Restrict access with VPC origins
You can use CloudFront to deliver content from applications that are hosted in your virtual private cloud (VPC) private subnets. You can use Application Load Balancers (ALBs), Network Load Balancers (NLBs), and EC2 instances in private subnets as VPC origins.
Here are some reasons why you might want to use VPC origins:
Security – VPC origins is designed to enhance the security posture of your application by placing your load balancers and EC2 instances in private subnets, making CloudFront the single point of entry. User requests go from CloudFront to the VPC origins over a private, secure connection, providing additional security for your applications.
Management – VPC origins reduces the operational overhead required for secure connectivity between CloudFront and origins. You can move your origins to private subnets with no public access, and you don’t have to implement access control lists (ACLs), secret shared headers, or other mechanisms to restrict access to your origins. This way, you don't have to invest in undifferentiated development work to secure your web applications with CloudFront.
Scalability and performance – VPC origins helps you to secure your web applications, freeing up time to focus on growing your critical business applications while improving security and maintaining high-performance and global scalability with CloudFront. VPC origins streamlines security management and reduces operational complexity so that you can use CloudFront as the single point of entry for your applications.
Prerequisites
Before you create a VPC origin for your CloudFront distribution, you must complete the following:
Create a virtual private cloud (VPC) on Amazon VPC.
Your VPC must be in the same AWS account as your CloudFront distribution.
Your VPC must be in one of the AWS Regions that are supported for VPC origins. For more information, see Supported AWS Regions for VPC origins.
For information about creating a VPC, see Create a VPC plus other VPC resources in the Amazon VPC User Guide.
Include the following in your VPC:
Internet gateway – Required so that your VPC can receive traffic from the internet. The internet gateway is not used for routing traffic to origins inside the subnet, and you don’t need to update the routing policies.
Private subnet with at least one available IPv4 address – CloudFront routes to your subnet by using an elastic network interface (ENI) that CloudFront creates after your define your private origin CloudFront resource. You must have at least one available IPv4 address in your private subnet so that the ENI creation process can succeed. The IPv4 address can be private, and there is no additional cost for it.
In the private subnet, launch an Application Load Balancer, a Network Load Balancer, or an EC2 instance to use as your origin.
The resource you launch must be fully deployed and in Active status before you can use it for a VPC origin.
Dual-stack Network Load Balancers and Network Load Balancers with TLS listeners can't be added as origins.
Gateway Load Balancers are not supported for VPC origins.
Update your security groups for the VPC private origins to explicitly allow the CloudFront managed prefix list. For more information, see Use the CloudFront managed prefix list.
After the VPC origin is created, the security group can be further restricted to allow only traffic from your VPC origins. To do this, update the allowed traffic source from the managed prefix list to the CloudFront security group.
Note
WebSockets, gRPC traffic, and origin re-write with Lambda@Edge in CloudFront is not supported for VPC origins. For more information, see Work with requests and responses in the Lambda@Edge documentation.
Response timeout and Keep-alive timeout origin settings can't currently be configured for distributions with VPC origins. The default values are used (30 seconds and 5 seconds, respectively). For more information, see Response and keep-alive timeout quotas.
Create a VPC origin (new distribution)
The following procedure shows you how to create a VPC origin for your new CloudFront distribution in the CloudFront console. Alternatively, you can use the CreateVpcOrigin and CreateDistribution API operations with the AWS CLI or an AWS SDK.
To create a VPC origin for a new CloudFront distribution
Open the CloudFront console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/v4/home
. Choose VPC origins, Create VPC origin.
Fill out the required fields. For Origin ARN, select the ARN of your Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer, or EC2 instance. If you don’t see the ARN, you can copy your specific resource ARN and paste it here instead.
Choose Create VPC origin.
Wait for your VPC origin status to change to Deployed. This can take up to 15 minutes.
Choose Distributions, Create distribution.
For Origin domain, select your VPC origins resource from the dropdown list.
If your VPC origin is an EC2 instance, copy and paste the Private IP DNS name of the instance into the Origin domain field.
Finish creating your distribution. For more information, see Create a CloudFront distribution in the console.
Create a VPC origin (existing distribution)
The following procedure shows you how to create a VPC origin for your existing CloudFront distribution in the CloudFront console, which helps to ensure continuous availability of your applications. Alternatively, you can use the CreateVpcOrigin and UpdateDistributionWithStagingConfig API operations with the AWS CLI or an AWS SDK.
Optionally, you could choose to add your VPC origin to your existing distribution without creating a staging distribution.
