Overview

Deploying a production-ready Trojan VPN on AWS EC2 gives you a fast, flexible, and privacy-preserving outbound proxy that blends into HTTPS traffic. This guide walks you through selecting an appropriate EC2 instance, securing traffic with TLS, installing and configuring Trojan (trojan-go recommended for its modern features), hardening the OS, tuning for performance, and running the service under systemd for reliability. The target audience is site owners, enterprise operators, and developers who need a repeatable, secure deployment process.

Why Trojan and why AWS EC2?

Trojan is a proxy protocol designed to mimic regular HTTPS traffic while providing low-latency, encrypted tunneling. Compared with other solutions, Trojan offers:

  • Minimal fingerprint — uses genuine TLS handshakes to blend with normal HTTPS traffic.
  • High performance — particularly trojan-go, which is written in Go and supports multiple transports and multiplexing.
  • Simple authentication — supports password-based and TLS client auth.

AWS EC2 is a natural choice for production because it provides predictable networking, autoscaling options, flexible instance types (for CPU/throughput/ENI needs), and integrated monitoring via CloudWatch.

Prerequisites and planning

Before starting, prepare the following:

  • An AWS account with permissions to create EC2 instances, VPC security groups, and Elastic IPs if needed.
  • A registered domain (example: vpn.example.com) with DNS able to create an A record pointing to your EC2 public IP.
  • Basic Linux administration skills (Ubuntu 20.04/22.04 LTS recommended) and SSH access to the instance.
  • Knowledge of TLS and certificate issuance (Let’s Encrypt recommended for free, automated certs).

Instance selection and networking

Choose an instance type based on expected throughput and concurrent connections. For small teams, t3.medium or t3.large is usually sufficient. For heavy usage, choose c5 or m5 instances that have better network performance. Configure the instance as follows:

  • Use a public subnet with a public IP or an Elastic IP for stability.
  • Security Group: open TCP/UDP ports required by your configuration. For a plain Trojan over TLS, you only need TCP 443 (or a custom port) and SSH (22) restricted to admin IPs.
  • Disable source/destination checks only if using NAT/HA architectures; otherwise keep defaults.

Initial server setup

After launching the instance, perform standard hardening:

  • Update packages: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y.
  • Create a non-root user and configure SSH key authentication. Disable password login and root SSH access in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.
  • Install necessary packages: nginx certbot socat wget curl git ufw (ufw or iptables for host firewall), and build-essential if building from source.
  • Enable automatic security updates if desired.

Domain and TLS certificate

Trojan relies on valid TLS certificates to appear as normal HTTPS connections. Use Let’s Encrypt with an automated process:

  • Create a DNS A record for your domain (e.g., vpn.example.com) pointing to the instance IP.
  • Install Certbot and obtain certs. A typical Certbot Nginx flow: sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx, then sudo certbot –nginx -d vpn.example.com.
  • If you prefer to terminate TLS in the Trojan process itself (supported by trojan-go), use Certbot in standalone mode: stop any service on 80, run sudo certbot certonly –standalone -d vpn.example.com.

Keep certs renewed automatically with systemd timers or cron: Certbot sets up renewal by default, but verify it with sudo certbot renew –dry-run.

Install trojan-go

While multiple Trojan implementations exist, trojan-go is highly recommended for production because it’s actively maintained and supports features like multiplexing and WebSocket/HTTP/QUIC transports.

Installation steps (binary release):

  • Download the latest release from GitHub: wget https://github.com/p4gefau1t/trojan-go/releases/download/vX.Y.Z/trojan-go-linux-amd64.zip (replace with current version).
  • Unzip and place binary in /usr/local/bin: sudo unzip trojan-go-linux-amd64.zip && sudo mv trojan-go /usr/local/bin/ && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/trojan-go.
  • Create runtime directories: sudo mkdir -p /etc/trojan-go /var/log/trojan-go.

Basic trojan-go configuration

trojan-go uses a JSON config file. Below is a minimal but production-oriented example. Place it in /etc/trojan-go/config.json and adapt the fields:

Sample trojan-go config (condensed): {“run_type”:”server”,”local_addr”:”0.0.0.0″,”local_port”:443,”remote_addr”:”127.0.0.1″,”remote_port”:80,”password”:[“your-strong-password”],”ssl”:{“cert”:”/etc/letsencrypt/live/vpn.example.com/fullchain.pem”,”key”:”/etc/letsencrypt/live/vpn.example.com/privkey.pem”,”sni”:”vpn.example.com”,”alpn”:[“http/1.1″],”fallback_port”:80},”transport”:{“type”:”tcp”,”tcp”:{“prefer_ipv4″:true}},”log”:{“level”:”info”,”file”:”/var/log/trojan-go/trojan-go.log”}}

Key notes:

  • password — use a unique, complex password per user or a list for multiple users.
  • ssl.cert / ssl.key — point to Let’s Encrypt cert paths.
  • fallback_port — useful for website fallback when using CDN or SNI routing.
  • Consider transports like WebSocket or QUIC for censorship resistance and multiplexing options.

