AWS Secure EC2 Infrastructure with SSM Access

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Architecture
• Prerequisites
• Setup Instructions
  • Configuration
  • Deployment Steps
• Access Instructions
  • Connecting to EC2
• Security
• Cleanup
• Troubleshooting

Overview

This Terraform configuration establishes a secure AWS infrastructure that creates an EC2 instance accessible only through AWS Systems Manager (SSM), eliminating the need for SSH access or bastion hosts.

Architecture

The infrastructure includes:

• VPC with private subnets
• EC2 instance with SSM access
• Security Groups
• VPC Endpoints for SSM connectivity:
  • SSM endpoint
  • SSM messages endpoint
  • EC2 messages endpoint

Prerequisites

• AWS CLI installed and configured
• Terraform
• AWS Systems Manager Session Manager plugin
• Appropriate AWS permissions

Setup Instructions

Configuration

1. Clone this repository to your local machine.
2. Create a locals.tf file in the root directory.

Deployment Steps

1. Initialize Terraform:

   terraform init

2. Review the execution plan:

   terraform plan

3. Apply the configuration:

   terraform apply

Access Instructions

Connecting to EC2

To connect to the EC2 instance:

1. Install the Session Manager plugin

2. Start a session using AWS CLI:

   aws ssm start-session --target i-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Security

The infrastructure implements several security best practices:

• ✅ No public IP addresses
• ✅ No inbound SSH access
• ✅ Private subnets only
• ✅ Minimal security group rules
• ✅ SSM access only
• ✅ No direct internet access

Cleanup

To remove all created resources:

terraform destroy