[chef] VPC woes

[Jeremy Winters < >]

I am trying to spin up a server in an AWS VPC for a client.

instead using VPN... I created a chef workstation instance within the subnet 
that I need to use.  

the knife ec2 server create gets stuck at waiting for sshd........

the server gets created... but without ssh the bootstrap isn't working.

what am I doing wrong?  shouldn't it have no trouble connecting within the 
same subnet for the bootstrap process?  note that port 22 is open in every 
direction in the security group.. as well as at the subnet level.  if I apply 
an elasticIP I am able to connect to the new instance.

note that our spin up process works just great outside of vpc.

any advice is appreciated!

Jeremy Winters