Promote server to a domain controller to join domain across internet - windows

I have been facing this issue well over couple of weeks now. I can use some guidance and help.
Current Setup:
Aws ec2 instance (windows 2012 r2 server) hosting "abcd.com" domain. It is also a DNS server. Also, Elastic public IP has been attached.
Server I am promoting is in different VPC (let's say my own personal computer). Also running windows server 2012 r2. Configured DNS settings to point to Elastic public IP of aws instance.
I am able to perform "nslookup abcd.com" which returns private ip of the aws instance. Unable to perform ping though (since it resolves to private ip).
I tried configuring the dns entry on aws instance so it maps to elastic public ip. after that i was able to ping "abcd.com". But this seemed dirty to me.
Overall, I am not able to promote my pc to the domain controller which is on aws instance. If I put domain controller and server being promoted in same network, it works like a charm (don't even need a public IP in that case). But keeping it in separate networks things aren't working for me. Your inputs would be greatly appreciated.

Related

TeamCity on EC2 - Can access it with private IP not public

We have TeamCity hosted on a Windows Box on AWS EC2. WE had 0 issues with this in the past and it's been working for years. However, this morning we had to restart the instance and the public IP was changed.
I have been unable to get TeamCity working ever since this happened. I can still access it through the private IP (visible for all internal networks in the EC2 cluster) but I can't access it remotely via the public IP.
Any thoughts on how to fix this?

I suddenly cannot connect to my EC2 instance. Why? How can I mitigate this?

I had a running instance, and then I became unable to connect to it via http(80) and ssh(22). I tried to reboot the instance, but nothing went up. This has happened to me twice in the past month.
Why does it happen? Can I do anything to fix and/or prevent it from happening?
If I launch a new instance in same region, and it works.
Things to check when trying to connect to an Amazon EC2 instance:
Security Group: Make sure the security group allows inbound access on the desired ports (eg 80, 22) for the appropriate IP address range (eg 0.0.0.0/0). This solves the majority of problems.
Public IP Address: Check that you're using the correct Public IP address for the instance. If the instance is stopped and started, it might receive a new Public IP address (depending on how it has been configured).
VPC Configuration: Accessing an EC2 instance that is launched inside a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) requires:
An Internet Gateway
A routing table connecting the subnet to the Internet Gateway
NACLs (Network ACLS) that permit through-traffic
If you are able to launch and connect to another instance in the same subnet, then the VPC configuration would appear to be correct.
The other thing to check would be the actual configuration of the operating system on the instance itself. Some software may be affecting the configuration so that the web server / ssh daemon is not working correctly. Of course, that is hard to determine without connecting to the instance.
If you are launching from a standard Amazon Linux AMI, ssh would work correctly anytime. The web server (port 80) would require installation and configuration of software on the instance, which is your responsibility to maintain.

Can an Amazon EC2 Instance access another Instance by Private IP?

I have two separate instances in my test scenario
Web Server Instance
Database Server Instance
So far the only way I can get from 1st to 2nd Instance is by having Elastic IP's configured and using the Public DNS (or IP) reference. I can limit unwanted access by configuring the Security Group for 2nd to only take Port 1433 traffic only from 1st.
It seems like Instances within the same Amazon AWS zone should be able to talk to each other more efficiently than first going out and then coming back in.
Is there a way to go directly from 1st to 2nd instance using just the Private DNS (or IP)?
If you are using the Amazon Public DNS name, Amazon makes sure that all internal traffic gets routed internally only. So there is no problem in using the public DNS names. Have a look at this question and this article for more details.

Amazon AWS - Windows Instance Setup

I have a domain www.rentcars.sg which is pointed to the right DNS server and verified by someone else and is working correctly: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=362885#362885
However, even though I setuped the domain correctly on the server with IIS, it's not working correctly.
Can anyone point me to the right direction? Is there any additional setup I need to make to get it working?
Server IP : 23.23.129.247
Using the internal IP, it works but not with the server ip with port/url.
I am not sure if I understand your problem, but my approach would be:
Allocating EC2 Elastic IP Address.
Associating such an address with your running EC2 instance.
Pointing your domain name to this IP address.
Adding inbound TCP rule for all IP sources (0.0.0.0/0) in Security Group settings belonging to your EC2 instance.
Keep in mind that windows instances in AWS come with the software (windows) firewall enabled by default. Make sure that you have the correct firewall policies in place in the software firewall as well as the security group.

How do I connect up my Amazon EC2 instances without manually modifying config files?

I have a three-tier Windows-based web application bundled into 3 AMIs on Amazon EC2 that I use for load testing.
An ASP.NET web application on IIS
An .NET application server
SQL Server
After I launch them, the config files of each tier needs modifying to update the IP addresses.
At the moment I am doing this manually: I connect to the webserver instance via remote desktop and modify the config file to point to the new IP of the application server instance. Then I do the same with the application server to change the IP in the connection string.
This must be a common requirement and I must be missing something obvious. There must be a better way!
I could use Elastic IP addresses, but these machines are only provisioned for a couple of hours at a time, and I would be charged for the addresses when they were NOT in use (which would be most of the time).
Is there some way of persistently naming the machines? Can I somehow get all the machines on the same network and use machine names instead of IP addresses?
I could write some nifty PowerShell script that would perform the modifications remotely. Is there an example somewhere?
I could use a dynamic IP address service. I'm not sure if this would have any negative effect on performance or availability... Are there any downsides to this approach?
I could install some sort of self-configuring service on each machine (which connects to S3? SNS? SimpleDB?) to publish/retrieve the addresses of the other machines and update the config files automatically. Is there an example somewhere?
What is best practice?
You could use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). You have a private subnet where you can assign an IP address to an instance, but it may require launching an instance from command line to assign IP. VPC is charged the same way as EC2.

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