Step 5: Launch an Instance - AWS OpsWorks

Step 5: Launch an Instance

Important

The AWS OpsWorks Stacks service reached end of life on May 26, 2024 and has been disabled for both new and existing customers. We strongly recommend customers migrate their workloads to other solutions as soon as possible. If you have questions about migration, reach out to the AWS Support Team on AWS re:Post or through AWS Premium Support.

Use AWS OpsWorks Stacks to start up an Ubuntu Server Amazon EC2 instance. This instance uses the settings that you defined in the layer you created earlier in this walkthrough. (For more information, see Instances.)

To launch the instance

  1. In the service navigation pane, choose Instances. The Instances page is displayed.

  2. For MyLinuxDemoLayer, choose Add an instance.

  3. On the New tab, leave the defaults for the following:

    • Hostname (demo1)

    • Size (c3.large)

    • Subnet (IP address us-west-2a)

  4. Choose Advanced.

  5. Leave the defaults for the following:

    • Scaling type (24/7)

    • SSH key (Do not use a default SSH key)

    • Operating system (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS)

    • OpsWorks Agent version (Inherit from stack)

    • Tenancy (Default - Rely on VPC settings)

    • Root device type (EBS backed)

    • Volume type (General Purpose (SSD))

    • Volume size (8)

  6. Your results will be similar to the following screenshot:

    Form for configuring a new EC2 instance with options for hostname, size, subnet, and other settings.

  7. Choose Add Instance. AWS OpsWorks Stacks adds the instance to the layer and displays the Instances page.

  8. For MyLinuxDemoLayer, for demo1, for Actions, choose start:

    Instance management interface showing a stopped demo1 instance with start and delete options.

  9. Over the course of several minutes, the following occurs:

    • The setting up circle changes from 0 to 1.

    • Status turns from stopped to requested, to pending, to booting, to running_setup, and then finally to online. Note that this process can take several minutes.

    • After Status changes to online, the setting up circle indicator changes from 1 to 0, and the online circle changes from 0 to 1 and changes to bright green. Do not proceed until the online circle changes to bright green, and shows 1 instance online.

  10. Your results must match the following screenshot before you continue (if you receive a failure message, you may want to consult the Debugging and Troubleshooting Guide):

    EC2 instance details showing one online c3.large instance in us-west-2a with stop and ssh options.

You now have an instance that is ready for the app to be deployed to it.

Note

If you want to log in to the instance to explore it further, you must first provide AWS OpsWorks Stacks with information about your public SSH key (which you can create with tools such as ssh-keygen or PuTTYgen), and then you must set permissions on the MyLinuxDemoStack stack to enable your user to log in to the instance. For instructions, see Registering a User's Public SSH Key and Logging In with SSH. If you plan to use SSH to connect to instances through PuTTY, see Connecting to Your Linux Instance from Windows Using PuTTY in the AWS documentation.

In the next step, you will deploy the app to the instance.