Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Introduction

Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud is a service which allows users to purchase computing resources by the hour in the form of virtual machine 'instances'. These instances are sold in many different sizes and under several purchasing options. Each instance is loaded with an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), a package including an OS and accompanying software. These can be chosen from a group of presets or customized by the user. When launching an instance, a startup script can be provided so that a task may be started immediately. Alternatively, the user may ssh to an instance and issue commands that way. Running instances may be monitored using Amazon's CloudWatch tools which can provide useful metrics such as CPU and network usage.

• A full listing of instance types: Instance Types
• A full description of purchasing options: Purchasing Options
• A full listing of public Amazon Machine Images: AMIs

Many of the basic features of EC2 can be used for no charge when signing up under the Free Tier. The Free Tier includes 750 hours of micro instance usage every month as well as a limited free usage of many accompanying servicess. See the Free Tier page for further details. The following section will walk through setting up an example instance for free.

Micro Instance Quick Start

This section will walk through the steps required to set up a micro instance and do an example run of the configuration/validation pipeline.

Create an account and access the management console

• To create an Amazon Web Services account, go to aws.amazon.com and select "sign up"
• You will need to create an Amazon account or sign in with an existing one
• Following this, you will need to supply some personal information and payment information, verify yourself by telephone, and select a support plan
• The pictures below show this process:

EC2 signup: account creation

EC2 signup: credit card info

EC2 signup: telephone verification

EC2 signup: support plan

EC2 signup: finalization

• After signing up, you can access the management console to begin using EC2
• The management console can be accessed by a menu in the upper right hand corner
• The management console provides access to all of the Amazon Web Services, but for now we only need EC2
• The pictures below show the management console:

Accessing the management console

The management console

Create the micro instance

• In the management console, select "EC2" and and then "Instances" on the left-hand menu

Launch Instance: AMI selection

Launch Instance: type selection

Launch Instance: advanced options

Launch Instance: storage configuration

Launch Instance: tags

Launch Instance: key pair

Launch Instance: firewall

Launch Instance: review

Connect to the micro instance

Connecting to an instance using SSH

Set up and run the configuration/validation pipeline

CLI tools

-- Main.geschd - 08 Aug 2013