After Setting up Amazon Web Services you can follow these steps to use the EC2 CLI tools to manage EC2 instances.
As per the setup instructions you require the following environment variables to use the tools. It is recommend you add these to $HOME/.bashrc or appropriate shell startup script.
$ export EC2_HOME=$HOME/aws/ec2 $ export PATH=$EC2_HOME/bin:$PATH # For Ubuntu $ export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/ # For Mac OSX Use # export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home/
Necessary Access Controls
In addition you require the various AWS access keys before running any EC2 commands.
$ cd $HOME/aws $ mv ~/Downloads/cert-EPE36OOAUD6QZZVFJCDJTEWFAG2EPWGA.pem cert.pem $ mv ~/Downloads/pk-EPE36OOAUD6QZZVFJCDJTEWFAG2EPWGA.pem pk.pem $ export EC2_CERT=$HOME/aws/cert.pem $ export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=$HOME/aws/pk.pem
Two more one off tasks are needed before you can launch a new instance. These are a keypair to access the instance, and a security group to maintain firewall rules.
$ ec2-add-keypair admin | grep -v "^KEYPAIR" > admin.pem $ chmod 600 admin.pem $ ec2-create-group db -d "DB Servers" $ ec2-authorize db -p 22 -s XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/32
In this example, an SSH keypair named “admin” has been created, and a security group called “db” with SSH only access from a given IP.
You should replace XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX with your current IP address.
If you do not know your current IP Address, goto http://www.whatismyip.com/.
Launching an EC2 Image
You must start with a pre-defined image to launch, known as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). Amazon provides a number of images as do many third parties. As this example launches a Ubuntu, we use the official AMIs listed at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EC2StartersGuide
$ ec2-run-instances ami-baba68d3 --instance-type t1.micro --region us-east-1 --group db --key admin RESERVATION r-c4ee13a7 336142022409 db INSTANCE i-91ef87f5 ami-baba68d3 pending admin 0 t1.micro 2012-03-16T21:40:47+0000 us-east-1c aki-805ea7e9 monitoring-disabled ebs paravirtual xen sg-cb2ef3a3 default
You can check the start of your running instances with
$ ec2-describe-instances RESERVATION r-c4ee13a7 336142022409 db INSTANCE i-91ef87f5 ami-baba68d3 ec2-23-20-96-190.compute-1.amazonaws.com domU-12-31-38-01-6A-F6.compute-1.internal running admin 0 t1.micro 2012-03-16T21:40:47+0000 us-east-1c aki-805ea7e9 monitoring-disabled 23.20.96.190 10.253.109.8 ebs paravirtual xen sg-cb2ef3a3 default BLOCKDEVICE /dev/sda1 vol-9bc893f7 2012-03-16T21:41:17.000Z true
When an instance is ready it will show as “running”, and there will be an ec2-XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX.compute-1.amazonaws.com hostname to connect to.
$ ssh -i admin.pem [email protected] $ uname -a $ free -m $ df -h $ exit
Removing an EC2 Instance
If the server you launched is not being used, this is costing you money (unless this is your only t1.micro instance on the free account). You can remove with
$ ec2-terminate-instances i-91ef87f5 $ sleep 10 $ ec2-describe-instances RESERVATION r-c4ee13a7 336142022409 db INSTANCE i-91ef87f5 ami-a7f539ce terminated admin 0 t1.micro 2012-03-16T21:40:47+0000 us-east-1c aki-805ea7e9 monitoring-disabled ebs paravirtual xen sg-cb2ef3a3 default
Conclusion
You have successfully configured and launched an EC2 AWS instance. You should now read up on the various Instance Types and also understand the use and benefits of the various regions and availability zones.
