2016
Cloud Security Curriculum Development Workshop
Amazon Web Service Lab
AWS Account Setup and Services Overview
Dr. Saptarshi Debroy, & Minh Nguyen
Contact: Dr. Prasad Calyam, calyamp@[Link]
1. Purpose of the Lab
Understand definitions of various Amazon Web Services (AWS) and their use in cloud computing
based web applications that are accessible over the Internet through an AWS account.
2. References to guide Lab work
- Chapter 1, Distributed and Cloud Computing, Hwang, Fox & Dongarra
- Chapter 1, Programming Amazon EC2, Vliet and Paganelli
- AWS Free Usage for Education:
o Overview of AWS, [Link]
o Services on the free usage tier, [Link]
o Make the most of your free monthly usage,
[Link]
freetier/[Link]
- AWS Documentation: [Link]
- AWS Reference Architectures: [Link]
- General AWS Reading: T. Morgan, “A Rare Peek Into The Massive Scale of AWS”, Nov.
2014 - [Link]
- AWS educational resources (AWS credit, training, learning resources)
[Link]
3. Lab Steps and output collection guidelines
AWS Add AWS
Launch SSH to
Amazon Web AWS Account Educa7on Credit
Services Architecture instance
instance
Crea7on for $100
Figure 1: Lab Steps Overview
The Figure 1 shows the required steps to be followed in order to successfully create an account
credited with funds for this course. You will need to understand pricing conditions and services
documentation related with ‘AWS free usage tier’, understand AWS Architecture, create your
‘AWS account’ and request for $100 credit. Then, you will launch your first AWS EC2 (Elastic
Compute Cloud) instance. The final step will show you the ways to connect to your instance
through local Linux/Mac or Windows computer.
3.1 Amazon Web Services
Take your time in order to understand the conditions of free usage that involve free account
availability, restrictions in terms of instance types, pay-as-you-go service rates, operating
systems that are under the free usage condition, and free usage accumulation, detailed
information can be found on [Link]
-1-
Go through the [Link] to find detailed information of each service
that AWS provides. Pay special attention to the service groups: Getting started with AWS, Compute,
Storage & Content Delivery and Database.
3.2. AWS Architecture Center
You will need to understand overall [Link] to help you build your
application architecture customized according to your requirements, and for maximizing the AWS
services usage. Web application hosting related customization example is shown below in Figure 1.
-2-
Figure 1: Example application customization of AWS architecture
3.3. AWS Account Creation
Create an (AWS) Amazon Web Service account in [Link] by clicking the button ‘Create
a Free Account’ and follow the instructions. A credit/debit card and a cellphone/Landline number is
required.
• Follow the instruction to create your account. At some point you will also need to enter your
credit/debit card information.
• Don’t forget to select ‘Basic (Free)’ Support plan to access to AWS free services (if that information is
required).
-3-
• Once you create your account you will see all AWS services available for you.
3.4. Add AWS Education Credit for $100 to your Account.
• In [Link] Apply for AWS credit using the ‘Apply for
AWS Educate for students’ link.
-4-
• Once you received an email from AWS with the Promo Code, activated it by enter it on ‘Credits’ tag
as shown below.
• You will be able to see your detailed usage and Credits Balance by accessing ‘Bills’ option in the left
menu.
• Another useful option is to enable ‘Receive PDF Invoice my Email’ as well ‘Receive Billing Alerts’ to
keep track of the usage.
-5-
3.5 Launching your first AWS Instance
Figure 3: Overview of an AWS Instance
Figure 3 shows the instance architecture to be configured in this Lab. Using your AWS account, you will
launch a virtual instance created in a new ‘Volume’ from an Amazon EBS-backed instance snapshot
(called ‘Root’), in order to access your reserved infrastructure resources over the Internet; you will need
to create key pairs and secure it through a security group; all the infrastructure will be created in a
specific zone.
3.5.1 Click ‘Console Home’, make sure to select the US East (N. Virginia) region in the top-right part of
your screen and select AWS EC2 service (Elastic Compute Cloud).
-6-
3.5.2 In left menu select “Key Pairs”.
• Create a KeyPair called ‘key-ec2’ and store it in a safe location, you will need this key to connect to
the instances.
If you are a Linux/MAC user, remember to set the priority for the key pair: chmod 700 <path-to-the-
keypairs>.
-7-
3.5.3 Select “Security Groups” from the left menu, name a Security Group ‘SG_EC2’, add description
and a SSH rule with ‘anywhere’ option selected in source field.
• Example of Security Group creation.
-8-
3.5.4 Launch your Instance
• In left menu, launch a new instance in the ‘Instances’ option Click on the ‘Launch Instance’ button
and select the first Image of ‘Amazon Linux’ on the list
• Select the [Link] instance that is ‘Free’.
• Keep default values in the next configuration windows and continue until you get to the ‘Tag
Instance’ option. Add ‘Key’ and ‘Value’ as shown in figure below and click on ‘Next: Configure
Security Group’.
-9-
• Select the ‘Security Group’ created previously and click on ‘Review and Launch’.
• Once you click ‘launch’ you will be prompted to choose the key pair ‘key-ec2’ created previously.
• In a short time your new instance will be deployed and ready to be used.
-10-
3.6 Adding volume
In left menu “Elastic Block Store”, select ‘Volumes’ and you will see the default volume where your
instance is stored.
• Click in ‘Create Volume’ for creating a new 2GB volume and Volume Type ‘General Purpose (SSD)’.
Be sure that the ‘Availability Zone’ in the new volume is the same as the ‘Zone’ of the first volume
(For this specific case us-east-1c)
-11-
• Once the new volume is ‘available’, right click on it and select ‘Attach volume’, select your created
instance and attach it. Note the path will be established in the ‘Device’ option.
• You will end up with a new 2 GB SDD storage drive attached to your instance.
• It is good practice to name your volumes.
3.7 Connection to the instance using SSH
First up, copy the public DNS.
-12-
3.7.1 For Linux and MAC OS
Open a terminal and type in:
ssh –i <path-to-your-key-pairs> <public DNS>
You will be logged in the amazon instance.
3.7.2 For Windows
Download ‘PuTTY Key Generator’ to convert your key to PuTTY compatible format. Click in ‘conversions’
and ‘import key’ to select your ‘[Link]’.
-13-
Select the ‘SSH-1 (RSA)’ check box and click on ‘Save private key’ for storing. Name it ‘key-ec2-putty’
Now with PuTTY. Paste [public dns] in ‘Host Name (or IP address)’
-14-
Browse the ‘key-ec2-putty’ in Connection/SSH/Auth then click Browse.
Select ‘Yes’ in the PuTTY alert. Then Login as ‘ec2-user’
-15-
3.8 You should stop your instance after finishing the lab.
In your AWS EC2 service select ‘Instances’ under ‘INSTANCES’ option, select your running instance, click
on ‘Actions’ button and ‘Stop’ option.
-16-
