Step 4: Launch an Instance

To launch an Amazon EC2 instance

1. In the Request Instances Wizard, on the Instance Details page, in the Instance Type list, select Large (m1.large, 7.5 GB).

   Accept the other defaults on this page, and then click Continue. Accept the defaults on the following pages, and then click Continue on each. When the wizard displays the Create Key Pair page, go to the next step.

2. Create a key pair:

   1. Amazon EC2 instances created from a Public AMI use a public/private key pair, rather than a password, for signing in. The public key is embedded in your instance. You use the private key to sign in securely without a password. After you create your own AMIs, you can choose other mechanisms to securely log in to your new instances.

      If you're new to Amazon EC2 and haven't created any key pairs yet, when the wizard displays the Create Key Pair page, the Create a new Key Pair button is selected by default.

      On the Create Key Pair page, in the Enter a name for your key pair box, type mykeypair. This will be the name of the private key file associated with the pair (with a .pem extension).

      

   2. Click Create & Download your Key Pair.

      You're prompted to save the private key from the key pair to your system.

   3. Save the private key in a safe place on your system, and record the location where you saved it.

      Important

      You need the key pair to be able to connect to your Amazon EC2 instance. If you lose the key pair, you will not be able to connect.

   The wizard displays the Configure Firewall page, where you create a security group.

3. Create a security group:

   A security group defines firewall rules for your instances. These rules specify which incoming network traffic should be delivered to your instance (e.g., accept web traffic on port 80). All other traffic is ignored. You can modify rules for a group at any time. The new rules are automatically enforced for all running instances. For more information about security groups, go to Using Security Groups in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

   1. If necessary, click Create a new Security Group.

   2. In the Group Name box, type webappsecuritygroup.

   3. In the Description box, type a description for your security group.

   4. In the Create a New Rule box inside Inbound Rules, click RDP and click Add Rule.

      Caution

      The security group enables all IP addresses to access your instance over RDP. This is acceptable for the short exercise in this tutorial, but it's not secure for production environments. In production, you'll authorize only a specific IP address or range of addresses to access your instance.

   5. Under Inbound Rules, in the Create a New Rule box, click HTTP, and then click Add Rule.

      

   6. Click Continue.

   The security group is created and assigned an ID (e.g., sg-48996e20). Your instance will be launched into this new security group. The wizard steps to the Review page, where you can review the settings and launch the instance.

4. Review your settings and launch the instance:

   1. If all the settings are as you want them, click Launch.

      A confirmation page is displayed to let you know that your instance is launching.

   2. On the confirmation page, click Close. In the navigation pane, click Instances to view the status of your instance. It takes a short time for an instance to launch. While the instance is launching, its status will be shown as pending.

      

      After a short period, your instance's status switches to running. To manually refresh the display at any time, you can click Refresh.

      

   3. Record the public DNS name for your instance:

      1. Select the running instance, and note the public DNS address in the bottom pane. You will need it for the next task.

         

   When your instance's status is running, you can connect to your instance and deploy your application.