Prerequisites
To connect to the EC2 Serial Console and use your chosen tool for troubleshooting, the following prerequisites must be in place:
AWS Regions
Supported in all AWS Regions except Canada West (Calgary).
Wavelength Zones and AWS Outposts
Not supported.
Local Zones
Supported in all Local Zones.
Instance types
Supported for all virtualized instances built on the Nitro System.
Not supported on bare metal instances.
Grant access
You must complete the configuration tasks to grant access to the EC2 Serial Console. For more information, see Configure access to the EC2 Serial Console.
Support for browser-based client
To connect to the serial console using the browser-based client, your browser must support WebSocket. If your browser does not support WebSocket, connect to the serial console using your own key and an SSH client.
Instance state
Must be running
.
You can't connect to the serial console if the instance is in the pending
,
stopping
, stopped
, shutting-down
, or
terminated
state.
For more information about the instance states, see Instance lifecycle.
Amazon EC2 Systems Manager
If the instance uses Amazon EC2 Systems Manager, then SSM Agent version 3.0.854.0 or later must be installed on the instance. For information about SSM Agent, see Working with SSM Agent in the AWS Systems Manager User Guide.
sshd server
You do not need an sshd server installed or running on your instance.
Configure your chosen troubleshooting tool
To troubleshoot your Windows instance via the serial console, you can use the Special Admin Console (SAC). Before you can use SAC, you must first enable SAC and the boot menu on every instance on which you'll use it.
For the instructions to configure your chosen troubleshooting tool on Linux, see Configure your chosen troubleshooting tool in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.
Enable SAC and the boot menu
Note
If you enable SAC on an instance, the EC2 services that rely on password retrieval will not work from the Amazon EC2 console. Windows on Amazon EC2 launch agents (EC2Config, EC2Launch v1, and EC2Launch v2) rely on the serial console to execute various tasks. These tasks do not perform successfully when you enable SAC on an instance. For more information about Windows on Amazon EC2 launch agents, see Configure your Windows instance. If you enable SAC, you can disable it later. For more information, see Disable SAC and the boot menu.
Use one of the following methods to enable SAC and the boot menu on an instance.