Launching Your First AWS EC2 Instance: A Complete Walkthrough
Introduction
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a core service in AWS that allows you to quickly launch and manage virtual servers in the cloud. Whether you’re hosting applications, running development environments, or experimenting with new tools, EC2 offers the flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness needed for modern cloud computing.
In this guide, we’ll walk through the step-by-step process of deploying an EC2 instance on AWS—from signing into your account and configuring the instance settings to connecting via SSH. By the end, you’ll have a fully running virtual server ready to use, all while staying within the AWS Free Tier. This tutorial is designed for beginners, so even if it’s your first time using AWS, you’ll be able to follow along with ease.
To deploy an EC2 Instance….
Search for aws.amazon.com to sign into your aws account.
Login to your aws console and search for EC2 and click on it.
Click launch instance
Give your instance a name, select the Amazon linux aws image
Select t3.micro, since we are using the free tier
Key pair: You can decide to create a key pair or not….its like a private key on Azure portal.
Now, we are creating a key pair…the key pair will be downloaded to our local host when you create a key pair.
Click on Create a key pair.
Give your key pair a name, select RSA as key pair type and click on Create a key pair
A pop up will appear to save and download your key pair
Networking settings : Click on Edit button to see your network settings and make changes if applicable
For now, we leave anything at default and Launch our instance
Successfully launch our instance.
To see your instance, search for EC2 on the console search bar.
On the left side options navigate and click on instances you will find your instance there.
To connect your instance, check the box within your instance.
Click on connect.
Click on SSH client to connect using ssh client with PowerShell.
Navigate to your local host search bar and search for power shell and open.
Navigate to your AWS console, click on the download button at the top, and double-click on your downloaded key pair, and it will take you to your file explorer where it’s downloaded.
Right-click on the key pair file and click on copy to path
Navigate back to your power shell terminal.
Run - ssh -i <your key pair path> <“your publicDNS eg. ec2-user”> & Enter.
A prompt will appear……type yes & Enter.
SUCCESSFULLY CONNECTED……
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