# How Do I Tunnel Into A Remote Database Using SSH?

A common question is “How do I connect to a database running on Amazon (or Azure) from my local laptop?” The answer often is:

* Create an SSH tunnel that will allow you to treat the remote database as if it was local.

### Example

We have an instance of MySQL running on an Amazon EC2 instance and want to access it from our local network. Technically what we want to do is:

* Pretend that there is a MySQL instance listening on port 3307 on our local network.
* Have magic forward all communication on localhost port 3307 to a MySQL instance living on Amazon EC2.

The secret sauce requires setting up a forwarding port using ssh. Example:

`ssh -L 3307:127.0.0.1:3306 myuser@myhost`

This statement will open a terminal prompt on capstormlabs.com and a tunnel listening on 127.0.0.1 that forwards traffic on local port 3307 to port 3306 (e.g. MySQL) on capstormlabs.com. With any CopyStorm product the remote MySQL instance can be reference with a connection string like:

`//localhost:3307/myDatabaseName`

If you are hungry for more information then see [this article](https://www.ssh.com/ssh/tunneling/example) for all the details.


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