AWS PrivateLink for DynamoDB

With AWS PrivateLink for DynamoDB, you can provision interface Amazon VPC endpoints (interface endpoints) in your virtual private cloud (Amazon VPC). These endpoints are directly accessible from applications that are on premises over VPN and AWS Direct Connect, or in a different AWS Region over Amazon VPC peering. Using AWS PrivateLink and interface endpoints, you can simplify private network connectivity from your applications to DynamoDB.

Applications in your VPC do not need public IP addresses to communicate with DynamoDB interface VPC endpoints for DynamoDB operations. Interface endpoints are represented by one or more elastic network interfaces (ENIs) that are assigned private IP addresses from subnets in your Amazon VPC. Requests to DynamoDB over interface endpoints stay on the Amazon network. You can also access interface endpoints in your Amazon VPC from on-premises applications through AWS Direct Connect or AWS Virtual Private Network (AWS VPN). For more information about how to connect your Amazon VPC with your on-premises network, see the AWS Direct Connect User Guide and the AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide.

For general information about interface endpoints, see Interface Amazon VPC endpoints (AWS PrivateLink) in the AWS PrivateLink Guide.

Types of Amazon VPC endpoints for Amazon DynamoDB

You can use two types of Amazon VPC endpoints to access Amazon DynamoDB: gateway endpoints and interface endpoints (by using AWS PrivateLink). A gateway endpoint is a gateway that you specify in your route table to access DynamoDB from your Amazon VPC over the AWS network. Interface endpoints extend the functionality of gateway endpoints by using private IP addresses to route requests to DynamoDB from within your Amazon VPC, on premises, or from an Amazon VPC in another AWS Region by using Amazon VPC peering or AWS Transit Gateway. For more information, see What is Amazon VPC peering? and Transit Gateway vs Amazon VPC peering.

Interface endpoints are compatible with gateway endpoints. If you have an existing gateway endpoint in the Amazon VPC, you can use both types of endpoints in the same Amazon VPC.

For more information about gateway endpoints, see Gateway Amazon VPC endpoints in the AWS PrivateLink Guide.

Considerations when using AWS PrivateLink for Amazon DynamoDB

Amazon VPC considerations apply to AWS PrivateLink for Amazon DynamoDB. For more information, see Interface endpoint considerations and AWS PrivateLink quotas in the AWS PrivateLink Guide. In addition, the following restrictions apply.

AWS PrivateLink for Amazon DynamoDB does not support the following:

AWS PrivateLink is currently not supported for Amazon DynamoDB Streams endpoints.

You can submit up to 50,000 requests per second for each AWS PrivateLink endpoint that you enable.

Creating an Amazon VPC endpoint

To create an Amazon VPC interface endpoint, see Create an Amazon VPC endpoint in the AWS PrivateLink Guide.

Accessing Amazon DynamoDB interface endpoints

When you create an interface endpoint, DynamoDB generates two types of endpoint-specific, DynamoDB DNS names: Regional and zonal.

Endpoint-specific DynamoDB DNS names can be resolved from the DynamoDB public DNS domain.

Accessing DynamoDB tables and control API operations from DynamoDB interface endpoints

You can use the AWS CLI or AWS SDKs to access DynamoDB tables and control API operations through DynamoDB interface endpoints.

AWS CLI examples

To access DynamoDB tables or DynamoDB control API operations through DynamoDB interface endpoints in AWS CLI commands, use the --region and --endpoint-url parameters.

Example: Create a VPC endpoint

aws ec2 create-vpc-endpoint \
--region us-east-1 \
--service-name dynamodb-service-name \
--vpc-id client-vpc-id \
--subnet-ids client-subnet-id \
--vpc-endpoint-type Interface \
--security-group-ids client-sg-id

Example: Modify a VPC endpoint

aws ec2 modify-vpc-endpoint \
--region us-east-1 \
--vpc-endpoint-id client-vpc-endpoint-id \
--policy-document policy-document \ #example optional parameter
--add-security-group-ids security-group-ids \ #example optional parameter 
# any additional parameters needed, see Privatelink documentation for more details 

Example: List tables using an endpoint URL

In the following example, replace the Region us-east-1 and the DNS name of the VPC endpoint ID vpce-1a2b3c4d-5e6f.dynamodb.us-east-1.vpce.amazonaws.com with your own information.

aws dynamodb --region us-east-1 —endpoint https://vpce-1a2b3c4d-5e6f.dynamodb.us-east-1.vpce.amazonaws.com list-tables

AWS SDK examples

To access DynamoDB tables or DynamoDB control API operations through DynamoDB interface endpoints when using the AWS SDKs, update your SDKs to the latest version. Then, configure your clients to use an endpoint URL for accessing a table or DynamoDB control API operation through DynamoDB interface endpoints.

