Use Google Private Service Connect with Aiven services#

Important

Google Private Service Connect is a limited availability feature, which you can request from the sales team (sales@Aiven.io). During the limited availability stage, you can use the feature at no cost. If you want to continue using Google Private Service Connect after it reaches general availability, you’ll be billed according to the latest applicable price.

Google Private Service Connect is supported for Aiven for Apache Kafka® and Aiven for ClickHouse® only.

Discover Google Private Service Connect and benefits of using it with your Aiven services. Learn how to enable Google Private Service Connect for Aiven services.

About Private Service Connect#

Private Service Connect lets you bring your Aiven services into your networks (virtual private clouds) over a private endpoint. The endpoint receives a private IP address from a range that you assign. Next, connectivity over the private endpoint is routed to your Aiven service.

Note

For consistency, Google Private Service Connect is called privatelink in Aiven tools. This applies to all clouds, including Google Cloud.

Prerequisites#

Your Aiven service is hosted in a project virtual private cloud (VPC) in the region where the connecting endpoint will be created.

Note

Private Service Connect endpoints are service specific. For each service you wish to connect to, you need to create a separate endpoint.

Set up a Private Service Connect connection#

Step 1: Enable Private Service Connect for a service#

Using the Aiven CLI, enable a Private Service Connect for your Aiven service:

avn service privatelink google create MY_SERVICE_NAME

Note

For publishing a service over Private Service Connect, a dedicated address range needs to be allocated at the publishing / Aiven end. Aiven reserves network 172.24.0.0/16 for this purpose and forbids creating project VPCs in Google Cloud overlapping with this range.

Creating a privatelink usually takes a minute or two.

You can use the following command to see the current state:

avn service privatelink google get MY_SERVICE_NAME

When the state has changed from creating to active, resources at Aiven end have been allocated, and it’s possible to create connections.

When the privatelink has been successfully created, you can expect an output similar to the following:

GOOGLE_SERVICE_ATTACHMENT                                                             STATE
====================================================================================  ======
projects/aivenprod/regions/europe-west1/serviceAttachments/privatelink-s3fd836dfc60   active

Note

The GOOGLE_SERVICE_ATTACHMENT value is used to connect an endpoint on the client side to the Aiven service.

Step 2: Create a Private Service Connect connection#

You can now create an PSC endpoint and connection to the Aiven service within the Google Console.

Select Published service as Target type.

Note

Target service should be the GOOGLE_SERVICE_ATTACHMENT value/URI from the previous step.
Select an existing subnet hosting your side of the endpoint.

After the endpoint is created, it initially exists in the pending state. To allow connections via the endpoint, it needs to be accepted at the service publisher (Aiven) end.

Tip

If you use an automatically-assigned IP address, note the IP address associated with the endpoint so that you can use it the next step.

Step 3: Approve the created connection#

Update the state of Private Service Connect connections for your Aiven service by running
```
avn service privatelink google refresh MY_SERVICE_NAME
```
Retry the following command until it returns the pending-user-approval status:
```
avn service privatelink google connection list MY_SERVICE_NAME
```
```
PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID  PSC_CONNECTION_ID  STATE                  USER_IP_ADDRESS
=========================  =================  =====================  ===============
plc3fd852bec98             12870921937223780  pending-user-approval  null
```
Note
- PSC_CONNECTION_ID is the identifier assigned to Google for the connection, and you can use it to verify that the connection is indeed matching your Private Service Connect endpoint.
- PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID is an Aiven internal identifier for the connection, which is needed in the final connection approval step.
To enable a connection, approve it.

Note

By approving the connection, you provide the IP address assigned to your PSC endpoint - whether automatically assigned or static. Aiven uses this IP address for pointing the service DNS records necessary for the clients to reach the Aiven service through the Private Service Connect connection.

To approve the connection, run the following approval command:
```
avn service privatelink google connection approve MY_SERVICE_NAME --privatelink-connection-id PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID --user-ip-address PSC_ENDPOINT_IP_ADDRESS
```

As a result, the connection initially transitions to the user-approved state.

avn service privatelink google connection list MY_SERVICE_NAME

PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID  PSC_CONNECTION_ID  STATE          USER_IP_ADDRESS
=========================  =================  =============  ===============
plc3fd852bec98             12870921937223780  user-approved  10.0.0.100

You may need to run the avn service privatelink google refresh command at this point since updates to service attachment accept lists are not immediately reflected in the states of returned connected endpoints.

avn service privatelink google refresh MY_SERVICE_NAME

After establishing the connection and populating DNS records, the connection appears as active.

avn service privatelink google connection list MY_SERVICE_NAME

PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID  PSC_CONNECTION_ID  STATE   USER_IP_ADDRESS
=========================  =================  ======  ===============
plc3fd852bec98             12870921937223780  active  10.0.0.100

The state of your Private Service Connect endpoint should have transitioned from pending to accepted at this point. Private Service Connect connectivity has been established now.

As the final step, you need to allow connectivity using the Private Service Connect endpoint.

Step 4: Enable Private Link access service components#

Finally, enable Private Link access on your Aiven services using either the Aiven CLI or Aiven Console.

Aiven CLI

To enable Private Service Connect access for your service in the Aiven CLI, set user_config.privatelink_access.<service component> to true for the components you want to enable. Take the following command as an example for Apache Kafka:

avn service update -c privatelink_access.kafka=true MY_SERVICE_NAME

Aiven Console

To enable Private Link access in Aiven Console, take the following steps:

On the Overview page of your service, select Service settings from the sidebar.
On the Service settings page, navigate to the Cloud and network section and select More network configurations from the actions (…) menu.
In the Network configuration window, take the following actions:
1. Select Add configuration options.
2. In the search field, enter privatelink_access.
3. From the displayed component names, select the names of the components that you want to enable (privatelink_access.<service component>).
4. Select the toggle switches for the selected components to enable them.
5. Select Save configuration.

Tip

Each service component can be controlled separately. For example, you can enable Private Service Connect access for your Aiven for Apache Kafka® service while allowing Kafka® Connect to only be connected via VNet peering.

Acquire connection information#

One Private Service Connect connection#

If you have one private endpoint connected to your Aiven service, you can preview the connection information (URI, hostname, or port required to access the service through the private endpoint) in Aiven Console > the service’s Overview page > the Connection information section, where you’ll also find the switch for the privatelink access route. privatelink-access-route values for host and port differ from those for the dynamic access route used by default to connect to the service.

Multiple Private Service Connect connections#

Use CLI to acquire connection information for more than one Private Service Connect connection.

Each endpoint (connection) has PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID, which you can check using the avn service privatelink google connection list SERVICE_NAME command.

To acquire connection information for your service component using Private Service Connect, run the avn service connection-info command.

For SSL connection information for your service component using Private Service Connect, run the following command:
```
avn service connection-info UTILITY_NAME SERVICE_NAME -p PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID
```

Where

UTILITY_NAME is kcat, for example
SERVICE_NAME is kafka-12a3b4c5, for example
PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID is plc39413abcdef, for example

For SASL connection information for Aiven for Apache Kafka® service components using Private Service Connect, run the following command:
```
avn service connection-info UTILITY_NAME SERVICE_NAME -p PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID -a sasl
```

Where

UTILITY_NAME is kcat, for example
SERVICE_NAME is kafka-12a3b4c5, for example
PRIVATELINK_CONNECTION_ID is plc39413abcdef, for example

Note

SSL certificates and SASL credentials are the same for all the connections.

Delete a Private Link service#

Use the Aiven CLI to delete the Private Service Connect connection for a service:

avn service privatelink google delete MY_SERVICE_NAME