Create a basic launch template

You can create a launch template using the AWS Management Console or the AWS CLI.

AWS Management Console

To create a launch template

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console and select Launch templates.

2. Choose Create launch template.

3. Under Launch template name and description enter a unique, distinctive name for Launch template name

4. Under Key pair (login) at Key pair name, select the SSH key pair that will be used to log into EC2 instances managed by AWS PCS. This is optional, but recommended.

5. Under Network settings, then Firewall (security groups), choose security groups to attach to the network interface. All security groups in the launch template must be from your AWS PCS cluster VPC. At minimum, choose:

   • A security group that allows communication with the AWS PCS cluster

   • A security group that allows communication between EC2 instances launched by AWS PCS

   • (Optional) A security group that allows inbound SSH access to interactive instances

   • (Optional) A security group that allows compute nodes to make outgoing connections to the Internet

   • (Optional) Security group(s) that allow access to networked resources such as shared file systems or a database server.

6. Your new launch template ID will be accessible in the Amazon EC2 console under Launch templates. The launch template ID will have the form lt-0123456789abcdef01.

Recommended next step

• Use the new launch template to create or update an AWS PCS compute node group.

AWS CLI

To create a launch template

Create your launch template with the command that follows.

• Before running the command, make the following replacements:

  1. Replace region-code with the AWS Region where you are working with AWS PCS

  2. Replace my-launch-template-name with a name for your template. It must be unique to the AWS account and AWS Region you are using.

  3. Replace my-ssh-key-name with name of your preferred SSH key.

  4. Replace sg-ExampleID1 and sg-ExampleID2 with security group IDs that allow communication between your EC2 instances and the scheduler and communication between EC2 instances. If you only have one security group that enables all this traffic, you can remove sg-ExampleID2 and its preceding comma character. You can also add more security group IDs. All security groups you include in the launch template must be from your AWS PCS cluster VPC.

  aws ec2 create-launch-template --region region-code \
      --launch-template-name my-template-name \
      --launch-template-data '{"KeyName":"my-ssh-key-name","SecurityGroupIds": ["sg-ExampleID1","sg-ExampleID2"]}'

The AWS CLI will output text resembling the following. The launch template ID is found in LaunchTemplateId.

{
    "LaunchTemplate": {
        "LatestVersionNumber": 1,
        "LaunchTemplateId": "lt-0123456789abcdef01",
        "LaunchTemplateName": "my-launch-template-name",
        "DefaultVersionNumber": 1,
        "CreatedBy": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Bob",
        "CreateTime": "2019-04-30T18:16:06.000Z"
    }
}

Recommended next step

• Use the new launch template to create or update an AWS PCS compute node group.