How to create Amazon EC2 instance and perform login using SSH

Login to the management console

• Login to the EC2 management console:

https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/

• From the upper pane, it is strongly recommended to select a region close to your location

Note: There might be pricing differences between AWS regions. For more information, see:

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

• From the left pane -> Instances -> Instances -> click on “Launch Instance” -> select the relevant Amazon Machine Image.
• From the “Choose an Instance Type”, select machine type according to your needs.

For more information, see:

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/

• Click on “Next: Configure Instance Details”
• Configure Instance Details page:

• Number of instances – unless you need redundancy, leave the default value
• Purchasing option - In case you do not need permanent EC2 machine for development / test environments, and would like to save money, consider using EC2 spot instance. For more information, see:

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/

• Network – Select the relevant VPC (Virtual Private Cloud). For more information on creating a VPC, see:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/GettingStartedGuide/getting-started-ipv4.html

• Subnet – Select the relevant subnet and availability zone. For more information on creating subnets, see:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/create-public-private-vpc.html

• Auto-assign Public IP – Leave the default settings
• IAM role - Choose the relevant Amazon IAM role. For more information on creating IAM roles, see:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_roles_create.html

• Shutdown behavior – Choose either Stop (the instance will be shut down, but it’s content will remain) or Terminate (the instance content will be permanently removed)
• Enable termination protection – This option protect the instance content from been permanently removed when selecting “Terminate instance” from the management console. This option is not relevant for Spot instances
• Monitoring – Allows you to monitor the performance of the instance; however, there is additional cost for using this service. For more information, see:

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/pricing/

• Tenancy – Leave the default settings (unless you have specific requirement, at additional cost, to choose a dedicated hardware without sharing it with other customers)
• Network interfaces – Leave the default settings
• Advanced Details – under “User data”, you can specify post-login script (for example, update security patches, install additional components, etc.)

• Click on “Next: Add Storage”
• From the “Add Storage” page, feel in the following details:

• Specify the root device volume size
• Select the Volume type according to your needs. For more information, see:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EBSVolumeTypes.html

• In case you need additional storage (for example, split between OS drive and data drives), click on “Add New Volume”
• When adding additional volumes, it is recommended to encrypt all the additional volumes (there is no performance impact)

• Click on “Next: Add Tags”
• Click on “Add Tag”:

• Key – Specify here ”Name”
• Value – Specify here the instance host name

• It is recommended to add additional tags (such as project name, environment, etc.). For more information, see:

https://aws.amazon.com/answers/account-management/aws-tagging-strategies/

• Click on “Next: Configure Security Group”
• From the “Configure Security Group” page, select either to create a new security group or to select an existing security group.

• When creating a new security group, specify an informative “Security group name” and description.
• When configuring security groups for publicly accessible EC2 instances, it is highly recommended to avoid opening SSH / RDP access from the internet to the EC2 instances – restrict access to the EC2 instances from a static public IP address or your organization public address/subnet

• Click “Review and Launch” -> click on Launch
• On the “Select an existing key pair or create a new key pair” page:

• “Create a new key pair” and specify key pair name – if this is your first EC2 instance in this specific region -> click on “Download Key Pair” to download the private key file -> save this key in a secure location, since it allows access to your EC2 instances
• “Choose an existing key pair” – if you already created and download the private key file, select an existing key pair -> click on “I acknowledge”

• Click on “Launch Instances” -> click on “View Instances”
• Wait for the EC2 instance to switch its state to “running”

Login to EC2 instance (from Windows machine)

• Download puttygen.exe from:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

• Run the puttygen.exe
• Click on “Load” -> change the file extension from “Putty Private key files” to “All Files” -> locate the private key pair and click on Open -> click on OK -> click on “Save private key” -> click on “Yes” -> save the private key file with PPK extension -> close puttygen.exe
• Download Putty from:

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html

• Run putty.exe
• From the left pane, under “Connection” -> expand SSH -> click on “Auth” -> from the main pane, under “Authentication parameters”, click on “Browse” -> locate the SSH private key generated by puttygen.exe
• From the left pane, click on “Session” -> from the main pane, under “Host Name (or IP address)” specify the following:

ec2-user@IP_Address

Note: Replace IP_Address with the EC2 instance “IPv4 Public IP” or “Public DNS (IPv4)”

• Under “Saved Sessions”, specify a name for this newly created connection.
• Click on Save
• Click on Open

Login to EC2 instance (from Linux machine)

• Login to the Linux machine console.
• Copy the private key file into ~/.ssh of the currently running user
• Run the following command:

ssh ec2-user@IP_Address -i ~/.ssh/[KEY_FILENAME]

Note 1: Replace IP_Address with the EC2 instance “IPv4 Public IP” or “Public DNS (IPv4)”

Note 2: Replace KEY_FILENAME with the actual private key file name