标签：#microvm

TL;DR I built a personal VPN using AWS Lambda MicroVMs. Your traffic exits from AWS. When you disconnect, the MicroVM terminates — zero cost, nothing running. When you reconnect, a fresh MicroVM launches in about 20 seconds. ./vpn.sh start # All Mac traffic now exits from AWS ./vpn.sh stop # Back to your real IP Here is what I learned across 12 image builds — dead ends, kernel limitations, and what finally worked. The Idea Lambda MicroVMs launched in June 2026 (4 days ago). They are Firecracker VMs with: Full Linux OS — your own binaries, eBPF, iptables, network namespaces Suspend/resume — state preserved on snapshot, resumes in ~1s per GB (or terminate for zero ongoing cost) Hardware-level isolation — every session gets its own sandbox Per-second billing — ~$0.13/hr for a 2GB ARM64 (Graviton) instance 8-hour max lifetime (active + suspended combined) I wanted to run a VPN inside one. Connect when I need privacy. Disconnect and pay nothing for compute. Resume instantly when I reconnect. Took 12 image builds to get there. What I Tried (and Failed) Attempt 1: NAT Gateway Replacement (The Original Idea) This is actually where the project started. I was paying $32/mo for a NAT Gateway and thought: what if a MicroVM running nftables could replace it? Serverless NAT. Pay only when traffic flows. Why it failed: Lambda MicroVMs cannot act as VPC route targets. Their networking is ingress-only (HTTPS + JWT). Other VPC resources cannot route through a MicroVM. The VPC egress connector gives the MicroVM its own internet access. It does not make it a transit device. That killed the NAT idea. But it made me think — if I cannot route VPC traffic through it, what about routing my own laptop's traffic through it? That is how Serverless VPN was born. Attempt 2: VPC Egress Connector I created a VPC, subnets, security groups, and a network connector. One hour wasted. MicroVMs have INTERNET_EGRESS by default. The connector is only needed for reaching private VPC resources (RDS, interna