用于 QuickBooks 的 AWS EC2

Question

AWS and.network noob. I've been asked to migrate QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise to AWS. This seems easy in principle but I'm finding a lot of conflicting and confusing information on how best to do it. The requirements are:

• Setup a Windows Server using AWS EC2
• QuickBooks will be installed on the server, including a file share that users will map to.
• Configure VPN connectivity so that the EC2 instance appears and behaves as if it were on prem.
• Allow additional off site VPN connectivity as needed for ad hoc remote access
• Cost is a major consideration, which is why I am doing this instead of getting someone who knows this stuff.

The on-prem.network is very small - one Win2008R2 server (I know...) that hosts QB now and acts as a file server, 10-15 PCs/printers and a Netgear Nighthawk router with a static IP.

My approach was to first create a new VPC with a private su.net that will contain the EC2 instance and setup a site-to-site VPN connection with the Nighthawk for the on-prem users. I'm unclear as to if I also need to create security group rules to only allow inbound traffic (UDP,TCP file sharing ports) from the static IP or if the VPN negates that need.

I'm trying to test this one step at a time and have an instance setup now. I am remote and am using my current IP address in the security group rules for the test (no VPN yet). I setup the file share but I am unable to access it from my computer. I can RDP and ping it and have turned on the firewall rules to allow NB and SMB but still nothing. I just read another thread that says I need to setup a storage gateway but before I do that, I wanted to see if that is really required or if there's another/better approach. I have to believe this is a common requirement but I seem to be missing something.

Answer 1

This is a bad approach for QuickBooks. Intuit explicitly recommends against using QuickBooks with a file share via VPN:

Networks that are NOT recommended

Virtual Private Network (VPN)   Connects computers over long distances via the Internet using an encrypted tunnel.

From here: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/configure-for-multiple-users/recommended.networks-for-quickbooks/00/203276

The correct approach here is to host QuickBooks on the EC2 instance, and let people RDP (remote desktop) into the EC2 Windows server to use QuickBooks. Do not let them install QuickBooks on their client machines and access the QuickBooks data file over the VPN link. Make them RDP directly to the QuickBooks server and access it from there.