Can I use Network Processing between my home computer and AWS?

[jenkinsm]

I have started exploring the use of AWS to speed up my photogrammetry workflow and so far, none of the AWS instances I have tried are faster than my home desktop computer.

They each have strengths and weaknesses (for example, one instance has 48 threads at 4.5 GHz and 1.5 TB of RAM - but no GPUs...) so I was thinking to try and include one or more AWS instances in a processing network that also includes my home computer(s). That way, I can use each machine for their strengths without having to transfer entire projects into the cloud and back down again.

Is this possible? I tried setting it up using the IP address of the AWS server but I'm guessing port 5840 is blocked somewhere and I would need to open it.

I know that the drive with the project files has to be shared and accessible on all computers, and I am thinking to use Google Drive File Streaming for that (it has the same drive letter on every machine). But this may not work since it'd appear as a local drive on each machine and not a network drive.

Has anyone done this successfully? What steps do I need to take to get it working? Use tunneling through a VPN?

For the record, I have gigabit internet (both upload and download) so I'm not too concerned with that being a bottleneck. I've already tried network processing at home on a gigabit LAN and it works fine.

Any advice is welcome. Thanks!

[jenkinsm]

After I typed my post, I remembered an app called Hamachi that makes it easy to set up VPN tunnels. I used that and already have the network processing working with two AWS instances and my home PC!

If anyone has suggestions to improve the setup, I am open to ideas. But this was way easier than I expected!

For anyone who wants to try something similar, I did have to open port 5840 in Windows Firewall after setting up Hamachi.