Linux Bastion Hosts on the AWS Cloud: Quick Start Reference Deployment

Posted on: Sep 21, 2016

This automated deployment was created by AWS solutions architects from the Quick Start reference team to help you add Linux bastion functionality to your AWS Cloud environment swiftly and easily, in about 5 minutes.

You can choose to create a new AWS architecture with bastion host instances, or deploy the bastion hosts into your existing AWS infrastructure. The bastion hosts provide secure access to Linux instances located in the private and public subnets. The Quick Start architecture deploys Linux bastion host instances into every public subnet to provide readily available administrative access to the environment. The Quick Start sets up a Multi-AZ environment consisting of two Availability Zones. If highly available bastion access is not necessary, you can stop the instance in the second Availability Zone and start it up when needed.

You can use this Quick Start as a building block for your own Linux-based deployments. You can add other infrastructure components and software layers to complete your Linux environment in the AWS Cloud. (To build an AWS Cloud infrastructure for accessing Microsoft Windows-based instances, see the Quick Start for Remote Desktop (RD) Gateway.)

The Quick Start includes AWS CloudFormation templates that automate the deployment. It also includes a deployment guide, which describes the networking architecture and provides step-by-step instructions for deploying and configuring the bastion hosts.

Quick Starts are automated reference deployments for infrastructure components and key workloads on the AWS Cloud. Each Quick Start launches, configures, and runs the AWS compute, network, storage, and other services required to deploy a specific workload on AWS, using AWS best practices for security and availability.

To get started, use the following resources: