2
How AWS Site-to-Site VPN Works ........................................................................................................ 3
Components of Your Site-to-Site VPN .......................................................................................... 3
Virtual Private Gateway ...................................................................................................... 3
AWS Transit Gateway .......................................................................................................... 3
Customer Gateway ............................................................................................................. 3
Customer Gateway Device ................................................................................................... 4
Site-to-Site VPN Categories ......................................................................................................... 4
Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Options .................................................................................................. 4
Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Authentication Options ............................................................................ 8
Pre-Shared Keys ................................................................................................................. 8
Private Certificate from AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority ........................... 8
Customer Gateway Options ......................................................................................................... 8
Site-to-Site VPN Routing Options ................................................................................................ 9
Static and Dynamic Routing ............................................................................................... 10
Route Tables and VPN Route Priority .................................................................................. 10
Getting Started ................................................................................................................................ 12
Create a Customer Gateway ....................................................................................................... 12
Create a Virtual Private Gateway ................................................................................................ 13
Enable Route Propagation in Your Route Table ............................................................................ 13
Update Your Security Group ...................................................................................................... 14
Create a Site-to-Site VPN Connection and Configure the Customer Gateway Device ........................... 15
Configure the Customer Gateway Device ..................................................................................... 15
Editing Static Routes for a Site-to-Site VPN Connection ................................................................ 16
Architectures .................................................................................................................................... 17
Single and Multiple Connection Examples ................................................................................... 17
Single Site-to-Site VPN Connection .................................................................................... 17
Single Site-to-Site VPN Connection with a Transit Gateway .................................................... 17
Multiple Site-to-Site VPN Connections ................................................................................ 18
Multiple Site-to-Site VPN Connections with a Transit Gateway ............................................... 19
Secure Communication Between Sites Using VPN CloudHub .......................................................... 19
Using Redundant Site-to-Site VPN Connections to Provide Failover ................................................. 21
Working with Site-to-Site VPN ........................................................................................................... 24
Identifying a Site-to-Site VPN Connection ................................................................................... 24
Migrating from AWS Classic VPN to AWS VPN .............................................................................. 25
Testing the Site-to-Site VPN Connection ..................................................................................... 26
Deleting a Site-to-Site VPN Connection ...................................................................................... 27
Modifying a Site-to-Site VPN Connection's Target Gateway ............................................................ 28
Step 1: Create the Transit Gateway ..................................................................................... 29
Step 2: Delete Your Static Routes (Required for a Static VPN Connection Migrating to a Transit
Gateway) ......................................................................................................................... 29
Step 3: Migrate to a New Gateway ..................................................................................... 30
Step 4: Update VPC Route Tables ....................................................................................... 30
Step 5: Update the Transit Gateway Routing (Required When the New Gateway is a Transit
Gateway) ......................................................................................................................... 31
Step 6: Update the Customer Gateway ASN (Required When the New Gateway has a Different
ASN from the Old Gateway) .............................................................................................. 31
Modifying Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Options ................................................................................. 31
Changing the Customer Gateway for a Site-to-Site VPN Connection ................................................ 32
Replacing Compromised Credentials ........................................................................................... 32
Rotating Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Endpoint Certificates ................................................................. 33

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide

Authentication and Access Control ..................................................................................................... 34

IAM Policies for Your Site-to-Site VPN Connection ........................................................................ 34
Service-Linked Role .................................................................................................................. 37
Permissions Granted by the Service-Linked Role ................................................................... 37
Create the Service-Linked Role ........................................................................................... 37
Edit the Service-Linked Role .............................................................................................. 37
Delete the Service-Linked Role ........................................................................................... 37
Monitoring Your Site-to-Site VPN Connection ...................................................................................... 38
Monitoring Tools ...................................................................................................................... 38
Automated Monitoring Tools ............................................................................................. 38
Manual Monitoring Tools ................................................................................................... 39
Monitoring VPN Tunnels Using Amazon CloudWatch ..................................................................... 39
VPN Tunnel Metrics and Dimensions ................................................................................... 39
Viewing VPN Tunnel CloudWatch Metrics ............................................................................ 40
Creating CloudWatch Alarms to Monitor VPN Tunnels ........................................................... 41
Document History ............................................................................................................................ 43

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Concepts

What is AWS Site-to-Site VPN?

By default, instances that you launch into an Amazon VPC can't communicate with your own (remote)
network. You can enable access to your remote network from your VPC by attaching a virtual private
gateway to the VPC, creating a custom route table, updating your security group rules, creating an
AWS Site-to-Site VPN (Site-to-Site VPN) connection, and configuring routing to pass traffic through the
connection.

Although the term VPN connection is a general term, in this documentation, a VPN connection refers
to the connection between your VPC and your own on-premises network. Site-to-Site VPN supports
Internet Protocol security (IPsec) VPN connections.

Your Site-to-Site VPN connection is either an AWS Classic VPN or an AWS VPN. For more information, see
Site-to-Site VPN Categories (p. 4).
Important
We currently do not support IPv6 traffic through a Site-to-Site VPN connection.

Concepts
The following are the key concepts for Site-to-Site VPN:

• VPN connection: A secure connection between your on-premises equipment and your VPCs.
• VPN tunnel: An encrypted link where data can pass from the customer network to or from AWS.

Each VPN connection includes two VPN tunnels which you can simultaneously use for high availability.
• Customer gateway: An AWS resource which provides information to AWS about your customer
gateway device.
• Customer gateway device: A physical device or software application on your side of the Site-to-Site
VPN connection.

Working with Site-to-Site VPN

You can create, access, and manage your Site-to-Site VPN resources using any of the following interfaces:

• AWS Management Console— Provides a web interface that you can use to access your Site-to-Site
VPN resources.
• AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) — Provides commands for a broad set of AWS services,
including Amazon VPC, and is supported on Windows, macOS, and Linux. For more information, see
AWS Command Line Interface.
• AWS SDKs — Provide language-specific APIs and takes care of many of the connection details, such
as calculating signatures, handling request retries, and error handling. For more information, see AWS
SDKs.
• Query API— Provides low-level API actions that you call using HTTPS requests. Using the Query API
is the most direct way to access Amazon VPC, but it requires that your application handle low-level
details such as generating the hash to sign the request, and error handling. For more information, see
the Amazon EC2 API Reference.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Pricing

Pricing
For information about pricing, see VPN pricing.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Components of Your Site-to-Site VPN

How AWS Site-to-Site VPN Works

Components of Your Site-to-Site VPN
A Site-to-Site VPN connection offers two VPN tunnels between a virtual private gateway or transit
gateway on the AWS side and a customer gateway on the remote (customer) side.

A Site-to-Site VPN connection consists of the following components. For more information about Site-
to-Site VPN limits, see Amazon VPC Limits in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

Contents
• Virtual Private Gateway (p. 3)
• AWS Transit Gateway (p. 3)
• Customer Gateway (p. 3)
• Customer Gateway Device (p. 4)

Virtual Private Gateway

A virtual private gateway is the VPN concentrator on the Amazon side of the Site-to-Site VPN connection.
You create a virtual private gateway and attach it to the VPC from which you want to create the Site-to-
Site VPN connection.

When you create a virtual private gateway, you can specify the private Autonomous System Number
(ASN) for the Amazon side of the gateway. If you don't specify an ASN, the virtual private gateway
is created with the default ASN (64512). You cannot change the ASN after you've created the virtual
private gateway. To check the ASN for your virtual private gateway, view its details in the Virtual Private
Gateways screen in the Amazon VPC console, or use the describe-vpn-gateways AWS CLI command.
Note
If you create your virtual private gateway before 2018-06-30, the default ASN is 17493 in the
Asia Pacific (Singapore) region, 10124 in the Asia Pacific (Tokyo) region, 9059 in the EU (Ireland)
region, and 7224 in all other regions.

AWS Transit Gateway

You can modify the target gateway of AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection from a virtual private gateway
to a transit gateway. A transit gateway is a transit hub that you can use to interconnect your virtual
private clouds (VPC) and on-premises networks. For more information, see the section called “Modifying
a Site-to-Site VPN Connection's Target Gateway” (p. 28).

Customer Gateway
A customer gateway resource in AWS, which provides information to AWS about your the section called
“Customer Gateway Device” (p. 4). For information about customer gateway options, see the section
called “Customer Gateway Options” (p. 8).

To use Amazon VPC with a Site-to-Site VPN connection, you or your network administrator must also
configure the customer gateway device or application in your remote network. When you create the

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Customer Gateway Device

Site-to-Site VPN connection, we provide you with the required configuration information and your
network administrator typically performs this configuration. For information about the customer
gateway requirements and configuration, see the Your Customer Gateway in the Amazon VPC Network
Administrator Guide.

The VPN tunnel comes up when traffic is generated from your side of the Site-to-Site VPN connection.
The virtual private gateway is not the initiator; your customer gateway must initiate the tunnels. If your
Site-to-Site VPN connection experiences a period of idle time (usually 10 seconds, depending on your
configuration), the tunnel may go down. To prevent this, you can use a network monitoring tool to
generate keepalive pings; for example, by using IP SLA.

Customer Gateway Device

A customer gateway device is a physical device or software application on your side of the Site-to-Site
VPN connection. For more information about configuring your customer gateway device, see the Amazon
VPC Network Administrator Guide.