To create a VPC origin for your existing CloudFront distribution
Open the CloudFront console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/v4/home
. -
Choose VPC origins, Create VPC origin.
Fill out the required fields. For Origin ARN, select the ARN of your Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer, or EC2 instance. If you don’t see the ARN, you can copy your specific resource ARN and paste it here instead.
Choose Create VPC origin.
Wait for your VPC origin status to change to Deployed. This can take up to 15 minutes.
In the navigation pane, choose Distributions.
Choose the ID of your distribution.
On the General tab, under Continuous deployment, choose Create staging distribution. For more information, see Use CloudFront continuous deployment to safely test CDN configuration changes.
Follow the steps in the Create staging distribution wizard to create a staging distribution. Include the following steps:
For Origins, choose Create origin.
For Origin domain, select your VPC origins resource from the dropdown menu.
If your VPC origin is an EC2 instance, copy and paste the Private IP DNS name of the instance into the Origin domain field.
Choose Create origin.
In your staging distribution, test the VPC origin.
Promote the staging distribution configuration to your primary distribution. For more information, see Promote a staging distribution configuration.
Remove public access to your VPC origin by making the subnet private. After you do this, the VPC origin won't be discoverable over the internet, but CloudFront will still have private access to it. For more information, see Associate or disassociate a subnet with a route table in the Amazon VPC User Guide.
Update a VPC origin
The following procedure shows you how to update a VPC origin for your CloudFront distribution in the CloudFront console. Alternatively, you can use the UpdateDistribution and UpdateVpcOrigin API operations with the AWS CLI or an AWS SDK.
To update an existing VPC origin for your CloudFront distribution
Open the CloudFront console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/v4/home
. In the navigation pane, choose Distributions.
Choose the ID of your distribution.
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Choose the Behaviors tab.
Make sure that the VPC origin is not the default origin for your cache behavior.
Choose the Origins tab.
Select the VPC origin that you're going to update and choose Delete. This disassociates the VPC origin from your distribution. Repeat steps 2-7 to disassociate the VPC origin from any other distributions.
Choose VPC origins.
Select the VPC origin and choose Edit.
Make your updates and choose Update VPC origin.
Wait for your VPC origin status to change to Deployed. This can take up to 15 minutes.
In the navigation pane, choose Distributions.
Choose the ID of your distribution.
Choose the Origins tab.
Choose Create origin.
For Origin domain, select your VPC origins resource from the dropdown menu.
If your VPC origin is an EC2 instance, copy and paste the Private IP DNS name of the instance into the Origin domain field.
Choose Create origin. This associates the VPC origin with your distribution again. Repeat steps 12-17 to associate the updated VPC origin with any other distributions.
Supported AWS Regions for VPC origins
VPC origins is currently supported in the following AWS Regions. Availability Zone (AZ) exceptions are noted.
| Region Name | Region |
|---|---|
| US East (Ohio) | us-east-2 |
| US East (N. Virginia) | us-east-1 (except AZ use1-az3) |
| US West (N. California) | us-west-1 (except AZ usw1-az2) |
| US West (Oregon) | us-west-2 |
| Africa (Cape Town) | af-south-1 |
| Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) | ap-east-1 |
| Asia Pacific (Mumbai) | ap-south-1 |
| Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) | ap-south-2 |
| Asia Pacific (Jakarta) | ap-southeast-3 |
| Asia Pacific (Melbourne) | ap-southeast-4 |
| Asia Pacific (Osaka) | ap-northeast-3 |
| Asia Pacific (Singapore) | ap-southeast-1 |
| Asia Pacific (Sydney) | ap-southeast-2 |
| Asia Pacific (Tokyo) | ap-northeast-1 (except AZ apne1-az3) |
| Asia Pacific (Seoul) | ap-northeast-2 (except AZ apne2-az1) |
| Canada (Central) | ca-central-1 (except AZ cac1-az3) |
| Canada West (Calgary) | ca-west-1 |
| Europe (Frankfurt) | eu-central-1 |
| Europe (Ireland) | eu-west-1 |
| Europe (London) | eu-west-2 |
| Europe (Milan) | eu-south-1 |
| Europe (Paris) | eu-west-3 |
| Europe (Spain) | eu-south-2 |
| Europe (Stockholm) | eu-north-1 |
| Europe (Zurich) | eu-central-2 |
| Israel (Tel Aviv) | il-central-1 |
| Middle East (Bahrain) | me-south-1 |
| Middle East (UAE) | me-central-1 |
| South America (São Paulo) | sa-east-1 |
