Getting Started in Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclaimer
These materials are for educational and research purposes only. The views and opinions expressed on this site are those of the author.
There are so many related information on how to get started in AWS, Amazon even offers free training to get you started in the Cloud.
Here is a simple guide on how build and launch your first virtual machine in AWS.
First, you need to establish an account by simply signing up to Amazon Web Services @ https://aws.amazon.com/. You can also use your existing amazon.com account to create your AWS account so you do not have to maintain separate accounts. For additional details, you can further read it @ https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonSimpleDB/latest/DeveloperGuide/AboutAWSAccounts.html
Now that you have established an account, first time you logged in, you will be in AWS Management Console. Viewing the console might be too complicated at first but fear not as folks at Amazon made it simple to guide you through every steps from creating virtual machines, building a web app, machine learning, and so on.
Launch a Virtual Machine
- To start our first virtual machine, chose ‘Launch a virtual machine’ link
- Choosing Amazon Machine Image (AMI).
Think of AMIs in market place as images which is supported and maintained by AWS. This can be Linux, Windows, or vendor provided images. AMI lists keeps on growing daily to tailor anyone’s requirements / needs. However, there is AMI ‘Market Place’ and ‘Community’ and difference is that Community is not vetted by AWS.
For labs and testing, community AMIs should be fine but definitely not for production systems unless you know exactly how these images were built.
3. For our example, will pick ‘Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8’
4. Pick an Instance Type
Instance types can be customized based on your requirements, think of this as choosing the hardware specification for your application and this can be customized. For additional information and also pricing, check https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
5. Configuring Instance
There are additional topics in configuring your instance which is out of the scope of this write-up but the following settings below are default settings that you can use to get started.
6. Configure Storage
This section is customizing your storage. Set it based on your requirements or type of server you are creating (i.e. file server, vpn, web, etc.)
7. Tags
Tags are helpful when you are working on multiple instances so you can easily group them and apply consistent settings.
8. Configure Security Group
Ensure the you only give access to your instance coming from the source(s) (IP addresses) that you will be connect from or sources that you approved. If you do not know what your Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) IP address is, you can pick ‘My IP’ from the drop down at the ‘Source” section and this will automatically resolve your IP address.
9. Review and Launch
Last section will give you the option to review all settings before launching your instance.
10. Select ‘Key Pair”
Key pair are your private and public keys to connect to your Linux instances in AWS. Great feature that I like so you do not have to use username and password which is susceptible to ‘brute force’ attacks.
11. Create Key Pair
To create a key pair, choose a ‘Key Pair Name’ and click on “Download Key Pair”
12. Launch Your Instance
13. Connecting to your Instance
Once the status of launching of your instance have been completed, you can start connecting from the page below
IP address and related information is available in your ‘Instance’ section
To connect to your new RHEL 8 server, on ‘Windows’ operating systems, you will need ‘Putty’ and ‘PuttyGen’
Before connecting via ‘Putty’ to the the new RHEL 8 server, we need to convert the ‘key file’ that we save earlier using ‘PuttyGen’. Detailed information and download links can be found @ https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/putty.html
14. Connecting via Putty
References