Site-to-Site VPN Categories

Your Site-to-Site VPN connection is either an AWS Classic VPN connection or an AWS VPN connection.
Any new Site-to-Site VPN connection that you create is an AWS VPN connection. The following features
are supported on AWS VPN connections only:

• Internet Key Exchange version 2 (IKEv2)

• NAT traversal
• 4-byte ASN (in addition to 2-byte ASN)
• CloudWatch metrics
• Reusable IP addresses for your customer gateways
• Additional encryption options; including AES 256-bit encryption, SHA-2 hashing, and additional Diffie-
Hellman groups
• Configurable tunnel options
• Custom private ASN for the Amazon side of a BGP session
• Private Certificate from a subordinate CA from AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority

For information about identifying and migrating your connection, see the section called “Identifying a
Site-to-Site VPN Connection” (p. 24) and the section called “Migrating from AWS Classic VPN to AWS
VPN” (p. 25).

Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Options for Your Site-to-

Site VPN Connection
You use a Site-to-Site VPN connection to connect your remote network to a VPC. Each Site-to-Site VPN
connection has two tunnels, with each tunnel using a unique virtual private gateway public IP address.
It is important to configure both tunnels for redundancy. When one tunnel becomes unavailable (for
example, down for maintenance), network traffic is automatically routed to the available tunnel for that
specific Site-to-Site VPN connection.

The following diagram shows the two tunnels of the Site-to-Site VPN connection.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Options

When you create a Site-to-Site VPN connection, you download a configuration file specific to your
customer gateway device that contains information for configuring the device, including information for
configuring each tunnel. You can optionally specify some of the tunnel options yourself when you create
the Site-to-Site VPN connection. Otherwise, AWS provides default values.

The following table describes the tunnel options that you can configure.

Item Description AWS-provided default values

Dead peer detection (DPD) The duration after which DPD 30

timeout (seconds) timeout occurs.

You can specify a number

between 0 and 30.

IKE versions The IKE versions that are ikev1, ikev2

permitted for the VPN tunnel.
You can specify one or more of
the default values.

Inside tunnel CIDR The range of inside IP addresses A size /30 CIDR block from the
for the VPN tunnel. You can 169.254.0.0/16 range.
specify a size /30 CIDR block
from the 169.254.0.0/16

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Options

Item Description AWS-provided default values

range. The CIDR block must be
unique across all Site-to-Site
VPN connections that use the
same virtual private gateway.

The following CIDR blocks are

reserved and cannot be used:

• 169.254.0.0/30
• 169.254.1.0/30
• 169.254.2.0/30
• 169.254.3.0/30
• 169.254.4.0/30
• 169.254.5.0/30
• 169.254.169.252/30

Phase 1 Diffie-Hellman (DH) The DH group numbers that are 2, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24
group numbers permitted for the VPN tunnel for
phase 1 of the IKE negotiations.
You can specify one or more of
the default values.

Phase 2 Diffie-Hellman (DH) The DH group numbers that are 2, 5, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23,
group numbers permitted for the VPN tunnel for 24
phase 2 of the IKE negotiations.
You can specify one or more of
the default values.

Phase 1 encryption algorithms The encryption algorithms AES128, AES256

that are permitted for the VPN
tunnel for phase 1 of the IKE
negotiations. You can specify
one or more of the default
values.

Phase 2 encryption algorithms The encryption algorithms AES128, AES256

that are permitted for the
VPN tunnel for phase 2 IKE
negotiations. You can specify
one or more of the default
values.

Phase 1 integrity algorithms The integrity algorithms that are SHA-1, SHA2-256
permitted for the VPN tunnel for
phase 1 of the IKE negotiations.
You can specify one or more of
the default values.

Phase 2 integrity algorithms The integrity algorithms that are SHA-1, SHA2-256
permitted for the VPN tunnel for
phase 2 of the IKE negotiations.
You can specify one or more of
the default values.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Options

Item Description AWS-provided default values

Phase 1 lifetime (seconds) The lifetime in seconds for phase 28,800 (8 hours)
1 of the IKE negotiations. You
can specify a number between
900 and 28,800.

Phase 2 lifetime (seconds) The lifetime in seconds for phase 3,600 (1 hour)
2 of the IKE negotiations. You
can specify a number between
900 and 3,600. The number that
you specify must be less than
the number of seconds for the
phase 1 lifetime.

Pre-shared key (PSK) The pre-shared key (PSK) to A 32-character alphanumeric

establish the initial internet string.
key exchange (IKE) security
association between the virtual
private gateway and customer
gateway.

The PSK must be between 8

and 64 characters in length
and cannot start with zero
(0). Allowed characters are
alphanumeric characters,
periods (.), and underscores (_).

Rekey fuzz (percentage) The percentage of the rekey 100

window (determined by the
rekey margin time) within which
the rekey time is randomly
selected.

You can specify a value between

0 and 100.

Rekey margin time (seconds) The margin time in seconds 540 (9 minutes)
before the phase 2 lifetime
expires, during which the AWS
side of the VPN connection
performs an IKE rekey.

You can specify a number

between 60 and half of the
value of the phase 2 lifetime
seconds.

The exact time of the rekey is

randomly selected based on the
value for rekey fuzz.

Replay window size packets The number of packets in an IKE 1024

replay window.

You can specify a value between

64 and 2048.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Authentication Options

You can modify tunnel options after you create the Site-to-Site VPN connection. You cannot configure
tunnel options for an AWS Classic VPN connection.

Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Authentication Options

You can use pre-shared keys, or certificates to authenticate your Site-to-Site VPN tunnel endpoints.

Pre-Shared Keys
A pre-shared key is the default authentication option.

A pre-shared key is a Site-to-Site VPN tunnel option that you can specify when you create a Site-to-Site
VPN tunnel.

A pre-shared key is a string that you enter when you configure your customer gateway device. If you do
not specify a string, we auto-generate one for you.

Private Certificate from AWS Certificate Manager

Private Certificate Authority
If you do not want to use pre-shared keys, you can use a private certificate from AWS Certificate Manager
Private Certificate Authority to authenticate your VPN.

You must create a private certificate from a subordinate CA using AWS Certificate Manager Private
Certificate Authority. For information about creating a private certificate, see Creating and Managing a
Private CA in the AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority User Guide.

You must create a service-link role to generate and use the certificate for the AWS side of the Site-to-Site
VPN tunnel endpoint. For more information, see the section called “Permissions Granted by the Service-
Linked Role” (p. 37).

After you generate the private certificate, you specify the certificate when you create the customer
gateway, and then apply it to your customer gateway device.

If you do not specify the IP address of your customer gateway device, we do not check the IP address.
This operation allows you to move the customer gateway device to a different IP address without having
to re-configure the VPN connection.

Customer Gateway Options for Your Site-to-Site

VPN Connection
The following table describes the information you'll need to create a customer gateway resource.

Item Description

(Optional) Internet-routable IP address (static) of The public IP address value must be static. If your
the customer gateway devices external interface. customer gateway is behind a network address
translation (NAT) device that's enabled for NAT
traversal (NAT-T), use the public IP address of

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Site-to-Site VPN Routing Options

Item Description
your NAT device, and adjust your firewall rules to
unblock UDP port 4500.

This is not required when you are using a private

certificate from AWS Certificate Manager Private
Certificate Authority.

The type of routing—static or dynamic. For more information, see Site-to-Site VPN
Routing Options (p. 9).

(Dynamic routing only) Border Gateway Protocol You can use an existing ASN assigned to your
(BGP) Autonomous System Number (ASN) of the network. If you don't have one, you can use a
customer gateway. private ASN (in the 64512–65534 range).

If you use the VPC wizard in the console to set up

your VPC, we automatically use 65000 as the ASN.

(Optional) Private certificate from a subordinate If you want to use certificate based
CA using AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) authentication, provide the ARN of an ACM private
certificate that will be used on your customer
gateway device.

When you create a customer gateway, you can

configure the customer gateway to use AWS
Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority
private certificates to authenticate the Site-to-Site
VPN.

When you choose to use this option, you create an

entirely AWS-hosted private certificate authority
(CA) for internal use by your organization. Both
the root CA certificate and subordinate CA
certificates are stored and managed by ACM
Private CA.

Before you create the customer gateway, you

create a private certificate from a subordinate CA
using AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate
Authority, and then specify the certificate
when you configure the customer gateway. For
information about creating a private certificate,
see Creating and Managing a Private CA in the
AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate
Authority User Guide.

Site-to-Site VPN Routing Options

When you create a Site-to-Site VPN connection, you must do the following:

• Specify the type of routing that you plan to use (static or dynamic)
• Update the route table for your subnet

There are limits on the number of routes that you can add to a route table. For more information, see the
Route Tables section in Amazon VPC Limits in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Static and Dynamic Routing

Static and Dynamic Routing

The type of routing that you select can depend on the make and model of your VPN devices. If your VPN
device supports Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), specify dynamic routing when you configure your Site-
to-Site VPN connection. If your device does not support BGP, specify static routing. For a list of static and
dynamic routing devices that have been tested with Amazon VPC, see the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
FAQs.

When you use a BGP device, you don't need to specify static routes to the Site-to-Site VPN connection
because the device uses BGP to advertise its routes to the virtual private gateway. If you use a device that
supports BGP advertising, then you cannot specify static routes, If you use a device that doesn't support
BGP, you must select static routing and enter the routes (IP prefixes) for your network that should be
communicated to the virtual private gateway.

