Launch an Instance

To launch an instance

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

2. Click Launch Instance.

   

3. On the Create a New Instance screen, select Classic Wizard, and then click Continue.

   

4. On the Choose an AMI page, on the Quick Start tab, select one of the Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).

   If you're not sure which to launch, select either the Basic 32-bit Amazon Linux AMI, or the Getting Started on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 AMI.

   	Note
   	An AMI contains all the information needed to create a new instance of a server. For example, an AMI might contain all the software to act as a web server or all the software to act as a Windows database server (such as Windows Server and SQL Server).

   

5. On the Instance Details page, in the Instance Type drop-down list box, select Small (m1.small, 1.7 GB) to launch a single small instance into your subnet.

   

6. Under Launch Instances, click the VPC tab, confirm that your subnet is selected in the Subnet drop-down list box, and then click Continue.

7. On the Advanced Instance Options page, you can specify the IP address to use for the instance. For this exercise, however, we'll leave the IP Address empty and click Continue to accept the default settings.

   

8. Give your instance a user friendly name or "tag," and then click Continue.

9. On the Create Key Pair page, you can select an existing key pair or create a new one.

   A key pair is a security credential similar to a password, which you use to securely connect to your instance once it's running. If you're new to Amazon EC2 and haven't created any key pairs, when the wizard displays the Create Key Pair page, the Create a new Key Pair button is selected by default. You'll need to create a key pair.

10. Select Create a new Key Pair, enter a name for your key pair (e.g., VPC_Keypair), and then click Create & Download your Key Pair.

    	Note
    	EC2 uses this name to also name the private key file (with a .pem extension) associated with the pair.

11. When prompted, save the private key in a safe place on your system and click Continue.

12. On the Configure Firewall page, click Choose one or more of your existing Security Groups, select the WebServerSG group you created earlier, and then click Continue.

13. On the Review page, review your settings, and then click Launch to launch the instance.

    A confirmation page lets you know your instance is launching.

14. On the confirmation page, click Close, and then click Instances in the navigation pane to view your instance's status. It takes a short time for an instance to launch. The instance's status is pending while it's launching. After a short period, your instance's status switches to running. You can click Refresh to refresh the display.

    	Note
    	You might need to click Show/Hide in the top right corner to enable the display of the VPC ID, subnet ID, and private IP address of the instance in the list of instances.

    

    At the bottom of the pane, you can view information about the Amazon EC2 instance.