A Guide on Establishing a Private Connection between Amazon RDS and Amazon QuickSight

Overview

Organizations increasingly turn to cloud services for their data analytics needs in today’s dynamic business landscape, where data is a critical asset. As this migration occurs, ensuring the security of data analytics becomes paramount. This comprehensive guide is designed to establish a secure and private connection between your Amazon RDS and Amazon QuickSight instances. By configuring your Amazon RDS instance within a private subnet and implementing the necessary security measures, you can create an enhanced and protected environment for seamless data analysis.

Introduction

As businesses harness the power of cloud services, safeguarding sensitive data during analytics processes is a top priority. This guide is tailored to assist you in creating a secure and private connection between Amazon RDS and Amazon QuickSight.

Following these steps ensures your data remains secure while leveraging the benefits of cloud-based analytics.

Pre-requisites

• AWS Account with necessary permissions.
• Amazon QuickSight enterprise account with admin access.
• Amazon RDS instance (MySQL) in a private subnet.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Create a Security Group for Amazon QuickSight

• Go to the Amazon VPC console and identify the Amazon VPC of your Amazon RDS instance.
• Create a new security group for Amazon QuickSight inside the same VPC (e.g., quicksight_sg).
• Configure inbound rules: All TCP, Port Range: 0 – 65535, Source: Security group ID of your Amazon RDS instance.
• Configure outbound rules: Custom TCP Rule, Port Range: 3306 (MySQL), Destination: Security group ID of your Amazon RDS instance.

Step 2: Modify the Security Group of the Amazon RDS instance

• Navigate to the Amazon RDS console.
• Access the security group associated with your RDS instance.
• Add an inbound rule: Custom TCP Rule, Port Range:3306, Source: QuickSight security group ID.

Step 3: Create a Private Connection in Amazon QuickSight

• In the AWS Management Console, use the search bar and enter “Amazon QuickSight”
• Log in to your Amazon QuickSight account by providing the account name, username, and password.
• Once you log in successfully, then on the top-right corner of the screen, click on the user icon. From the drop-down menu, select “Manage QuickSight”
• On the left side of the QuickSight management console, locate and click on “Manage VPC Connection”
• Click on the “Add VPC Connection” In the prompted form, fill in the following details:

1. VPC ID: Select the VPC of your RDS instance.
2. Subnet ID: Choose the private subnet where the RDS instance resides.
3. Security Group ID: Enter the ID of the QuickSight security group.
4. Execution Role: Choose the Amazon QuickSight service role.

Once you have entered the required information, click the “Add” button to create the VPC connection. Once it is created, we must wait to see if the Amazon VPC connection status becomes available.

Step 4: Create a Datasource in Amazon QuickSight for Data Validation

• In the QuickSight console, go to the “Datasets”
• Choose “New dataset” and select the “RDS”
• Provide configurations and select the VPC connection created in Step 3.
• Configure connection details, including the database name, endpoint, and authentication credentials for data validation.

Conclusion

Following these steps, you’ve successfully established a private connection between your Amazon RDS instance and Amazon QuickSight, ensuring secure data access for authorized services. This robust configuration provides a foundation for leveraging the full potential of cloud-based data analytics while maintaining the highest security standards.

About CloudThat