We recommend that you use BGP-capable devices, when available, because the BGP protocol offers
robust liveness detection checks that can assist failover to the second VPN tunnel if the first tunnel goes
down. Devices that don't support BGP may also perform health checks to assist failover to the second
tunnel when needed.

Route Tables and VPN Route Priority

Route tables determine where network traffic is directed. In your route table, you must add a route for
your remote network and specify the virtual private gateway as the target. This enables traffic from your
VPC that's destined for your remote network to route via the virtual private gateway and over one of the
VPN tunnels. You can enable route propagation for your route table to automatically propagate your
network routes to the table for you.

Only IP prefixes that are known to the virtual private gateway, whether through BGP advertisements or
static route entry, can receive traffic from your VPC. The virtual private gateway does not route any other
traffic destined outside of received BGP advertisements, static route entries, or its attached VPC CIDR.

When a virtual private gateway receives routing information, it uses path selection to determine how to
route traffic to your remote network. Longest prefix match applies; otherwise, the following rules apply:

• If any propagated routes from a Site-to-Site VPN connection or AWS Direct Connect connection
overlap with the local route for your VPC, the local route is most preferred even if the propagated
routes are more specific.
• If any propagated routes from a Site-to-Site VPN connection or AWS Direct Connect connection
have the same destination CIDR block as other existing static routes (longest prefix match cannot
be applied), we prioritize the static routes whose targets are an Internet gateway, a virtual private
gateway, a network interface, an instance ID, a VPC peering connection, a NAT gateway, a transit
gateway, or a VPC endpoint.

If you have overlapping routes within a Site-to-Site VPN connection and longest prefix match cannot be
applied, then we prioritize the routes as follows in the Site-to-Site VPN connection, from most preferred
to least preferred:

• BGP propagated routes from an AWS Direct Connect connection

• Manually added static routes for a Site-to-Site VPN connection
• BGP propagated routes from a Site-to-Site VPN connection

In this example, your route table has a static route to an internet gateway (that you added manually),
and a propagated route to a virtual private gateway. Both routes have a destination of 172.31.0.0/24.
In this case, all traffic destined for 172.31.0.0/24 is routed to the internet gateway — it is a static
route and therefore takes priority over the propagated route.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Route Tables and VPN Route Priority

Destination Target

10.0.0.0/16 Local

172.31.0.0/24 vgw-1a2b3c4d (propagated)

172.31.0.0/24 igw-11aa22bb

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Create a Customer Gateway

Getting Started
Use the following procedures to manually set up the AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection. Alternatively, you
can let the VPC creation wizard take care of many of these steps for you. For more information about
using the VPC creation wizard to set up the virtual private gateway, see Scenario 3: VPC with Public and
Private Subnets and AWS Site-to-Site VPN Access or Scenario 4: VPC with a Private Subnet Only and
AWS Site-to-Site VPN Access in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

To set up a Site-to-Site VPN connection, complete the following steps:

• Step 1: Create a Customer Gateway (p. 12)

• Step 2: Create a Virtual Private Gateway (p. 13)
• Step 3: Enable Route Propagation in Your Route Table (p. 13)
• Step 4: Update Your Security Group (p. 14)
• Step 5: Create a Site-to-Site VPN Connection and Configure the Customer Gateway Device (p. 15)

These procedures assume that you have a VPC with one or more subnets.

Create a Customer Gateway

A customer gateway provides information to AWS about your customer gateway device or software
application. For more information, see Customer Gateway (p. 3).

If you plan to use a private certificate to authenticate your VPN, create a private certificate from a
subordinate CA using AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority. For information about
creating a private certificate, see Creating and Managing a Private CA in the AWS Certificate Manager
Private Certificate Authority User Guide.
Note
You must specify either an IP address, or an Amazon Resource Name of the private certificate.

To create a customer gateway using the console

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Customer Gateways, and then Create Customer Gateway.
3. Complete the following and then choose Create Customer Gateway:

• (Optional) For Name, enter a name for your customer gateway. Doing so creates a tag with a key
of Name and the value that you specify.
• For Routing, select the routing type.
• For dynamic routing, for BGP ASN, enter the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Autonomous System
Number (ASN).
• (Optional) For IP Address, type the static, internet-routable IP address for your customer gateway
device. If your customer gateway is behind a NAT device that's enabled for NAT-T, use the public IP
address of the NAT device.
Note
This is optional when you use a private certificate for VPN connections to a virtual private
gateway (VGW).
• (Optional) If you want to use a private certificate, for Certificate ARN, choose the Amazon
Resource Name of the private certificate.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Create a Virtual Private Gateway

To create a customer gateway using the command line or API

• CreateCustomerGateway (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• create-customer-gateway (AWS CLI)
• New-EC2CustomerGateway (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Create a Virtual Private Gateway

When you create a virtual private gateway, you can optionally specify the private Autonomous System
Number (ASN) for the Amazon side of the gateway. The ASN must be different from the BGP ASN
specified for the customer gateway.

After you create a virtual private gateway, you must attach it to your VPC.

To create a virtual private gateway and attach it to your VPC

1. In the navigation pane, choose Virtual Private Gateways, Create Virtual Private Gateway.
2. (Optional) Enter a name for your virtual private gateway. Doing so creates a tag with a key of Name
and the value that you specify.
3. For ASN, leave the default selection to use the default Amazon ASN. Otherwise, choose Custom ASN
and enter a value. For a 16-bit ASN, the value must be in the 64512 to 65534 range. For a 32-bit
ASN, the value must be in the 4200000000 to 4294967294 range.
4. Choose Create Virtual Private Gateway.
5. Select the virtual private gateway that you created, and then choose Actions, Attach to VPC.
6. Select your VPC from the list and choose Yes, Attach.

To create a virtual private gateway using the command line or API

• CreateVpnGateway (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• create-vpn-gateway (AWS CLI)
• New-EC2VpnGateway (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

To attach a virtual private gateway to a VPC using the command line or API

• AttachVpnGateway (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• attach-vpn-gateway (AWS CLI)
• Add-EC2VpnGateway (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Enable Route Propagation in Your Route Table

To enable instances in your VPC to reach your customer gateway, you must configure your route table
to include the routes used by your Site-to-Site VPN connection and point them to your virtual private
gateway. You can enable route propagation for your route table to automatically propagate those routes
to the table for you.

For static routing, the static IP prefixes that you specify for your VPN configuration are propagated to the
route table when the status of the Site-to-Site VPN connection is UP. Similarly, for dynamic routing, the
BGP-advertised routes from your customer gateway are propagated to the route table when the status
of the Site-to-Site VPN connection is UP.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Update Your Security Group

Note
If your connection is interrupted, any propagated routes in your route table are not
automatically removed. You may have to disable route propagation to remove the propagated
routes; for example, if you want traffic to fail over to a static route.

To enable route propagation using the console

1. In the navigation pane, choose Route Tables, and then select the route table that's associated with
the subnet. By default, this is the main route table for the VPC.
2. On the Route Propagation tab in the details pane, choose Edit, select the virtual private gateway
that you created in the previous procedure, and then choose Save.

Note
For static routing, if you do not enable route propagation, you must manually enter the static
routes used by your Site-to-Site VPN connection. To do this, select your route table, choose
Routes, Edit. For Destination, add the static route used by your Site-to-Site VPN connection. For
Target, select the virtual private gateway ID, and choose Save.

To disable route propagation using the console

1. In the navigation pane, choose Route Tables, and then select the route table that's associated with
the subnet.
2. Choose Route Propagation, Edit. Clear the Propagate check box for the virtual private gateway, and
choose Save.

To enable route propagation using the command line or API

• EnableVgwRoutePropagation (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• enable-vgw-route-propagation (AWS CLI)
• Enable-EC2VgwRoutePropagation (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

To disable route propagation using the command line or API

• DisableVgwRoutePropagation (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• disable-vgw-route-propagation (AWS CLI)
• Disable-EC2VgwRoutePropagation (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Update Your Security Group

To allow access to instances in your VPC from your network, you must update your security group rules
to enable inbound SSH, RDP, and ICMP access.

To add rules to your security group to enable inbound SSH, RDP and ICMP access

1. In the navigation pane, choose Security Groups, and then select the default security group for the
VPC.
2. On the Inbound tab in the details pane, add rules that allow inbound SSH, RDP, and ICMP access
from your network, and then choose Save. For more information about adding inbound rules, see
Adding, Removing, and Updating Rules in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

For more information about working with security groups using the AWS CLI, see Security Groups for
Your VPC in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

14
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Create a Site-to-Site VPN Connection and
Configure the Customer Gateway Device

Create a Site-to-Site VPN Connection and

Configure the Customer Gateway Device
After you create the Site-to-Site VPN connection, download the configuration information and use it to
configure the customer gateway device or software application.

