Question

A company runs a fleet of EC2 instances in private subnets that make frequent API calls to Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon SQS, and AWS Systems Manager. All outbound traffic currently routes through a NAT gateway to reach these AWS service public endpoints. The finance team reports that NAT gateway data-processing charges have become a significant portion of the monthly bill. A solutions architect wants to reduce these costs while keeping traffic on the AWS network. Which approach is the MOST cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Use a gateway VPC endpoint for DynamoDB and interface VPC endpoints for SQS and Systems Manager so that traffic bypasses the NAT gateway.

Answer

Replace the NAT gateway with a NAT instance on a smaller instance type to lower per-GB processing charges.

Answer

Create interface VPC endpoints for DynamoDB, SQS, and Systems Manager to remove all NAT gateway usage.

Answer

Move the EC2 instances to public subnets and assign Elastic IPs so they reach the AWS service endpoints directly.