31 May 2016

Getting Started With AWS (Amazon Web Services)

Amazon Web Services (AWS), is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, which offers a suite of cloud computing services that make up an on-demand computing platform. The most central and best-known of these services arguably include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as “EC2“, and Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as “S3“. AWS now has more than 70 services that span a wide range including compute, storage, networking, database, analytics, application services, deployment, management, mobile, developer tools and tools for the Internet of things. Amazon markets AWS as a service to provide large computing capacity quicker and cheaper than a client company building an actual physical server farm.

Reference for the same can be found at – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services/

In this blog we will be discuss on How to create a free account and launch a free tier EC2 instance.

Getting Started with Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Follow these steps to get started with Amazon Web Services (AWS):

Step 1: Create a Free Account

Go to AWS website – https://aws.amazon.com/ and click on ‘Create a Free Account’. Refer to the below image for more reference –

If you already have an account in AWS, then sign in directly else create a free account by simply typing your email id or mobile number.

Fill the rest of the form with relevant details to complete the sign-up process.

In Next screen you need to fill the contact information –

Next fill your debit or credit card details. Preferably use your debit card if you are going to use this account for learning purpose.

Fill the rest form to complete the sign-up process.

Step 2: Launch an EC2 Instance

Click on EC2 to launch a new instance –

Click on Launch Instance. Follow the screenshot for next step:

Select an Amazon Machine (AMI). Select any Instance which you are familiar with:

Now choose an Instance type. Since this blog is for beginners, we will proceed with free tier. Click on ‘Configure Instance Details’.

Configure the instance details, if you are familiar with Networking and Cloud instances else leave it as it is by default.

Next click on ‘Add Storage’ for next step. Refer the screen shot below for your reference:

Here you can choose the size of storage else simply leave it as it is by default.

Then click on ‘Tag Instance’. Give a name to this Instance and click Configure security group.

Here you can click on Configure Security Group, add rules to configure the security of this Instance. Click on ‘All Traffic’ and select ‘Anywhere’ in source field for this instance. At last click on ‘Review and Launch’.

Now click on ‘Launch’ to launch this Instance.

You will get a screen to generate key pair. Make sure you have downloaded the private key file (.pem file) else you will not be able to access your instance. Refer to the screenshot below for more reference:

After Launching this Instance, you will get the below mentioned screen. To see the status of Instance, click on instance id.

Scroll down to see the complete details of this Instance like public IP and name. Here we have not set any elastic IP to this instance, so public IP will change after every reboot.

We have launched our Instance.

To access this instance through Windows, you need to download PuTTY and PuTTY key generator to convert ‘.pem’ file into ‘.ppk’ file.

You can also refer this link for Setting up with Amazon EC2 Instance.

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/get-set-up-for-amazon-ec2.html

Step 3: Access your EC2 Instance-

You need to PuTTY to access this Instance through Windows. But PuTTY reads, .ppk file only for authentication so first we need to convert this .pem file into .ppk.

Connecting to Your Linux Instance from Windows Using PuTTY

If you are a Windows user, then you can connect your Instance using PuTTY. After you launch your instance, you can connect to it and use it the way that you’d use a computer in front of you.

Before you connect your Instance through PuTTY, complete the following prerequisites:

1) Install PuTTY for Windows

Before we install PuTTY, we need to understand it first.

PuTTY is an open source software that is available with source code. PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform.

How to Download PuTTY?

Visit the below mentioned link to download PuTTY:

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

For more information, you can also visit PuTTY’s homepage and can download it.

Link- http://www.putty.org/

2) Generate Putty Private Key ( .ppk )-

PuTTY does not support AWS private key format (.pem) generated by Amazon EC2. To connect your Instance with PuTTY you need a PuTTY format key (.ppk). For this PuTTY has a tool named PuTTYyGen which converts (.pem ) AWS key pair into PuTTY formatted key pair (.ppk) .

Steps to generate PuTTy formatted key pair (.ppk):

(a) Download PuTTYgen –

You can Download PuTTyGen from the below link:

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