To create a Site-to-Site VPN connection and configure the customer gateway

1. In the navigation pane, choose Site-to-Site VPN Connections, Create VPN Connection.
2. Complete the following information, and then choose Create VPN Connection:

• (Optional) For Name tag, enter a name for your Site-to-Site VPN connection. Doing so creates a
tag with a key of Name and the value that you specify.
• Select the virtual private gateway that you created earlier.
• Select the customer gateway that you created earlier.
• Select one of the routing options based on whether your VPN router supports Border Gateway
Protocol (BGP):
• If your VPN router supports BGP, choose Dynamic (requires BGP).
• If your VPN router does not support BGP, choose Static. For Static IP Prefixes, specify each IP
prefix for the private network of your Site-to-Site VPN connection.
• Under Tunnel Options, you can optionally specify the following information for each tunnel:
• A size /30 CIDR block from the 169.254.0.0/16 range for the inside tunnel IP addresses.
• The IKE pre-shared key (PSK). The following versions are supported: IKEv1 or IKEv2.
• Advanced tunnel information, which includes the encryption algorithms for phases 1 and 2 of
the IKE negotiations, the integrity algorithms for phases 1 and 2 of the IKE negotiations, the
Diffie-Hellman groups for phases 1 and 2 of the IKE negotiations, the IKE version, the phase
1 and 2 lifetimes, the rekey margin time, the rekey fuzz, the replay window size, and the dead
peer detection interval.

For more information about these options, see Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Options for Your Site-to-
Site VPN Connection (p. 4).

It may take a few minutes to create the Site-to-Site VPN connection. When it's ready, select the
connection and choose Download Configuration.
3. In the Download Configuration dialog box, select the vendor, platform, and software that
corresponds to your customer gateway device or software, and then choose Yes, Download.

To create a Site-to-Site VPN connection using the command line or API

• CreateVpnConnection (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• create-vpn-connection (AWS CLI)
• New-EC2VpnConnection (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Configure the Customer Gateway Device

Give the configuration file that you downloaded to your network administrator, along with this guide:
Amazon VPC Network Administrator Guide. The network administrator configures the customer gateway
device with the settings that match the customer gateway. After the network administrator configures
the customer gateway device, the Site-to-Site VPN connection is operational.

15
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Editing Static Routes for a Site-to-Site VPN Connection

Editing Static Routes for a Site-to-Site VPN

Connection
For static routing, you can add, modify, or remove the static routes for your VPN configuration.

To add, modify, or remove a static route

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Site-to-Site VPN Connections.
3. Choose Static Routes, Edit.
4. Modify your existing static IP prefixes, or choose Remove to delete them. Choose Add Another Rule
to add a new IP prefix to your configuration. When you are done, choose Save.

Note
If you have not enabled route propagation for your route table, you must manually update
the routes in your route table to reflect the updated static IP prefixes in your Site-to-Site VPN
connection. For more information, see Enable Route Propagation in Your Route Table (p. 13).

To add a static route using the command line or API

• CreateVpnConnectionRoute (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• create-vpn-connection-route (AWS CLI)
• New-EC2VpnConnectionRoute (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

To delete a static route using the command line or API

• DeleteVpnConnectionRoute (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• delete-vpn-connection-route (AWS CLI)
• Remove-EC2VpnConnectionRoute (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

16
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Single and Multiple Connection Examples

Site-to-Site VPN Architectures

The following are common Site-to-Site VPN architectures:

• the section called “Single and Multiple Connection Examples” (p. 17)
• the section called “Using Redundant Site-to-Site VPN Connections to Provide Failover” (p. 21)
• the section called “Secure Communication Between Sites Using VPN CloudHub” (p. 19)

Site-to-Site VPN Single and Multiple Connection

Examples
The following diagrams illustrate single and multiple Site-to-Site VPN connections.

Single Site-to-Site VPN Connection

The VPC has an attached virtual private gateway, and your remote network includes a customer gateway,
which you must configure to enable the Site-to-Site VPN connection. You set up the routing so that any
traffic from the VPC bound for your network is routed to the virtual private gateway.

Single Site-to-Site VPN Connection with a Transit

Gateway
The VPC has an attached transit gateway, and your remote network includes a customer gateway, which
you must configure to enable the Site-to-Site VPN connection. You set up the routing so that any traffic
from the VPC bound for your network is routed to the transit gateway.

17
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Multiple Site-to-Site VPN Connections

Multiple Site-to-Site VPN Connections

The VPC has an attached virtual private gateway, and your remote network includes a customer gateway,
which you must configure to enable the Site-to-Site VPN connection. You set up the routing so that any
traffic from the VPC bound for your network is routed to the virtual private gateway.

When you create multiple Site-to-Site VPN connections to a single VPC, you can configure a second
customer gateway to create a redundant connection to the same external location. You can also use it to
create Site-to-Site VPN connections to multiple geographic locations.

18
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Multiple Site-to-Site VPN
Connections with a Transit Gateway

Multiple Site-to-Site VPN Connections with a Transit

Gateway
The VPC has an attached transit gateway, and your remote network includes a customer gateway, which
you must configure to enable the Site-to-Site VPN connection. You set up the routing so that any traffic
from the VPC bound for your network is routed to the transit gateway.

When you create multiple Site-to-Site VPN connections to a single VPC, you can configure a second
customer gateway to create a redundant connection to the same external location. You can also use it to
create Site-to-Site VPN connections to multiple geographic locations.

Providing Secure Communication Between Sites

Using VPN CloudHub
If you have multiple AWS Site-to-Site VPN connections, you can provide secure communication between
sites using the AWS VPN CloudHub. This enables your remote sites to communicate with each other, and
not just with the VPC. The VPN CloudHub operates on a simple hub-and-spoke model that you can use
with or without a VPC. This design is suitable for customers with multiple branch offices and existing
internet connections who'd like to implement a convenient, potentially low-cost hub-and-spoke model
for primary or backup connectivity between these remote offices.

The following diagram shows the VPN CloudHub architecture, with blue dashed lines indicating network
traffic between remote sites being routed over their Site-to-Site VPN connections.

19
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Secure Communication Between Sites Using VPN CloudHub

To use the AWS VPN CloudHub, you must create a virtual private gateway with multiple customer
gateways. You must use a unique Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Autonomous System Number (ASN)
for each customer gateway. Customer gateways advertise the appropriate routes (BGP prefixes) over
their Site-to-Site VPN connections. These routing advertisements are received and re-advertised to each
BGP peer, enabling each site to send data to and receive data from the other sites. The sites must not
have overlapping IP ranges. Each site can also send and receive data from the VPC as if they were using a
standard Site-to-Site VPN connection.

Sites that use AWS Direct Connect connections to the virtual private gateway can also be part of the
AWS VPN CloudHub. For example, your corporate headquarters in New York can have an AWS Direct
Connect connection to the VPC and your branch offices can use Site-to-Site VPN connections to the VPC.
The branch offices in Los Angeles and Miami can send and receive data with each other and with your
corporate headquarters, all using the AWS VPN CloudHub.

To configure the AWS VPN CloudHub, you use the AWS Management Console to create multiple
customer gateways, each with the public IP address of the gateway and the ASN. Next, you create a Site-
to-Site VPN connection from each customer gateway to a common virtual private gateway. Each Site-to-
Site VPN connection must advertise its specific BGP routes. This is done using the network statements in
the VPN configuration files for the Site-to-Site VPN connection. The network statements differ slightly
depending on the type of router you use.

When using an AWS VPN CloudHub, you pay typical Amazon VPC Site-to-Site VPN connection rates. You
are billed the connection rate for each hour that each VPN is connected to the virtual private gateway.
When you send data from one site to another using the AWS VPN CloudHub, there is no cost to send
data from your site to the virtual private gateway. You only pay standard AWS data transfer rates for
data that is relayed from the virtual private gateway to your endpoint. For example, if you have a site
in Los Angeles and a second site in New York and both sites have a Site-to-Site VPN connection to the
virtual private gateway, you pay $.05 per hour for each Site-to-Site VPN connection (for a total of $.10

20
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Using Redundant Site-to-Site VPN
Connections to Provide Failover

per hour). You also pay the standard AWS data transfer rates for all data that you send from Los Angeles
to New York (and vice versa) that traverses each Site-to-Site VPN connection; network traffic sent over
the Site-to-Site VPN connection to the virtual private gateway is free but network traffic sent over the
Site-to-Site VPN connection from the virtual private gateway to the endpoint is billed at the standard
AWS data transfer rate. For more information, see Site-to-Site VPN Connection Pricing.

Using Redundant Site-to-Site VPN Connections to

Provide Failover
As described earlier, a Site-to-Site VPN connection has two tunnels to help ensure connectivity in case
one of the Site-to-Site VPN connections becomes unavailable. To protect against a loss of connectivity in
case your customer gateway becomes unavailable, you can set up a second Site-to-Site VPN connection
to your VPC and virtual private gateway by using a second customer gateway. By using redundant
Site-to-Site VPN connections and customer gateways, you can perform maintenance on one of your
customer gateways while traffic continues to flow over the second customer gateway's Site-to-Site VPN
connection. To establish redundant Site-to-Site VPN connections and customer gateways on your remote
network, you need to set up a second Site-to-Site VPN connection. The customer gateway IP address for
the second Site-to-Site VPN connection must be publicly accessible.

The following diagram shows the two tunnels of each Site-to-Site VPN connection and two customer
gateways.

