• By Rasika Preethiraj
• In AWS
• Posted 13 Aug 2022

How to create an EC2 instance from AWS Console

Create EC2 instance is one of the most basic tasks AWS cloud users perform. AWS makes it easy to complete the EC2 instance launch process, but there are still many steps involved.

Step 1. Select a region
One of the most important steps is to select the desired AWS region. This can be done from the top navigation bar of the AWS Console.

Step 2. Navigate to the EC2 Console
Once you select the desired AWS region, go to the EC2 Console. From the same landing page, search for EC2 (Figure 1). Your landing page in the management interface will likely display EC2 among the most commonly used services in the account.
Under Instances is a list of the EC2 instances deployed in the account. There is also a Launch instances button on the top right section of this page; clicking on that button brings you to the EC2 instance launch flow

Step 3. Create the EC2 instance
An EC2 instance is a virtual server deployed in the AWS cloud. The first server-specific configuration to choose is the Amazon Machine Image (AMI). An AMI is a base server image stored in the cloud (Figure 3). It contains the OS, preinstalled software as well as data included in the EC2 instance when it launches.
AWS offers a set of AMIs for OS like Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Windows, etc..

Step 4. Choose an instance type
o select an EC2 instance, you must understand the application infrastructure requirements and the right EC2 instance type to meet them. Under-provisioned EC2 instances encounter performance problems, while over-provisioned instances result in an unnecessarily high bill.

Step 5. Configure storage
EC2 instances attach to an EBS volume, which is configured in this section. Specify the storage size in gigabytes and the storage type options. Options include various generations of general-purpose SSD or provisioned IOPS as well as older-generation magnetic volumes (not recommended). Storage-optimized instance types, such as EC2 C5d, come with built-in SSD storage.

Step 6. Tag the instance
A consistent tagging strategy across AWS resources is an operational best practice. Therefore, appropriately tagging the new instance is important.

Step 7. Build in security
Security groups in AWS determine a set of access rules for both incoming and outgoing traffic in the EC2 instance (Figure 8). The settings include port ranges, IPs or security group IDs assigned to resources trying to access an EC2 instance. Limit incoming traffic to only the set of parameters strictly required to access an EC2 instance. Avoid generic rules that allow open access to a wide range of ports and IP addresses. You can either select an existing security group or create a new one.

Step 8. Enable SSH access with a key or RDP
The last step is to create an EC2 key or select an existing one (Figure 9). The key is used to enable Secure Shell (SSH) access into the EC2 instance. With Windows instances, the private EC2 key helps generate an admin password to access the instance. AWS stores a copy of the public key inside the EC2 instance. Users keep the private key.

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