Welcome to Chronicles, let' explore EC2 and how to access EC2 instance using Windows.

Description

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides on-demand, scalable computing capacity in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Using Amazon EC2 reduces hardware costs so you can develop and deploy applications faster. You can use Amazon EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need, configure security and networking, and manage storage. You can add capacity (scale up) to handle compute-heavy tasks, such as monthly or yearly processes, or spikes in website traffic. When usage decreases, you can reduce capacity (scale down) again.

An instance is a virtual server in the AWS Cloud. With Amazon EC2, you can set up and configure the operating system and applications that run on your instance.

An Amazon EC2 Windows instance is similar to the traditional Windows Server. After you launch an instance, it briefly goes into the pending state while registration takes place, then it goes into the running state. The instance remains active until you stop or terminate it. You can't restart an instance after you terminate it. You can create a backup image of your instance while it's running, and launch a new instance from that backup image.

Task Overview

1. Log in to your AWS Account

   • Visit AWS Console (opens in a new tab) and log in.

2. Open EC2 Dashboard

   • Navigate to the EC2 dashboard.

   

3. Launch an Instance

   • Click on "Launch Instance".

   

4. Configure Instance Settings

   • Provide a name and tags for your instance.
   • Under Application and OS images choose Quick Start, and select Windows.

   

   • Choose a suitable instance type (e.g., Free Tier eligible t3.micro).

   

   • Create a new key pair for login, choosing RSA as the type and pem as the format.

   

   • Configure network settings, creating a security group allowing RDP traffic from anywhere.

   

   • Choose storage options accordingly and launch the instance.

   

5. Connect to the Instance

   • From the EC2 dashboard, select "Connect".
   • Choose "RDP client" and then select "Connect using RDP client".

   

6. Retrieve Windows Password

   • Click on "Get Password" to decrypt it.
   • Upload the private key file created earlier.
   • Click on "Decrypt Password".

   

   • The decrypted password is shown instead of Get Password

7. Open Remote Desktop Connection

   • Open Remote Desktop Connection on your Windows machine.
   • Enter the instance's Public DNS as the computer name.
   • Enter the username and password provided.

   

8. Access the Instance

   • Copy the password from the EC2 dashboard and paste it into Remote Desktop Connection.
   • Click "OK" to connect.

   

Congratulations! You have successfully connected to your EC2 instance using Windows.