21
AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Using Redundant Site-to-Site VPN
Connections to Provide Failover

22
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Using Redundant Site-to-Site VPN
Connections to Provide Failover

Dynamically routed Site-to-Site VPN connections use the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to exchange
routing information between your customer gateways and the virtual private gateways. Statically routed
Site-to-Site VPN connections require you to enter static routes for the remote network on your side of
the customer gateway. BGP-advertised and statically entered route information allow gateways on both
sides to determine which tunnels are available and reroute traffic if a failure occurs. We recommend that
you configure your network to use the routing information provided by BGP (if available) to select an
available path. The exact configuration depends on the architecture of your network.

23
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Identifying a Site-to-Site VPN Connection

Working with Site-to-Site VPN

You can work with Site-to-Site VPN resources using the Amazon VPC console or the AWS CLI.

Contents
• Identifying a Site-to-Site VPN Connection (p. 24)
• Migrating from AWS Classic VPN to AWS VPN (p. 25)
• Testing the Site-to-Site VPN Connection (p. 26)
• Deleting a Site-to-Site VPN Connection (p. 27)
• Modifying a Site-to-Site VPN Connection's Target Gateway (p. 28)
• Modifying Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Options (p. 31)
• Changing the Customer Gateway for a Site-to-Site VPN Connection (p. 32)
• Replacing Compromised Credentials (p. 32)
• Rotating Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Endpoint Certificates (p. 33)

Identifying a Site-to-Site VPN Connection

You can find out the category of your Site-to-Site VPN connection by using the Amazon VPC console or a
command line tool.

To identify the Site-to-Site VPN category using the console

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Site-to-Site VPN Connections.
3. Select the Site-to-Site VPN connection, and check the value for Category in the details pane. A value
of VPN indicates an AWS VPN connection. A value of VPN-Classic indicates an AWS Classic VPN
connection.

To identify the Site-to-Site VPN category using a command line tool

• You can use the describe-vpn-connections AWS CLI command. In the output that's returned, take
note of the Category value. A value of VPN indicates an AWS VPN connection. A value of VPN-
Classic indicates an AWS Classic VPN connection.

In the following example, the Site-to-Site VPN connection is an AWS VPN connection.

aws ec2 describe-vpn-connections --vpn-connection-ids vpn-1a2b3c4d

{
"VpnConnections": [
{
"VpnConnectionId": "vpn-1a2b3c4d",

...

"State": "available",
"VpnGatewayId": "vgw-11aa22bb",
"CustomerGatewayId": "cgw-ab12cd34",
"Type": "ipsec.1",
"Category": "VPN"

24
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Migrating from AWS Classic VPN to AWS VPN

}
]
}

Alternatively, use one of the following commands:

• DescribeVpnConnections (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• Get-EC2VpnConnection (Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Migrating from AWS Classic VPN to AWS VPN

If your existing Site-to-Site VPN connection is an AWS Classic VPN connection, you can migrate to
an AWS VPN connection by creating a new virtual private gateway and Site-to-Site VPN connection,
detaching the old virtual private gateway from your VPC, and attaching the new virtual private gateway
to your VPC.

If your existing virtual private gateway is associated with multiple Site-to-Site VPN connections, you
must recreate each Site-to-Site VPN connection for the new virtual private gateway. If there are multiple
AWS Direct Connect private virtual interfaces attached to your virtual private gateway, you must recreate
each private virtual interface for the new virtual private gateway. For more information, see Creating a
Virtual Interface in the AWS Direct Connect User Guide.

If your existing Site-to-Site VPN connection is an AWS VPN connection, you cannot migrate to an AWS
Classic VPN connection.
Note
During this procedure, connectivity over the current VPC connection is interrupted when
you disable route propagation and detach the old virtual private gateway from your VPC.
Connectivity is restored when the new virtual private gateway is attached to your VPC and the
new Site-to-Site VPN connection is active. Ensure that you plan for the expected downtime.

To migrate to an AWS VPN connection

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Virtual Private Gateways, Create Virtual Private Gateway and
create a virtual private gateway.
3. In the navigation pane, choose Site-to-Site VPN Connections, Create VPN Connection. Specify the
following information, and choose Yes, Create.

• Virtual Private Gateway: Select the virtual private gateway that you created in the previous step.
• Customer Gateway: Choose Existing, and select the existing customer gateway for your current
AWS Classic VPN connection.
• Specify the routing options as required.
4. Select the new Site-to-Site VPN connection and choose Download Configuration. Download the
appropriate configuration file for your customer gateway device.
5. Use the configuration file to configure VPN tunnels on your customer gateway device. For examples,
see the Amazon VPC Network Administrator Guide. Do not enable the tunnels yet. Contact your
vendor if you need guidance on keeping the newly configured tunnels disabled.
6. (Optional) Create test VPC and attach the virtual private gateway to the test VPC. Change the
encryption domain/source destination addresses as required, and test connectivity from a host in
your local network to a test instance in the test VPC.
7. If you are using route propagation for your route table, choose Route Tables in the navigation pane.
Select the route table for your VPC, and choose Route Propagation, Edit. Clear the check box for the
old virtual private gateway and choose Save.

25
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Testing the Site-to-Site VPN Connection

Note
From this step onwards, connectivity is interrupted until the new virtual private gateway is
attached and the new Site-to-Site VPN connection is active.
8. In the navigation pane, choose Virtual Private Gateways. Select the old virtual private gateway
and choose Actions, Detach from VPC, Yes, Detach. Select the new virtual private gateway, and
choose Actions, Attach to VPC. Specify the VPC for your Site-to-Site VPN connection, and choose
Yes, Attach.
9. In the navigation pane, choose Route Tables. Select the route table for your VPC and do one of the
following:

• If you are using route propagation, choose Route Propagation, Edit. Select the new virtual private
gateway that's attached to the VPC and choose Save.
• If you are using static routes, choose Routes, Edit. Modify the route to point to the new virtual
private gateway, and choose Save.
10. Enable the new tunnels on your customer gateway device and disable the old tunnels. To bring the
tunnel up, you must initiate the connection from your local network.

If applicable, check your route table to ensure that the routes are being propagated. The routes
propagate to the route table when the status of the VPN tunnel is UP.
Note
If you need to revert to your previous configuration, detach the new virtual private gateway
and follow steps 8 and 9 to re-attach the old virtual private gateway and update your
routes.
11. If you no longer need your AWS Classic VPN connection and do not want to continue incurring
charges for it, remove the previous tunnel configurations from your customer gateway device, and
delete the Site-to-Site VPN connection. To do this, go to Site-to-Site VPN Connections, select the
Site-to-Site VPN connection, and choose Delete.
Important
After you've deleted the AWS Classic VPN connection, you cannot revert or migrate your
new AWS VPN connection back to an AWS Classic VPN connection.

Testing the Site-to-Site VPN Connection

After you create the AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection and configure the customer gateway, you can
launch an instance and test the connection by pinging the instance. You need to use an AMI that
responds to ping requests, and you need to ensure that your instance's security group is configured to
enable inbound ICMP. We recommend you use one of the Amazon Linux AMIs. If you are using instances
running Windows Server, you'll need to log in to the instance and enable inbound ICMPv4 on the
Windows firewall in order to ping the instance.
Important
You must configure any security group or network ACL in your VPC that filters traffic to the
instance to allow inbound and outbound ICMP traffic.

To test end-to-end connectivity

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. On the dashboard, choose Launch Instance.
3. On the Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) page, choose an AMI, and then choose Select.
4. Choose an instance type, and then choose Next: Configure Instance Details.
5. On the Configure Instance Details page, for Network, select your VPC. For Subnet, select your
subnet. Choose Next until you reach the Configure Security Group page.

26
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Deleting a Site-to-Site VPN Connection

6. Select the Select an existing security group option, and then select the default group that you
modified earlier. Choose Review and Launch.
7. Review the settings that you've chosen. Make any changes that you need, and then choose Launch
to select a key pair and launch the instance.
8. After the instance is running, get its private IP address (for example, 10.0.0.4). The Amazon EC2
console displays the address as part of the instance's details.
9. From a computer in your network that is behind the customer gateway, use the ping command with
the instance's private IP address. A successful response is similar to the following:

ping 10.0.0.4

Pinging 10.0.0.4 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 10.0.0.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Reply from 10.0.0.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 10.0.0.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Ping statistics for 10.0.0.4:

Packets: Sent = 3, Received = 3, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milliseconds:

Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

You can now use SSH or RDP to connect to your instance in the VPC. For more information about how
to connect to a Linux instance, see Connect to Your Linux Instance in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for
Linux Instances. For more information about how to connect to a Windows instance, see Connect to Your
Windows Instance in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Windows Instances.

Deleting a Site-to-Site VPN Connection

If you no longer need a AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection, you can delete it.
Important
If you delete your Site-to-Site VPN connection and then create a new one, you have to
download new configuration information and have your network administrator reconfigure the
customer gateway.

To delete a Site-to-Site VPN connection using the console

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Site-to-Site VPN Connections.
3. Select the Site-to-Site VPN connection and choose Actions, Delete.
4. Choose Delete.

If you no longer require a customer gateway, you can delete it. You can't delete a customer gateway
that's being used in a Site-to-Site VPN connection.

To delete a customer gateway using the console

1. In the navigation pane, choose Customer Gateways.

2. Select the customer gateway to delete and choose Actions, Delete Customer Gateway.
3. Choose Yes, Delete.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Modifying a Site-to-Site VPN Connection's Target Gateway

If you no longer require a virtual private gateway for your VPC, you can detach it.