SDK for Python (Boto3)

Example: Use an endpoint URL to access a DynamoDB table

In the following example, replace the Region us-east-1 and VPC endpoint ID https://vpce-1a2b3c4d-5e6f.dynamodb.us-east-1.vpce.amazonaws.com with your own information.

ddb_client = session.client(
service_name='dynamodb',
region_name='us-east-1',
endpoint_url='https://vpce-1a2b3c4d-5e6f.dynamodb.us-east-1.vpce.amazonaws.com'
)

SDK for Java 1.x

Example: Use an endpoint URL to access a DynamoDB table

In the following example, replace the Region us-east-1 and VPC endpoint ID https://vpce-1a2b3c4d-5e6f.dynamodb.us-east-1.vpce.amazonaws.com with your own information.

//client build with endpoint config  
final AmazonDynamoDB dynamodb = AmazonDynamoDBClientBuilder.standard().withEndpointConfiguration(
        new AwsClientBuilder.EndpointConfiguration(
                "https://vpce-1a2b3c4d-5e6f.dynamodb.us-east-1.vpce.amazonaws.com",
                Regions.DEFAULT_REGION.getName()
        )
).build();

SDK for Java 2.x

Example: Use an endpoint URL to access an S3 bucket

In the following example, replace the Region us-east-1 and VPC endpoint ID https://vpce-1a2b3c4d-5e6f.dynamodb.us-east-1.vpce.amazonaws.com with your own information.

Region region = Region.US_EAST_1;
dynamoDbClient = DynamoDbClient.builder().region(region)
.endpointOverride(URI.create("https://vpce-1a2b3c4d-5e6f.dynamodb.us-east-1.vpce.amazonaws.com"))
.build()

Updating an on-premises DNS configuration

When using endpoint-specific DNS names to access the interface endpoints for DynamoDB, you don’t have to update your on-premises DNS resolver. You can resolve the endpoint-specific DNS name with the private IP address of the interface endpoint from the public DynamoDB DNS domain.

Using interface endpoints to access DynamoDB without a gateway endpoint or an internet gateway in the Amazon VPC

Interface endpoints in your Amazon VPC can route both in-Amazon VPC applications and on-premises applications to DynamoDB over the Amazon network, as illustrated in the following diagram.

The diagram illustrates the following:

Using gateway endpoints and interface endpoints together in the same Amazon VPC to access DynamoDB

You can create interface endpoints and retain the existing gateway endpoint in the same Amazon VPC, as the following diagram shows. By taking this approach, you allow in-Amazon VPC applications to continue accessing DynamoDB through the gateway endpoint, which is not billed. Then, only your on-premises applications would use interface endpoints to access DynamoDB. To access DynamoDB this way, you must update your on-premises applications to use endpoint-specific DNS names for DynamoDB.

The diagram illustrates the following:

For more information about gateway endpoints, see Gateway Amazon VPC endpoints in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

Creating an Amazon VPC endpoint policy for DynamoDB

You can attach an endpoint policy to your Amazon VPC endpoint that controls access to DynamoDB. The policy specifies the following information:

Example: Restricting access to a specific table from an Amazon VPC endpoint

You can create an endpoint policy that restricts access to only specific DynamoDB tables. This type of policy is useful if you have other AWS services in your Amazon VPC that use tables. The following table policy restricts access to only the DOC-EXAMPLE-TABLE. To use this endpoint policy, replace DOC-EXAMPLE-TABLE with the name of your table.

{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Id": "Policy1216114807515",
  "Statement": [
    { "Sid": "Access-to-specific-table-only",
      "Principal": "*",
      "Action": [
        "dynamodb:GetItem",
        "dynamodb:PutItem"
      ],
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Resource": ["arn:aws:dynamodb:::DOC-EXAMPLE-TABLE",
                   "arn:aws:dynamodb:::DOC-EXAMPLE-TABLE/*"]
    }
  ]
}