Release: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud on 2009-08-26 (Beta)
This is the initial release of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. The service is currently in a limited beta.
Release Date: August 26, 2009
Latest Version: 2009-07-15
Created On: August 26, 2009
Last Updated: October 09, 2017
New Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| New Amazon EC2 WSDL and Schema | Amazon VPC operations are part of the Amazon EC2 WSDL. The latest Amazon EC2 API version is 2009-07-15, and the WSDL and schema are located at http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2009-07-15/AmazonEC2.wsdl. |
| Creating Subnets | A subnet is a segment of a VPC's address space that Amazon EC2 instances can be attached to. Subnets enable you to group instances based on security and operational needs. You can create up to 20 subnets in your VPC and launch up to 20 instances in your VPC. If you feel you need more subnets or instances, you can request more at http://aws.amazon.com/contact-us/vpc-request/. |
| Changes to the Amazon EC2 API for Amazon VPC | The RunInstances and DescribeInstances operations have changed slightly with the 2009-07-15 release of the Amazon EC2 WSDL.
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| New Fields in the AWS Management Console | The AWS Management Console now shows three additional fields for Amazon EC2 instances within a VPC: the instance's private IP address, its associated subnet ID, and its associated VPC ID. Because the information does not appear in the console display by default, click Show/Hide in the top right corner of the console page, and then select the check boxes for those fields in the resulting dialog box. The console leaves empty any fields currently irrelevant to instances within a VPC (such as security group and public DNS name). |
| New Documentation | Amazon VPC technical documentation includes the following: |
Known Issues
| Issue | Description |
|---|---|
| Current Limits |
During the Amazon VPC limited beta:
|
| No Direct Internet Access from a VPC | Any VPC traffic to/from the Internet must currently route through the established VPN connection and through your existing IT infrastructure to the public Internet. You are currently unable to send/receive Internet traffic directly from your VPC. |
| Unsupported AWS Services Only Accessible Via VPN Connection | Amazon VPC allows you to deploy Amazon EC2 instances within your VPC. Resources provided by services such as Amazon S3, Amazon SQS, Amazon SimpleDB and others cannot currently be deployed within your VPC, and, as such, are only accessible to resources within your VPC via the VPN connection, through your network, and to the respective service's public endpoint. You may need to create firewall exceptions to allow cloud-based instances to access the Internet (and possibly NAT) from your existing IT infrastructure. |
| Broadcast and Multicast Unsupported in a VPC | You are unable to employ either broadcast or multicast within your VPC. |
| Increased Latency in Bundling Linux/UNIX AMIs | You may experience increased latency in bundling Linux/UNIX AMIs within Amazon VPC. Such bundles are transferred from the instance, through the VPN connection, through your network and to the public Amazon S3 endpoint. You may need to create firewall exceptions to allow cloud-based instances to access the Internet (and possibly NAT) from your existing IT infrastructure. |
| Service Currently Available in One Availability Zone | Currently your VPC, subnets, VPN gateway, and any instances you launch in the VPC must all reside in a single Availability Zone in the us-east-1 region. |
| No Capacity Guarantee for Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances | Reserved Instances (with their discounted rates) are available; however, there's currently no capacity guarantee for Reserved Instances in a VPC. |
| Traffic Sent to Overlapping IP Address Ranges Is Dropped | If your VPC's IP address range overlaps with an IP address range in use within your existing IT infrastructure, Amazon VPC will drop any traffic to said range. To avoid this, create your VPC so it does not overlap with current or expected future subnets in your network. |
| Ordering of DHCP Option Values Not Guaranteed | When you specify DHCP options, some options (e.g., DNS servers) accept multiple values. The ordering of these values is not guaranteed. After creating the options, you should use the DescribeDhcpOptions operation (or the ec2-describe-dhcp-options command) to confirm the order in which the options will be delivered to instances. |
| AWS Capabilities Currently Unavailable within Amazon VPC | The following AWS services and Amazon EC2 features are currently not available for use with a VPC:
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