To detach a virtual private gateway using the console

1. In the navigation pane, choose Virtual Private Gateways.

2. Select the virtual private gateway and choose Actions, Detach from VPC.
3. Choose Yes, Detach.

If you no longer require a detached virtual private gateway, you can delete it. You can't delete a virtual
private gateway that's still attached to a VPC.

To delete a virtual private gateway using the console

1. In the navigation pane, choose Virtual Private Gateways.

2. Select the virtual private gateway to delete and choose Actions, Delete Virtual Private Gateway.
3. Choose Yes, Delete.

To delete a Site-to-Site VPN connection using the command line or API

• DeleteVpnConnection (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• delete-vpn-connection (AWS CLI)
• Remove-EC2VpnConnection (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

To delete a customer gateway using the command line or API

• DeleteCustomerGateway (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• delete-customer-gateway (AWS CLI)
• Remove-EC2CustomerGateway (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

To detach a virtual private gateway using the command line or API

• DetachVpnGateway (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• detach-vpn-gateway (AWS CLI)
• Dismount-EC2VpnGateway (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

To delete a virtual private gateway using the command line or API

• DeleteVpnGateway (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• delete-vpn-gateway (AWS CLI)
• Remove-EC2VpnGateway (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)

Modifying a Site-to-Site VPN Connection's Target

Gateway
You can modify the target gateway of AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection. The following migration options
are available:

• An existing virtual private gateway to a transit gateway

28
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Step 1: Create the Transit Gateway

• An existing virtual private gateway to another virtual private gateway

• An existing transit gateway to another transit gateway
• An existing transit gateway to a virtual private gateway

The following tasks help you complete the migration to a new gateway.

Tasks
• Step 1: Create the Transit Gateway (p. 29)
• Step 2: Delete Your Static Routes (Required for a Static VPN Connection Migrating to a Transit
Gateway) (p. 29)
• Step 3: Migrate to a New Gateway (p. 30)
• Step 4: Update VPC Route Tables (p. 30)
• Step 5: Update the Transit Gateway Routing (Required When the New Gateway is a Transit
Gateway) (p. 31)
• Step 6: Update the Customer Gateway ASN (Required When the New Gateway has a Different ASN
from the Old Gateway) (p. 31)

Step 1: Create the Transit Gateway

Before you perform the migration to the new gateway, you must configure the new gateway. For
information about adding a virtual private gateway, see the section called “Create a Virtual Private
Gateway” (p. 13). For more information about adding a transit gateway, see Create a Transit Gateway in
Amazon VPC Transit Gateways.

If the new target gateway is a transit gateway, attach the VPCs to the transit gateway. For information
about VPC attachments, see Transit Gateway Attachments to a VPC in Amazon VPC Transit Gateways.

When you modify the target from a virtual private gateway to a transit gateway, you can optionally set
the transit gateway ASN to be the same value as the virtual private gateway ASN. If you choose to have
a different ASN, then you must set the ASN on your customer gateway device to the transit gateway
ASN. For more information, see the section called “Step 6: Update the Customer Gateway ASN (Required
When the New Gateway has a Different ASN from the Old Gateway)” (p. 31).

Step 2: Delete Your Static Routes (Required for

a Static VPN Connection Migrating to a Transit
Gateway)
This step is required when you migrate from a virtual private gateway with static routes to a transit
gateway.

You must delete the static routes before you migrate to the new gateway.
Tip
Keep a copy of the static route before you delete it. You will need to add back these routes to
the transit gateway after the VPN connection migration is complete.

To delete a route from a route table

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Route Tables, and then select the route table.
3. In the Routes tab, choose Edit, and then choose Remove for the static route to the virtual private
gateway..

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Step 3: Migrate to a New Gateway

4. Choose Save when you are done.

Step 3: Migrate to a New Gateway

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Site-to-Site VPN Connections.
3. Select the Site-to-Site VPN connection and choose Actions, Modify VPN Connection.
4. Under Change Target, do the following:

a. For Target Type, choose the gateway type.

b. Configure the connection target:

[Virtual private gateway] For Target VPN Gateway ID, choose the virtual private gateway ID.

[Transit Gateway] For Target transit gateway ID, choose the transit gateway ID.
5. Choose Save.

To modify a Site-to-Site VPN connection using the command line or API

• ModifyVpnConnection (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• modify-vpn-connection (AWS CLI)

Step 4: Update VPC Route Tables

After you migrate to the new gateway, you might need to modify your VPC route table. The following
table provides information about the actions you need to take. For information about updating VPC
route tables, see Route Tables in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

VPN Gateway Target Modification Required VPC Route Table Updates

Existing gateway New gateway VPC route table change

Virtual private gateway with Transit gateway Add a route that points to the
propagated routes transit gateway ID.

Virtual private gateway with Virtual private gateway with There is no action required.
propagated routes propagated routes

Virtual gateway with propagated Virtual private gateway with Add an entry that contains the
routes static route new virtual private gateway ID.

Virtual gateway with static Transit gateway Update the VPC route table and
routes change the entry that contains
to the virtual private gateway ID
to the transit gateway ID.

Virtual gateway with static Virtual private gateway with Update the entry that points
routes static routes to the virtual private gateway
ID to be the new virtual private
gateway ID.

Virtual gateway with static Virtual private gateway with Delete the entry that contains
routes propagated routes the virtual private gateway ID.

30
 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Step 5: Update the Transit Gateway Routing (Required
When the New Gateway is a Transit Gateway)

Existing gateway New gateway VPC route table change

Transit Gateway Virtual private gateway with Update the entry that contains
static routes the transit gateway to the
virtual private gateway ID.

Transit Gateway Virtual private gateway with Delete the entry that contains
propagated routes the transit gateway ID.

Transit Gateway Transit Gateway Update the entry that contains

the transit gateway ID to the
new transit gateway ID.

Step 5: Update the Transit Gateway Routing

(Required When the New Gateway is a Transit
Gateway)
When the new gateway is a transit gateway, modify the transit gateway route table to allow traffic
between the VPC and the Site-to-Site VPN. For information about transit gateway routing, see Transit
Gateway Route Tables in the Amazon VPC Transit Gateways.
Important
If you deleted VPN static routes, you must add the static routes to the transit gateway route
table.

Step 6: Update the Customer Gateway ASN (Required

When the New Gateway has a Different ASN from the
Old Gateway)
When the new gateway has a different ASN from the old gateway, you must update the ASN on your
customer gateway device to point to the new ASN.

Modifying Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Options

You can modify the tunnel options for the VPN tunnels in your Site-to-Site VPN connection. You can
modify one VPN tunnel at a time.
Important
When you modify a VPN tunnel, connectivity over the tunnel is interrupted for up to several
minutes. Ensure that you plan for the expected downtime.

To modify the VPN tunnel options using the console

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Site-to-Site VPN Connections.
3. Select the Site-to-Site VPN connection, and choose Actions, Modify VPN Tunnel Options.
4. For VPN Tunnel Outside IP Address, choose the tunnel endpoint IP of the VPN tunnel that you're
modifying options for.
5. Choose or enter new values for the tunnel options. For more information, see Site-to-Site VPN
Tunnel Options for Your Site-to-Site VPN Connection (p. 4).

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Changing the Customer Gateway
for a Site-to-Site VPN Connection

6. Choose Save.

To modify the VPN tunnel options using the command line or API

• modify-vpn-tunnel-options (AWS CLI)

• ModifyVpnTunnelOptions (Amazon EC2 Query API)

Changing the Customer Gateway for a Site-to-Site

VPN Connection
You can change the customer gateway of your Site-to-Site VPN connection by using the Amazon VPC
console or a command line tool.

To identify the Site-to-Site VPN category using the console

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Site-to-Site VPN Connections.
3. Select the Site-to-Site VPN connection, and then choose Actions, Modify VPN Connection.
4. For Target Type, choose Customer Gateway.
5. For Target Customer Gateway ID, choose the ID for the customer gateway that you want to use for
the connection.

To change the customer gateway using the command line or API

• ModifyVpnTunnelC (Amazon EC2 Query API)

• modify-vpn-tunnel (AWS CLI)

Replacing Compromised Credentials

If you believe that the tunnel credentials for your Site-to-Site VPN connection have been compromised,
you can change the IKE pre-shared key. To do so, delete the Site-to-Site VPN connection, create a new
one using the same virtual private gateway, and configure the new keys on your customer gateway. You
can specify your own pre-shared keys when you create the Site-to-Site VPN connection. You also need
to confirm that the tunnel's inside and outside addresses match, because these might change when
you recreate the Site-to-Site VPN connection. While you perform the procedure, communication with
your instances in the VPC stops, but the instances continue to run uninterrupted. After the network
administrator implements the new configuration information, your Site-to-Site VPN connection uses the
new credentials, and the network connection to your instances in the VPC resumes.
Important
This procedure requires assistance from your network administrator group.

To change the IKE pre-shared key

1. Delete the Site-to-Site VPN connection. For more information, see Deleting a Site-to-Site VPN
Connection (p. 27). You don't need to delete the VPC or the virtual private gateway.
2. Create a new Site-to-Site VPN connection and specify your own pre-shared keys for the tunnels or
let AWS generate new pre-shared keys for you. For more information, see Create a Site-to-Site VPN
Connection and Configure the Customer Gateway Device (p. 15).
3. Download the new configuration file.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Rotating Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Endpoint Certificates

To change the certificate for the AWS side of the tunnel endpoint

• Rotate the certificate. For more information, see the section called “Rotating Site-to-Site VPN
Tunnel Endpoint Certificates” (p. 33).

