Your First Week on Amazon Web Services

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Getting Started with AWS

Matt Yanchyshyn

July 10th, 2014

Let’s Get Started:

We’ll learn how to:– Set up an AWS account

– Create an IAM user and enable MFA

– Create SSH key pairs (used to log into your instances)

– Create a Security Group (firewall)

– Start an EC2 instance (virtual machine)

– Connect to your EC2 instance

– Use S3 (Internet connected storage)

– Create a CloudWatch alarm

– Backup and restore your EC2 instance

– Visualize AWS costs and set spending alerts

Free tier

• Includes most of the AWS services

• Available for all new account

• Good for one year from the day the account is

created

• Everything we show today can be done within

the free tier

• More details at http://aws.amazon.com/free

Sign Up

• Sign up though https://aws.amazon.com

• You need a credit card

• There will be a phone verification

Demo: signing-up for AWS

Creating IAM Users

Using AWS Identity and Access

Management (IAM), you can

create and manage AWS users

and groups.

You can control what resources

each user has access to so you

can avoid overly permissive

accounts.

Enabling MFA

AWS allows you to require

multi-factor authentication

for your users through physical

or software-based single use

login tokens to thwart stolen

passwords and key loggers

as an attack vector.

Demo:

creating an IAM user

& enabling MFA

Creating your SSH Key

• SSH stands for Secure Shell

• SSH keys are used for secured access to EC2

(Linux)

• SSH keys avoid password weaknesses

• Can import your own or use AWS created keys

Demo: creating SSH keys

Creating a Security Group

• Security Groups are firewalls for your instances

• By default, the Security Group blocks everything

• Choose which protocols & ports are open– Can use port ranges (e.g. 22-24)

• Choose which addresses the ports are open to– Uses CIDR rules for IP address access

– (use /32 for allowing a single address)

Demo: creating a security group

Start a New Instance

• Instances are virtual machines running in the cloud

• You have full control of the instance and can install

any software that you choose

• In this process, you define what kind of machine you

want (processing power, HD space, etc.)

• You will need:– A Key Pair to connect to your instance via SSH

– A Security Group to put your instance in

Demo: starting an EC2 instance

S3

• S3 is Amazon’s Simple Storage Service

• Store and retrieve almost any amount of data: 1 Byte to 5 Terabytes

• Highly scalable and durable– Regular S3 has 99.999999999% durability

– Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) offers 99.99% durability at discount

• Encryption available– At rest and for ingest/delivery

• Storage is isolated by AWS Region

• Object-level permissions

• Easily Accessible – Web (HTTP/HTTPS), P2P (BitTorrent) & APIs (REST & SOAP)

Demo: using S3

Connecting to EC2 Instances

• SSH is used to connect to Linux– There is a Java-based terminal available in the EC2 Console

– Linux/OSX: Terminal

– Windows: PuTTY

– Note: If you are using an Linux distribution that has a GUI, you can use a remote GUI tool like VNC

• Remote Desktop is used to connect to Windows– Windows: MSTSC (Microsoft Terminal Services Client)

– Linux/OSX: 2X client

– Note: you can also use Remote PowerShell or a 3rd party shell extension with Windows.

Connecting to a Linux Instancefrom Linux/OSX

• Open a terminal window

• ssh -i {ssh private key location} ec2-

user@{public DNS name}

Connecting to a Linux Instance from Windows

• Download/Install PuTTY– http://bit.ly/1jsQjnt

• Convert .pem file to .ppk with PuTTYgen

• Create a connection in PuTTY

Connecting to a Windows Instance from Windows

• Open a Remote Desktop connection

• Windows + r or start and then the “run” option

• mstsc /v:{EC2 instance public DNS Name}

Demo:

connecting to a Linux EC2

Instance from Windows

Demo:

connecting to an instance from

AWS Management Console

CloudWatch

• CloudWatch provides monitoring information for your

EC2 instances

• CloudWatch allows you to specify actions to take when a

condition is met

– Example 1: Send an email when CPU Utilization >80% for 5 minutes

– Example 2: Add another machine to an Auto-Scaling Group if Average Disk

Read IOPS across an Auto-Scaling Group exceeds 500

– Example 3: Remove a machine from an Auto-Scaling Group if Network

input drops below 2,000 Bytes

Demo: creating a CloudWatch alarm

Additional Information

• CloudWatch works with Auto Scaling

• When you have defined an Auto-Scaling Group,

CloudWatch Alarms can be used to increase

and decrease the resources in the Auto-Scaling

Group

Elastic Block Storage

• Elastic Block Storage (EBS) is block level

storage for EC2 instances (think HDD)

• EBS volumes can be removed and re-attached

• Custom volume sizes from 1TB – 1 GB (RAID

for larger)

• Use Provisioned IOPS for predictable I/O

Demo: backing up an EBS volume

Restoring a Snapshot / Creating an AMI

• AMIs are Amazon Machine Images

• AMIs are bootable versions of a snapshot

(backup)

• AMIs are private, but you can choose to share

them with others

Demo:

creating an AMI

& restoring a snapshot

AWS Billing and Cost Management

• Several features to help you monitor costs and

visualize your AWS spend:– Cost Explorer

– Alerts on Spending Limits

– Detailed Billing Reports

– Consolidated Billing

Demo: AWS Account billing console

Summary

• We covered:– Set up an AWS account

– Create an IAM user and enable MFA

– Create SSH key pairs (used to log into your instances)

– Create a Security Group (firewall)

– Start an EC2 instance (virtual machine)

– Connect to your EC2 instance

– Use S3 (Internet connected storage)

– Create a CloudWatch alarm

– Backup and restore your EC2 instance

– Visualize AWS costs and set spending alerts

Thank you!