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Developer Access to a Private Cloud SQL Instance Without a VPN or a Login-able VM
draft2916 words · 15 min readGiving developers a path to a Postgres instance with no public IP, without a self-managed bastion anyone logs into and without standing up a VPN. Uses GCP Identity-Aware Proxy TCP forwarding to a headless relay VM that runs one socat process and nothing else, no SSH keys, no OS Login, IAM gates the tunnel instead of a login. Covers the network layer and the separate, non-optional step after it: Postgres-level group authentication and privilege grants, since reaching the instance is not the same as being able to query it.