Run trojan-go as a systemd service

Create a systemd unit to manage trojan-go. Example unit file at /etc/systemd/system/trojan-go.service (use sudo to create):

[Unit] Description=trojan-go Service After=network.target [Service] Type=simple User=root ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/trojan-go -config /etc/trojan-go/config.json Restart=on-failure RestartSec=5 LimitNOFILE=65536 [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

Commands to enable and start:

  • sudo systemctl daemon-reload
  • sudo systemctl enable trojan-go
  • sudo systemctl start trojan-go
  • Check status and logs: sudo systemctl status trojan-go && sudo tail -n 200 /var/log/trojan-go/trojan-go.log

Nginx reverse proxy (optional)

Running Nginx in front of trojan-go can be useful when you want to host a genuine website on fallback ports or use advanced TLS features like OCSP stapling. For the simplest setup, terminate TLS with trojan-go directly. If using Nginx as reverse proxy:

  • Configure nginx to listen on ports 80/443 and serve a small site or reverse proxy to an internal HTTP server.
  • Use Certbot with the –nginx plugin for automated certificate installation.
  • When using Nginx, configure trojan-go to accept plaintext (local_port on a high-numbered port) and let Nginx proxy (stream module) or use SNI routing.

Security hardening and production considerations

To make your deployment suitable for production, adopt the following security and reliability measures:

  • Firewall — use UFW or iptables to allow only required ports (SSH limited by admin IPs, trojan port, and optionally HTTP for cert renewal).
  • Fail2ban — protect SSH and optionally monitor Trojan logs to ban brute force attempts on passwords.
  • Dedicated user accounts — isolate admin accounts and avoid running services as root where possible. trojan-go currently runs as root for binding low ports; use ambient capabilities or bind to higher port and use Nginx to forward to 443 if you want non-root execution.
  • Logging and monitoring — ship logs to a centralized system (CloudWatch, ELK stack) and configure alerts for high error rates or unusual traffic patterns.
  • Rate limiting — implement per-user or per-IP limitations at the proxy or upstream to protect backend resources.
  • Certificate lifecycle — automate renewals and reload trojan-go on certificate change (systemd path-based reload or a post-renewal hook that runs systemctl restart trojan-go).

Performance tuning

For high throughput and low latency, apply kernel and network tunings on the EC2 instance:

  • Enable BBR congestion control: add to /etc/sysctl.conf net.core.default_qdisc=fq and net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=bbr, then run sudo sysctl -p.
  • Increase file descriptor limits: set LimitNOFILE in systemd unit and edit /etc/security/limits.conf for persistent user limits.
  • Tune TCP settings: increase net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout, net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse, and adjust net.core.somaxconn, net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog for high-connection environments.
  • Monitor CPU, network, and fio metrics. Offload tasks like TLS termination to instances with hardware acceleration if needed.

Operational maintenance

Operational best practices to keep your Trojan deployment reliable:

  • Regularly update the OS and trojan-go binary. Test updates in a staging environment before production rollout.
  • Rotate service passwords and keys periodically. Use per-client credentials where possible to revoke single users.
  • Back up configuration files, certificates, and critical system state to a secure location.
  • Have a recovery plan: keep AMIs or Terraform/CloudFormation templates to recreate the environment quickly.

Advanced topics and scaling

For enterprise scenarios consider:

  • Autoscaling groups behind an AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB) where you manage sticky sessions for long-lived connections. Note: NLB is L4 and preserves TLS, NLB can forward TCP/UDP to instances running trojan-go.
  • Using multiple domains and SNI routing to host multiple tenants on shared infrastructure.
  • Client certificate authentication (mutual TLS) for the highest security, combining password+client certs to prevent credential leakage misuse.
  • Leveraging AWS PrivateLink or VPC endpoints when combining with private enterprise backends.

Troubleshooting checklist

If clients cannot connect or performance is poor, check the following quickly:

  • DNS resolves to the correct public IP and TLS certificate matches the domain: openssl s_client -connect vpn.example.com:443 -servername vpn.example.com.
  • Firewall/Security Group rules allow traffic on the chosen port from client networks.
  • trojan-go logs show accepted connections and no TLS handshake errors: /var/log/trojan-go/trojan-go.log.
  • Certbot renewal succeeded and cert files are readable by the service.
  • System limits (nofile) and CPU utilization are not causing drops under load.

Wrapping up

Deploying Trojan on AWS EC2 can yield a fast, secure, and production-ready proxy if you follow best practices around TLS, automation, hardening, and monitoring. Use trojan-go for modern features, automate certificate management with Certbot, run the service under systemd, and apply kernel/network tunings for high throughput. Combine logging, alerting, and regular maintenance to keep the deployment resilient in production.

For more in-depth tutorials and managed dedicated IP recommendations, visit Dedicated-IP-VPN at https://dedicated-ip-vpn.com/.