Hey everyone! I'm diving into AWS but I really want to keep my expenses to a minimum while I'm learning. Every guide I've followed seems to lead me to unexpected charges, like the $0.052 per hour for a NAT Gateway. I'd love to set up a cloud environment using Terraform with both an EC2 instance and an RDS database, with the EC2 instance running a web app that's publicly accessible. Is this even achievable on the free tier? Are there templates or guides out there that I can use?
Also, is there a way to check for potential costs in my Terraform code? Will I see charges from the NAT Gateway in my VPC console? If I use route tables along with security groups and ingress rules, can I remain within the free tier limitations? Lastly, is it smart to consider using IPv6, given that public IPv4 addresses get charged when not in use?
3 Answers
You can avoid NAT gateways by keeping your RDS and EC2 in public subnets. Just use an internet gateway which is free of charge. The concern with keeping everything exposed to the internet is that it brings a risk of hacks, which could lead to hefty bills later on, so make sure to secure your instances properly!
If you're looking to save costs, totally consider a NAT instance instead of the NAT gateway. Also, check out this project called fck-nat that runs on a free tier EC2 instance—you can save quite a bit that way! Just remember, using an SSH key is important for maintaining security, especially if your setup is accessible from the internet.
Honestly, if you want to avoid costs altogether while testing, you might want to skip RDS and EC2 entirely. Look into using serverless solutions like AWS Lambda; they can handle a lot of workloads without the associated costs of those services under the free tier.
Are there any guides on securing an EC2 instance properly?