Launching and Connecting to an AWS EC2 Instance

I had to do this recently for one of my projects i am working on, and i had to go through a tonne of hoops and documentation to get it done. So here is something that will make peoples lives easier.

Note: I’m running Windows 10 on my computer and i’ll be using the Amazon Linux AMI for the EC2 instance.

Creating and launching an AWS EC2 Instance.

1. Head over to https://aws.amazon.com/ and log into the AWS Console, if you already have an account. If you do not have an account yet, sign up for one.

You need your credit card details to sign-up, even for the free basic plan. They won’t charge you anything unless you go over their free-tier limits, which is something you definitely need to keep track of if you are working on a large scale project but otherwise the free-tier gives you plenty to work with.

You should see something like this after you log-in to your AWS console.

2. Now click on services and then select EC2. Then click on the Launch Instance button.

3. Next you get to choose an AMI (Amazon Machine Image), which contains the software configuration i.e. the operating system, application server, and applications that are required to launch the instance.

In this post i will be using the Amazon Linux AMI 2018.03.0 image. Feel free to use something else…