To change the certificate on the customer gateway device

1. Create a new certificate, For information about creating an ACM certificate, see Getting Started in
the AWS Certificate Manager User Guide.
2. Add the certificate to the customer gateway device.

Rotating Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel Endpoint

Certificates
You can rotate the certificates on the tunnel endpoints on the AWS side by using by using the Amazon
VPC console. When a tunnel endpoint’s certificate is close to expiration, AWS automatically rotates
the certificate using the service-linked role. For more information, see the section called “Permissions
Granted by the Service-Linked Role” (p. 37).

To identify the Site-to-Site VPN category using the console

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Site-to-Site VPN Connections.
3. Select the Site-to-Site VPN connection, and then choose Actions, Rotate Tunnel Certificates.
4. Select the tunnel endpoint whose certificate you want to rotate.
5. Choose Save.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
IAM Policies for Your Site-to-Site VPN Connection

Authentication and Access Control

for Your AWS Site-to-Site VPN
AWS uses security credentials to identify you and to grant you access to your AWS resources. You can use
features of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to allow other users, services, and applications to
use your AWS resources fully or in a limited way, without sharing your security credentials.

By default, IAM users do not have permission to create, view, or modify AWS resources. To allow an IAM
user to access resources, such as Site-to-Site VPN connections, virtual private gateways, and customer
gateways, and to perform tasks, you must:

• Create an IAM policy that grants the IAM user permission to use the specific resources and API actions
they need
• Attach the policy to the IAM user or the group to which the IAM user belongs

When you attach a policy to a user or group of users, it allows or denies the users permission to perform
the specified tasks on the specified resources.

To work with a Site-to-Site VPN connections, virtual private gateways, and customer gateways, one of
the following AWS managed policies might meet your needs:

• PowerUserAccess
• ReadOnlyAccess
• AmazonEC2FullAccess
• AmazonEC2ReadOnlyAccess

For more information about policies, see IAM Policies for Amazon EC2 in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

IAM Policies for Your Site-to-Site VPN Connection

You can use resource-level permissions to restrict what resources users can use when they invoke APIs.
You can specify the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for the VPN connection in the Resource element
of IAM permission policy statements (for example, arn:aws:ec2:us-west-2:123456789012:vpn-
connection/vpn-0d4e855ab7d3536fb).

The following actions support resource-level permissions for the VPN connection resource:

• ec2:CreateVpnConnection
• ec2:ModifyVpnConnection
• ec2:ModifyVpnTunnelOptions

The following are the supported condition keys.

Condition key Description Valid values Type

ec2:AuthenticationType The authentication Pre Shared Keys, String

type for the VPN tunnel Certificates
endpoints.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
IAM Policies for Your Site-to-Site VPN Connection

Condition key Description Valid values Type

ec2:DPDTimeoutSeconds The duration after An integer between 0 Numeric

which DPD timeout and 30.
occurs.

ec2:GatewayType The gateway type for VGW, TGW String

the VPN endpoint on
the AWS side of the
VPN connection.

ec2:IKEVersions The internet key ikev1, ikev2 String

exchange (IKE) versions
that are permitted for
the VPN tunnel.

ec2:InsideTunnelCidr The range of inside IP See Site-to-Site VPN String

addresses for the VPN Tunnel Options for
tunnel. Your Site-to-Site VPN
Connection (p. 4).

ec2:Phase1DHGroupNumbers
The Diffie-Hellman 2, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, Numeric
groups that are 23, 24
permitted for the VPN
tunnel for the phase 1
IKE negotiations.

ec2:Phase2DHGroupNumbers
The Diffie-Hellman 2, 5, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, Numeric
groups that are 22, 23, 24
permitted for the VPN
tunnel for the phase 2
IKE negotiations.

ec2:Phase1EncryptionAlgorithms
The encryption AES128, AES256 String
algorithms that are
permitted for the VPN
tunnel for the phase 1
IKE negotiations.

ec2:Phase2EncryptionAlgorithms
The encryption AES128, AES256 String
algorithms that are
permitted for the VPN
tunnel for the phase 2
IKE negotiations.

ec2:Phase1IntegrityAlgorithms
The integrity SHA1, SHA2-256 String
algorithms that are
permitted for the VPN
tunnel for the phase 1
IKE negotiations.

ec2:Phase2IntegrityAlgorithms
The integrity SHA1, SHA2-256 String
algorithms that are
permitted for the VPN
tunnel for the phase 2
IKE negotiations.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
IAM Policies for Your Site-to-Site VPN Connection

Condition key Description Valid values Type

ec2:Phase1LifetimeSeconds
The lifetime in seconds An integer between 900 Numeric
for phase 1 of the IKE and 28,800.
negotiation.

ec2:Phase2LifetimeSeconds
The lifetime in seconds An integer between 900 Numeric
for phase 2 of the IKE and 3,600.
negotiation.

ec2:PresharedKeys The pre-shared key See Site-to-Site VPN String

(PSK) to establish the Tunnel Options for
initial IKE security Your Site-to-Site VPN
association between the Connection (p. 4).
virtual private gateway
and customer gateway.

ec2:RekeyFuzzPercentage The percentage of An integer between 0 Numeric

the rekey window and100.
(determined by the
rekey margin time)
within which the rekey
time is randomly
selected.

ec2:RekeyMarginTimeSeconds
The margin time before An integer from 60 and Numeric
the phase 2 lifetime above.
expires, during which
AWS performs an IKE
rekey.

ec2:RoutingType The routing type for the Static, BGP String

VPN connection.

You can allow or deny specific values for each supported condition key using IAM condition operators.
For more information, see IAM JSON Policy Elements: Condition in the IAM User Guide.

The following example policy enables users to create VPN connections, but only VPN connections with
static routing types.

{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Sid": "statement1",
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"ec2:CreateVpnConnection"
],
"Resource": "*",
"Condition": {
"StringEquals": {
"ec2:RoutingType": [
"static"
]
}
}
}
]

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Service-Linked Role

AWS Site-to-Site VPN Service-Linked Role

AWS Site-to-Site VPN uses service-linked roles for the permissions that it requires to call other AWS
services on your behalf. For more information, see Using Service-Linked Roles in the IAM User Guide.

Permissions Granted by the Service-Linked Role

When you work with a Site-to-Site VPN connection that uses certificate-based authentication, Site-to-
Site VPN uses the service-linked role named AWSServiceRoleForVPCS2SVPN to call the following AWS
Certificate Manager (ACM) actions on your behalf:

• acm:ExportCertificate
• acm:DescribeCertificatee
• acm:ListCertificates
• acm-pca:DescribeCertificateAuthority

Create the Service-Linked Role

You don't need to manually create the AWSServiceRoleForVPCS2SVPN role. Site-to-Site VPN creates
this role for you when you create a customer gateway with an associated ACM private certificate.

For a Site-to-Site VPN user to create a service-linked role on your behalf, you must have the required
permissions. For information about service-linked roles, see Service-Linked Role Permissions in the IAM
User Guide.

Edit the Service-Linked Role

You can edit the description of AWSServiceRoleForVPCS2SVPN using IAM. For information about
editing service-linked roles, see Editing a Service-Linked Role in the IAM User Guide.

Delete the Service-Linked Role

If you no longer need to use the Site-to-Site VPN connections with certificate-based authentication, we
recommend that you delete AWSServiceRoleForVPCS2SVPN.

You can delete this service-linked role only after you delete all customer gateways that have an
associated ACM private certificate. This ensures that you cannot inadvertently remove permission to
access your ACM certificates in use by Site-to-Site VPN connections.

You can use the IAM console, the IAM CLI, or the IAM API to delete service-linked roles. For information
about deleting service-linked roles, see Deleting a Service-Linked Role in the IAM User Guide.

After you delete AWSServiceRoleForVPCS2SVPN, Amazon VPC creates the role again for a customer
gateway with an associated ACM private certificate.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Monitoring Tools

Monitoring Your Site-to-Site VPN

Connection
Monitoring is an important part of maintaining the reliability, availability, and performance of your
AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection. You should collect monitoring data from all of the parts of your
AWS solution so that you can more easily debug a multi-point failure if one occurs. Before you start
monitoring your Site-to-Site VPN connection; however, you should create a monitoring plan that
includes answers to the following questions:

• What are your monitoring goals?

• What resources will you monitor?
• How often will you monitor these resources?
• What monitoring tools will you use?
• Who will perform the monitoring tasks?
• Who should be notified when something goes wrong?

The next step is to establish a baseline for normal VPN performance in your environment, by measuring
performance at various times and under different load conditions. As you monitor your VPN, store
historical monitoring data so that you can compare it with current performance data, identify normal
performance patterns and performance anomalies, and devise methods to address issues.

