Create a VM in AWS Educate¶

This lab will guide you through the process of creating a VM in the default VPC in your AWS Educate account. Begin by logging in to AWS Educate and navigating to the AWS management console.

Step 1: Go to the EC2 Dashboard¶

In the service search bar type EC2 and select the service from the results as shown.

Step 2.1: Launch an Instance¶

Scroll down in the center panel to find the “Launch Instance” button as shown. Click it to enter the lauch intance wizard.

Launch Instance

Step 2.2: Select an Image Type¶

You can choose any Free Tier Eligible Linux. I will use the “Amazon Linux 2 AMI (HVM), SSD Volume Type” image. Click the “Select” button to the right of the image name.

Step 2.3: Choose an Instance Type¶

Your AWS Educate subscription limits what instance types you can use. The default should be “t2.micro” and will already be selected. Select “Review and Launch”

Choose insance type

Step 2.4: Review and Launch¶

Press the “Launch” button at the bottom right. This brings up a dialog asking to select an SSH key pair.

Step 2.5: SSH Key Pair¶

IMPORTANT: AWS machines do not have passwords and can only be accessed via SSH. Failure to save your SSH key will make your AWS machine unusable.

In the top pulldown select, “Create a new key pair” and name it “cis-90-key” as shown. Click “Download Key Pair”

Select key pair

The key pair should be in your downloads folder.

Step 2.6: Launch Instance¶

After downloading your key pair click “Launch Instance”. Your AWS VM will take a minute or two to start.

Step 3: Install Your Key Pair¶

Locate the key you downloaded from Amazon. Unlike the keys you generated with ssh-keygen both keys are in the same cis-90-key.pem file. You must be sure to never leave this file unprotected. Copy the file to your .ssh directory.

Step 4: Get Your Instance Information¶

At the EC2 dashboard find your newly created instance as shown.

New instance

Click the new instance to find it’s IP address as shown in this screen:

Instance IP address

Step 5: Edit Your SSH Configuration¶

Edit the config file in your SSH configuration directory. I show you how to do this using vscode, but any text editor will work. Add the following information:

Host aws 
        HostName >>aws-ip-address-here<<
        User ec2-user
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/cis-90-key.pem

Place your VM’s IP address after HostName.

The ec2-user is the default for Amazon Linux. If you picked another Linux the username will be different.

Turn In¶

A screenshot of you SSHd into your VM.