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This guide walks through setting up the AWS side of a private connection: a Network Load Balancer (NLB), a target group pointing at the resource you want to expose, and a VPC Endpoint Service that authorizes Trigger.dev to consume it.
Prefer Terraform? Open the “Add connection” page in the Trigger.dev dashboard and use the Terraform wizard to generate a ready-to-apply script. The wizard creates everything described below and pre-fills our AWS account ID for you.

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Prerequisites

Before you start you’ll need:
  • An AWS account with permission to create VPC, EC2, and ELB resources
  • A resource in a VPC subnet that you want to expose (RDS instance, ElastiCache cluster, internal API, etc.)
  • The Trigger.dev AWS account ID — find this on the “Add connection” page in your Trigger.dev dashboard, in the “I have my details” or “Step-by-step guide” cards
  • A VPC that contains the resource, with at least one private subnet per Availability Zone you want to serve from
PrivateLink connections are zonal. If your resource lives in a single AZ, your connection will only be available from that AZ. For higher availability, ensure target groups can route to multiple AZs.

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Step 1: Create a target group pointing at your resource

The target group is how the NLB will know where to forward traffic. AWS requires a target group when creating a load balancer, so we’ll set this up first.
1

Open the target groups page

Go to EC2 → Target Groups → Create target group.
2

Choose a target type

  • IP addresses for RDS, ElastiCache, or any resource you can reach by IP
  • Instances for EC2 instances you own
  • Application Load Balancer if your resource sits behind an ALB
For most database use cases, IP addresses is correct. NLBs don’t support Lambda targets directly — if you need to expose a Lambda, put it behind an ALB and use the ALB target type.
3

Configure the target group

  • Name: e.g. trigger-postgres-tg
  • Protocol: TCP
  • Port: the port your resource listens on (5432 for Postgres, 6379 for Redis, 3306 for MySQL, etc.)
  • VPC: the VPC where your resource lives (this must match the VPC you’ll use for the NLB)
  • Health check protocol: TCP Target group basic configuration
4

Register your targets

Add the IP addresses of the resource. For RDS, look up the writer endpoint’s IPs (dig <endpoint> from inside the VPC). For ElastiCache, use the primary endpoint IPs.Register targets in the target group
RDS and ElastiCache endpoints’ IP addresses can change after failover or maintenance. For long-lived connections, consider running a small Lambda or sidecar that periodically resolves the DNS name and updates the target group, or use a DNS-resolved target if your setup supports it.
5

Create the target group

Click Create target group.

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Step 2: Create an internal Network Load Balancer

The NLB is what PrivateLink exposes to Trigger.dev. It must be internal (not internet-facing).
1

Open the EC2 console

Go to EC2 → Load Balancers → Create load balancer and choose Network Load Balancer.
2

Configure the basics

  • Name: something descriptive, e.g. trigger-postgres-nlb
  • Scheme: Internal
  • IP address type: IPv4 Network Load Balancer basic configuration
3

Choose VPC and subnets

Pick the same VPC as your target group. Select one private subnet per AZ that should serve traffic. Each subnet you select adds an availability zone to the endpoint.Network Load Balancer VPC and Availability Zones
4

Add a TCP listener forwarding to your target group

Under Listeners and routing, configure:
  • Protocol: TCP
  • Port: same as your target group port (5432 for Postgres, 6379 for Redis, etc.)
  • Default action: forward to the target group you created in Step 1 Add the target group to the NLB listener
5

Create the load balancer and wait until it's Active

Click Create load balancer. Provisioning takes 1–2 minutes — wait until the NLB’s State column shows Active before moving on. The endpoint service in the next step won’t list the NLB until it’s fully active.
Test connectivity from a bastion host or another instance in the same VPC before continuing — e.g. psql -h <nlb-dns-name> -p 5432 -U user -d db. If the NLB can’t reach your resource, the PrivateLink connection won’t either.

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Step 3: Create a VPC Endpoint Service

This is the resource that PrivateLink consumers connect to.
Confirm the NLB from Step 2 is in the Active state before starting this step. It won’t appear in the Available load balancers dropdown until it has finished provisioning.
1

Open the VPC console

Go to VPC → Endpoint services → Create endpoint service.
2

Configure the endpoint service

  • Name: optional, but useful for identification, e.g. trigger-postgres-endpoint
  • Load balancer type: Network
  • Available load balancers: select the NLB you created
  • Require acceptance for endpoint: No (recommended) Create VPC Endpoint Service form
If you set “Require acceptance” to Yes, every connection request from Trigger.dev will sit in a pending state until you manually approve it. Setting it to No lets connections come up automatically once the principal is allow-listed.
3

Skip private DNS

Leave the “Private DNS name” option disabled. Trigger.dev tasks dial the endpoint by its private IP, so private DNS isn’t needed.
4

Configure cross-region access (optional)

If your Trigger.dev tasks run in a different AWS region from your endpoint service, expand the Supported Regions section and add the region(s) where Trigger.dev should be allowed to create the VPC Endpoint from (for example, add eu-central-1 if your service is in us-east-1 but tasks run in eu-central-1).If your tasks and resource are in the same region, you can skip this — same-region access is enabled by default.
Cross-region PrivateLink adds AWS data-transfer cost and ~10–30ms of latency depending on the region pair. Prefer same-region when possible.
5

Create the endpoint service

Click Create. The service is created immediately — you’ll come back to copy its Service name once you’ve authorized Trigger.dev in the next step.

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Step 4: Authorize the Trigger.dev AWS account

By default, no one can connect to your endpoint service. You need to explicitly allow Trigger.dev’s AWS account.
1

Open your endpoint service

Go to VPC → Endpoint services, select the service you just created.
2

Open the Allow principals tab

Click the Allow principals tab, then Allow principals.
3

Add Trigger.dev's account

Paste the principal ARN in this format, replacing <account-id> with the Trigger.dev AWS account ID shown in your dashboard:
arn:aws:iam::<account-id>:root
Allow principal dialog
You will find the correct AWS account ID in the Add connection page of the Trigger.dev dashboard. Do not assume an account ID — it differs between Trigger.dev environments.
4

Click Allow principals

The principal is now authorized to create a VPC Endpoint targeting your service.
5

Copy the endpoint service name

On the endpoint service detail page, copy the Service name value — it looks like com.amazonaws.vpce.us-east-1.vpce-svc-0123abcd.... You’ll paste this into the Trigger.dev dashboard in the next step.Copy the endpoint service name

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Step 5: Add the connection in Trigger.dev

1

Open the dashboard

In Trigger.dev, go to Organization Settings → Private Connections and click Add connection.
2

Pick the I have my details card

Then fill in:
  • Friendly name: a short, human-readable label for this connection.
  • VPC Endpoint Service name: paste the com.amazonaws.vpce.<region>.vpce-svc-... value from Step 4.
  • Target region: the AWS region your endpoint service lives in.
3

Submit

Submit the form. The connection’s status moves through Pending → Provisioning → Active. Provisioning typically takes 30–90 seconds.
4

Verify

Once Active, the dashboard shows the assigned private IP. Plug it into the connection-string environment variable your task already uses (for example, DATABASE_URL set on the Environment Variables page) and your tasks will reach the resource over PrivateLink.

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Troubleshooting

See the dedicated Troubleshooting page for common problems such as the “Private link not found” wizard error. A few quick checks specific to this setup flow: