Creating an Elastic Beanstalk environment

The following procedure launches a new environment running the default application. These steps are simplified to get your environment up and running quickly, using default option values.

Notes

• For instructions on creating and managing environments with the EB CLI, see Managing Elastic Beanstalk environments with the EB CLI.

• Creating an environment requires the permissions in the Elastic Beanstalk full access managed policy. See Elastic Beanstalk user policy for details.

To launch an environment with a sample application (console)

1. Open the Elastic Beanstalk console, and in the Regions list, select your AWS Region.

2. In the navigation pane, choose Applications. Select an existing application in the list. You can also choose to create one, following the instructions in Managing applications .

3. On the application overview page, choose Create new environment.

   The following image displays the application overview page.

   

   This launches the Create environment wizard. The wizard provides a set of steps for you to create a new environment.

4. For Environment tier, choose the Web server environment or Worker environment environment tier. You can't change an environment's tier after creation.

   Note

   The .NET on Windows Server platform doesn't support the worker environment tier.

   The Application information fields default, based on the application that you previously chose.

   In the Environment information grouping the Environment name defaults, based on the application name. If you prefer a different environment name you can enter another value in the field. You can optionally enter a Domain name; otherwise Elastic Beanstalk autogenerates a value. You can also optionally enter an Environment description.

5. For Platform, select the platform and platform branch that match the language your application uses.

   Note

   Elastic Beanstalk supports multiple versions for most of the platforms that are listed. By default, the console selects the recommended version for the platform and platform branch you choose. If your application requires a different version, you can select it here. For information about supported platform versions, see Elastic Beanstalk supported platforms.

6. For Application code, you have some choices for launching a sample application.

   • To launch the default sample application without supplying the source code, choose Sample application. This action chooses the single page application that Elastic Beanstalk provides for the platform you previously selected.

   • If you downloaded a sample application from this guide or another source, do the following steps.

     1. Select Upload your code.

     2. Next choose Local file, then under Upload application, select Choose file.

     3. Your computer's operating system will present you with an interface to select the local file that you downloaded. Select the source bundle file and continue.

7. For Presets, choose Single instance.

8. Choose Next.

9. The Configure service access page displays.

   The following image illustrates the Configure service access page.

   

10. Choose a value from the Existing Service Roles dropdown.

11. (Optional) If you previously created an EC2 key pair, you can select it from the EC2 key pair field dropdown. You would use it to securely log in to the Amazon EC2 instance that Elastic Beanstalk provisions for your application. If you skip this step, you can always create and assign an EC2 key pair after the environment is created. For more information, see EC2 key pair.

12. Next, we'll focus on the EC2 instance profile dropdown list. The values displayed in this dropdown list may vary, depending on whether you account has previously created a new environment.

    Choose one of the following items, based on the values displayed in your list.

    • If aws-elasticbeanstalk-ec2-role displays in the dropdown list, select it from the dropdown list.

    • If another value displays in the list, and it’s the default EC2 instance profile intended for your environments, select it from the dropdown list.

    • If the EC2 instance profile dropdown list doesn't list any values, you'll need to create an instance profile.

      Create an instance profile

      To create an instance profile, we'll take a detour to another procedure on this same page. Go to the end of this procedure and expand the procedure that follows, Create IAM Role for EC2 instance profile.

      Complete the steps in Create IAM Role for EC2 instance profile to create an IAM Role that you can subsequently select for the EC2 instance profile. Then return back to this step.

      Now that you've created an IAM Role, and refreshed the list, it displays as a choice in the dropdown list. Select the IAM Role you just created from the EC2 instance profile dropdown list.

13. Choose Skip to Review on the Configure service access page.

    This will select the default values for this step and skip the optional steps.

14. The Review page displays a summary of all your choices.

    To further customize your environment, choose Edit next to the step that includes any items you want to configure. You can set the following options only during environment creation:

    • Environment name

    • Domain name

    • Platform version

    • Processor

    • VPC

    • Tier

    You can change the following settings after environment creation, but they require new instances or other resources to be provisioned and can take a long time to apply:

    • Instance type, root volume, key pair, and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role

    • Internal Amazon RDS database

    • Load balancer

    For details on all available settings, see The create new environment wizard.

15. Choose Submit at the bottom of the page to initialize the creation of your new environment.

Create IAM Role for EC2 instance profile

To create an IAM Role for EC2 instance profile selection

1. Choose View permission details. This displays under the EC2 instance profile dropdown list.

   A modal window titled View instance profile permissions displays. This window lists the managed profiles that you'll need to attach to the new EC2 instance profile that you create. It also provides a link to launch the IAM console.

2. Choose the IAM console link displayed at the top of the window.

3. In the IAM console navigation pane, choose Roles.

4. Choose Create role.

5. Under Trusted entity type, choose AWS service.

6. Under Use case, choose EC2.

7. Choose Next.

8. Attach the appropriate managed policies. Scroll in the View instance profile permissions modal window to see the managed policies. The policies are also listed here:

   • AWSElasticBeanstalkWebTier

   • AWSElasticBeanstalkWorkerTier

   • AWSElasticBeanstalkMulticontainerDocker

9. Choose Next.

10. Enter a name for the role.

11. (Optional) Add tags to the role.

12. Choose Create role.

13. Return to the Elastic Beanstalk console window that is open.

14. Close the modal window View instance profile permissions.

    Important

    Do not close the browser page that displays the Elastic Beanstalk console.

15. Choose (refresh), next to the EC2 instance profile dropdown list.

    This refreshes the dropdown list, so that the Role you just created will display in the dropdown list.

While Elastic Beanstalk creates your environment, you are redirected to the Elastic Beanstalk console. When the environment health turns green, choose the URL next to the environment name to view the running application. This URL is generally accessible from the internet unless you configure your environment to use a custom VPC with an internal load balancer.

Topics

• The create new environment wizard

• Clone an Elastic Beanstalk environment

• Terminate an Elastic Beanstalk environment

• Creating Elastic Beanstalk environments with the AWS CLI

• Creating Elastic Beanstalk environments with the API

• Constructing a Launch Now URL

• Creating and updating groups of Elastic Beanstalk environments