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Amazon Web Services AWS Broken Labs

Lab 07 - Outbound Access II

Difficulty: Expert Service: Amazon VPC

Cost: This lab uses a t2.micro instance, one NAT Gateway, and three VPC interface endpoints. Estimated cost if left running: approximately $1.80/day. Delete the stack when you are done.

Note: Fixing the lab may involve creating additional billable resources. Delete anything you create outside the stack before deleting the stack.

Scenario

Your team deployed an EC2 instance in a private subnet. The instance is running and you can connect to it using Session Manager. The VPC has an Internet Gateway and a NAT Gateway.

But the operations team reports that the instance cannot reach the internet. Outbound connections are timing out.

What Was Deployed

Resource Purpose
AWS::EC2::VPC Custom VPC for the lab (10.0.0.0/16)
AWS::EC2::Subnet (x2) Public subnet (10.0.1.0/24) and private subnet (10.0.2.0/24)
AWS::EC2::InternetGateway Internet Gateway — created and attached to the VPC
AWS::EC2::RouteTable (x2) Public route table (has 0.0.0.0/0 → IGW) and private route table
AWS::EC2::EIP Elastic IP address for the NAT Gateway
AWS::EC2::NatGateway NAT Gateway — deployed and available
AWS::EC2::Route Default route in the private route table pointing to the NAT Gateway
AWS::EC2::VPCEndpoint (x3) Interface endpoints for SSM, SSMMessages, EC2Messages
AWS::IAM::Role IAM role with AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore for Session Manager access
AWS::EC2::Instance t2.micro in the private subnet — no public IP

The stack deployed without errors. The instance is running.

Deploy the Lab

  1. Open the AWS CloudFormation console
  2. Click Create stack > With new resources (standard)
  3. Select Upload a template file and upload lab-07-outbound-access-ii.yaml

  4. Enter a stack name (e.g., brokenlabs-vpc-lab-07) and click Next > Next > Submit

    IAM notice: This template creates an IAM role. On the final confirmation page, check the box acknowledging that CloudFormation will create IAM resources, then click Submit.

  5. Wait for the stack status to reach CREATE_COMPLETE (takes 3–5 minutes)
  6. Open the stack Outputs tab — you will see InstanceId and PrivateIP

The Problem

Connect to the instance using Session Manager:

  1. Open the EC2 console > Instances
  2. Select the instance named brokenlabs-vpc-lab-07
  3. Click Connect > Session Manager tab > Connect

Once connected, test outbound internet access:

curl --max-time 5 https://checkip.amazonaws.com

Expected: The public IP address of the NAT Gateway is returned. Actual: The connection times out — the instance cannot reach the internet.

Fix the Lab

Diagnose why the problem occurs and fix it so the result matches Expected above.

After applying your fix, reconnect via Session Manager and re-run the curl command to confirm the instance can now reach the internet.

Need help? Open hints.md for progressive hints.

Cleanup

Note: If you created any resources outside the stack while fixing the lab, delete them before deleting the stack. The full solution in hints.md lists any extra cleanup steps.

  1. Open CloudFormation, select your stack, and click Delete
  2. Wait for the stack to reach DELETE_COMPLETE

Resources