To establish a baseline, you should monitor the following items:

• The state of your VPN tunnels

• Data into the tunnel
• Data out of the tunnel

Contents
• Monitoring Tools (p. 38)
• Monitoring VPN Tunnels Using Amazon CloudWatch (p. 39)

Monitoring Tools
AWS provides various tools that you can use to monitor a Site-to-Site VPN connection. You can configure
some of these tools to do the monitoring for you, while some of the tools require manual intervention.
We recommend that you automate monitoring tasks as much as possible.

Automated Monitoring Tools

You can use the following automated monitoring tools to watch a Site-to-Site VPN connection and
report when something is wrong:

• Amazon CloudWatch Alarms – Watch a single metric over a time period that you specify, and perform
one or more actions based on the value of the metric relative to a given threshold over a number of

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Manual Monitoring Tools

time periods. The action is a notification sent to an Amazon SNS topic. CloudWatch alarms do not
invoke actions simply because they are in a particular state; the state must have changed and been
maintained for a specified number of periods. For more information, see Monitoring VPN Tunnels
Using Amazon CloudWatch (p. 39).
• AWS CloudTrail Log Monitoring – Share log files between accounts, monitor CloudTrail log files in real
time by sending them to CloudWatch Logs, write log processing applications in Java, and validate that
your log files have not changed after delivery by CloudTrail. For more information, see Logging API
Calls Using AWS CloudTrail in the Amazon EC2 API Reference and Working with CloudTrail Log Files in
the AWS CloudTrail User Guide

Manual Monitoring Tools

Another important part of monitoring a Site-to-Site VPN connection involves manually monitoring those
items that the CloudWatch alarms don't cover. The Amazon VPC and CloudWatch console dashboards
provide an at-a-glance view of the state of your AWS environment.

• The Amazon VPC dashboard shows:

• Service health by region
• Site-to-Site VPN connections
• VPN tunnel status (In the navigation pane, choose Site-to-Site VPN Connections, select a Site-to-
Site VPN connection, and then choose Tunnel Details)
• The CloudWatch home page shows:
• Current alarms and status
• Graphs of alarms and resources
• Service health status

In addition, you can use CloudWatch to do the following:

• Create customized dashboards to monitor the services you care about
• Graph metric data to troubleshoot issues and discover trends
• Search and browse all your AWS resource metrics
• Create and edit alarms to be notified of problems

Monitoring VPN Tunnels Using Amazon

CloudWatch
You can monitor VPN tunnels using CloudWatch, which collects and processes raw data from the VPN
service into readable, near real-time metrics. These statistics are recorded for a period of 15 months, so
that you can access historical information and gain a better perspective on how your web application or
service is performing. VPN metric data is automatically sent to CloudWatch as it becomes available.
Important
CloudWatch metrics are not supported for AWS Classic VPN connections. For more information,
see Site-to-Site VPN Categories (p. 4).

For more information, see the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

VPN Tunnel Metrics and Dimensions

The following metrics are available for your VPN tunnels.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Viewing VPN Tunnel CloudWatch Metrics

Metric Description

TunnelState The state of the tunnel. For static VPNs, 0 indicates

DOWN and 1 indicates UP. For BGP VPNs, 1 indicates
ESTABLISHED and 0 is used for all other states.

Units: Boolean

TunnelDataIn The bytes received through the VPN tunnel. Each metric
data point represents the number of bytes received
after the previous data point. Use the Sum statistic to
show the total number of bytes received during the
period.

This metric counts the data after decryption.

Units: Bytes

TunnelDataOut The bytes sent through the VPN tunnel. Each metric
data point represents the number of bytes sent after
the previous data point. Use the Sum statistic to show
the total number of bytes sent during the period.

This metric counts the data before encryption.

Units: Bytes

To filter the metric data, use the following dimensions.

Dimension Description

VpnId Filters the metric data by the Site-to-Site VPN connection ID.

TunnelIpAddress Filters the metric data by the IP address of the tunnel for the virtual
private gateway.

Viewing VPN Tunnel CloudWatch Metrics

When you create a new Site-to-Site VPN connection, the VPN service sends the following metrics about
your VPN tunnels to CloudWatch as it becomes available. You can view the metrics for VPN tunnels as
follows.

To view metrics using the CloudWatch console

Metrics are grouped first by the service namespace, and then by the various dimension combinations
within each namespace.

1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Metrics.
3. Under All metrics, choose the VPN metric namespace.
4. Select the metric dimension to view the metrics (for example, for the Site-to-Site VPN connection).

To view metrics using the AWS CLI

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Creating CloudWatch Alarms to Monitor VPN Tunnels

At a command prompt, use the following command:

aws cloudwatch list-metrics --namespace "AWS/VPN"

Creating CloudWatch Alarms to Monitor VPN Tunnels

You can create a CloudWatch alarm that sends an Amazon SNS message when the alarm changes state.
An alarm watches a single metric over a time period you specify, and sends a notification to an Amazon
SNS topic based on the value of the metric relative to a given threshold over a number of time periods.

For example, you can create an alarm that monitors the state of a VPN tunnel and sends a notification
when the tunnel state is DOWN for 3 consecutive 5-minute periods.

To create an alarm for tunnel state

1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Alarms, Create Alarm.
3. Choose VPN Tunnel Metrics.
4. Choose the IP address of the VPN tunnel and the TunnelState metric. Choose Next.
5. Configure the alarm as follows, and choose Create Alarm when you are done:

• Under Alarm Threshold, enter a name and description for your alarm. For Whenever, choose <=
and enter 0. Enter 3 for the consecutive periods.
• Under Actions, select an existing notification list or choose New list to create a new one.
• Under Alarm Preview, select a period of 5 minutes and specify a statistic of Maximum.

You can create an alarm that monitors the state of the Site-to-Site VPN connection. For example, you
can create an alarm that sends a notification when the status of one or both tunnels is DOWN for 1
consecutive 5-minute period.

To create an alarm for Site-to-Site VPN connection state

1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Alarms, Create Alarm.
3. Choose VPN Connection Metrics.
4. Select your Site-to-Site VPN connection and the TunnelState metric. Choose Next.
5. Configure the alarm as follows, and choose Create Alarm when you are done:

• Under Alarm Threshold, enter a name and description for your alarm. For Whenever, choose <=
and enter 0 (or 0.5 for when at least one tunnel is down). Enter 1 for the consecutive periods.
• Under Actions, select an existing notification list or choose New list to create a new one.
• Under Alarm Preview, select a period of 5 minutes and specify a statistic of Maximum.

Alternatively, if you've configured your Site-to-Site VPN connection so that both tunnels are up,
you can specify a statistic of Minimum to send a notification when at least one tunnel is down.

You can also create alarms that monitor the amount of traffic coming in or leaving the VPN tunnel. For
example, the following alarm monitors the amount of traffic coming into the VPN tunnel from your
network, and sends a notification when the number of bytes reaches a threshold of 5,000,000 during a
15 minute period.

To create an alarm for incoming network traffic

1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide
Creating CloudWatch Alarms to Monitor VPN Tunnels

2. In the navigation pane, choose Alarms, Create Alarm.

3. Choose VPN Tunnel Metrics.
4. Select the IP address of the VPN tunnel and the TunnelDataIn metric. Choose Next.
5. Configure the alarm as follows, and choose Create Alarm when you are done:

• Under Alarm Threshold, enter a name and description for your alarm. For Whenever, choose >=
and enter 5000000. Enter 1 for the consecutive periods.
• Under Actions, select an existing notification list or choose New list to create a new one.
• Under Alarm Preview, select a period of 15 minutes and specify a statistic of Sum.

The following alarm monitors the amount of traffic leaving the VPN tunnel to your network, and sends a
notification when the number of bytes is less than 1,000,000 during a 15 minute period.

To create an alarm for outgoing network traffic

1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Alarms, Create Alarm.
3. Choose VPN Tunnel Metrics.
4. Select the IP address of the VPN tunnel and the TunnelDataOut metric. Choose Next.
5. Configure the alarm as follows, and choose Create Alarm when you are done:

• Under Alarm Threshold, enter a name and description for your alarm. For Whenever, choose <=
and enter 1000000. Enter 1 for the consecutive periods.
• Under Actions, select an existing notification list or choose New list to create a new one.
• Under Alarm Preview, select a period of 15 minutes and specify a statistic of Sum.

For more examples of creating alarms, see Creating Amazon CloudWatch Alarms in the Amazon
CloudWatch User Guide.

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 AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide

Document History
The following table describes the AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide updates.

Change Description Date

Modify AWS Site-to-Site VPN You can modify the options for August 29, 2019
tunnel options a VPN tunnel in a AWS Site-to-
Site VPN connection. You can
also configure additional tunnel
options. For more information,
see Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel
Options for Your Site-to-Site
VPN Connection (p. 4).

AWS Certificate Manager Private You can use a private certificate August 15, 2019
Certificate Authority private from AWS Certificate Manager
certificate support Private Certificate Authority to
authenticate your VPN. For more
information, see the section
called “Private Certificate from
AWS Certificate Manager Private
Certificate Authority” (p. 8).

You can modify the target You can modify the target December 18, 2018
gateway of AWS Site-to-Site gateway of AWS Site-to-Site
VPN connection VPN connection. For more
information, see the section
called “Modifying a Site-to-
Site VPN Connection's Target
Gateway” (p. 28).

Initial release This release separates the AWS December 18, 2018
Site-to-Site VPN (previously
known as AWS Managed VPN)
content from the Amazon VPC
User Guide.

43