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Amazon Isn’t Just For Books Anymore...

1/27/2013 6:12:45 PM

We demonstrate how to get started with Amazon’s Web Services

While we’re used to Amazon -the massive online retailer that we all know, and some love - providing a huge array of products, you may be unaware that it also provides a range of tools and services aimed at the IT market, too. Initially designed to make use of spare capacity of within its servers, now Amazon offer a range of services that has grown to rival that of Google, while differentiating itself with products aimed at the power user, enthusiast and businesses rather than the average web user. This area now forms a much larger part of the Amazon business plan than just using the spare infrastructure capacity of its infrastructure, with data centres across the US, Europe and Asia.

Amazon Web Services dashboard

Amazon Web Services dashboard

The specific service, that’ll be covered in this article is the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) which, as the name suggests, focuses on offering cloud computing solutions that are easily started and stopped as needed (hence ‘Elastic’). Specifically, below we’ll offer some help in the basic setup of the EC2 services that will get you up and running. The Amazon documentation is far more considerable than this article -though a bit less user friendly - so if you have any more specific queries, that’s where you should head next.

Amazon EC2

The EC2 service lets you create a PC in the cloud to the specifications you need, from the available services that Amazon offer. The range of instances should cover everything you need and you have the ability to run either Linux or Windows instances (you can also upload your own image based on a VMWare image, but that’s probably a whole other article on it’s own and not covered here).

“The EC2 service lets you create a PC in the cloud, to the specifications you need”

Instances are priced based on the number of EC2 Compute Units (see boxout), RAM and disk space available to the instance. At the top end of the spectrum, Amazon also offer the ability to run GPU and High Performance Computing Clusters, which allow researchers the ability to quickly, and cheaply, setup modelling services in the cloud. The ability to setup and have the machine fully running in under an hour, makes it ideal for instances where a model or task only has to run for a short amount of time - it means that there is no initial cost to the user - setup is free and you only pay for what you use (be warned -costs can soon mount up).

“The EC2 service lets you create a PC in the cloud, to the specifications you need”

“The EC2 service lets you create a PC in the cloud, to the specifications you need”

You can get started on EC2 for free if you’re a new Amazon Web Services customer. To encourage use of the service, the company offers all new members a free period of use that’s enough to run the instance 24/7 for a month, though you can spread this time out over a year, should you wish. So, let’s take a look at the initial setup, which is the same for both Windows and Linux, and then split the article to reflect the different procedures of required to work with the different operating systems. The choice of Linux or Windows is a personal preference, though Windows instances are more expensive per hour (to pay for the licenses being used).

Getting Started

The first step is to connect to the AWS website (aws..com) and create an account, which can be the same as your normal Amazon account. Once logged in and verified (Amazon have to verify your account, partly to prevent the services being used for spam and other illegal activities), you can log in and visit the Console (console.aws..com). There, you’ll be greeted with the page showing all the web services that you have access to.

The first step is to connect to the AWS website (aws..com) and create an account, which can be the same as your normal Amazon account

The first step is to connect to the AWS website (aws..com) and create an account, which can be the same as your normal Amazon account

Select an EC2 service from the list and you’ll be taken to the EC2 dashboard page, from where you can manage all your EC2 instances. The top right hand corner houses a drop down menu allowing you to choose where you want to run your server (for this article, we used Ireland). The prices you’re charged with differ from region to region, but the global reach of the EC2 servers allow you to locate the server where the most people will be accessing it (for better transfer speeds, normally), hence our choice.

The dashboard shows the status of any running instances you have, the status of the Amazon servers, availability and provides a summary of your resources. I’ve already used EC2, so I have a few security groups and key pair setup - but your dash should show 0 in all instances here.

The easiest way to get started is to click the launch instance button and let Amazon walk you through setting up the device. We’ll use the classic wizard as it helps us get everything sorted. Once we select this, we’re greeted with a screen showing the available operating systems the instance can run. If you want to make use of the free tier that Amazon offer for new AWS customers, you have to choose an instance marked with the star (though they make that clear). You can choose custom and community based AMI’s (the images the server will use), but these are often specialised - stick with a default one and you’ll be able to customise the server to what you need.

Creating An Instance

This step lets us choose what instance size we want to use and how many instances we want to setup at once. We’ll select 1 and use the Micro instance (this is the only free tier that Amazon offer). There’s no need to change the availability zone.

RDP connection details

RDP connection details

You can then setup additional monitoring tools which go beyond the basics that Amazon offer for free, and allow you to be notified when events occur. We won’t set any up now, but feel free to experiment in the future. We won’t import any users and we won’t set accidental termination on, either, as we’re just experimenting. Changing the shutdown behaviour is something you might want to consider, though. The default state is to shut down the instance but keep the instance ‘in your name’ (and therefore chargeable). Setting it to terminate will shut down the instance and stop it (be warned though, when the instance is terminated, this will also delete the disk image and all data!)

This stage also shows the disk space: each instance has a set amount of desk space with it, which we’ll leave set at the Windows AMI default of 30GB (Micro has up to 160GB available). You can then create an optional tag to name the servers. If you just have one or two, this isn’t really required but if you start running many for a business, this could really help organise the instances.

Security of your server is important and at this stage, Amazon asks you to create a keypair to access the server with. You’ll need to keep this safe, as without it, you’ll be unable to access your server. To quote Gandalf from Lord Of The Rings: “keep it secret, keep it safe”.

The last screen is where you setup the firewall access to the server. This section can put you off if you’re new to firewalls and there’s not much help regarding it. Thankfully, Amazon have identified the ports that are commonly opened up on the server and you can select these in the drop down box. As a bare minimum, you’ll need to open the RDP or SSH protocols (depending on whether you’re using a Windows or Linux linstance), otherwise you won’t be able to access the instance once it’s created! You can edit the firewall groups after this point, so don’t worry if you later want to open up additional ports. We’ll set the IP addresses to the default 0.0.0.0/0 settings - this will allow any IP address to connect to your instance. If you’ll only be administering from your own machine, you might want to change these to your IP (if you google “What’s my IP?”, Google will kindly tell you your IP address!) and it will only let you connect, as long as your IP address remains the same.

Unlock the administrator password

Unlock the administrator password

A final screen then appears and lets you review the setup. Once you’ve looked it over, click Launch and your server is started (and Amazon start charging you). By selecting the instances menu, you can get a summary of your server information. You might have to wait a while to connect to the instance as it gets setup. This can take up to 15 minutes (which you are charged for) but is often quicker.

Windows

To connect to a Windows instance, you need to install the Remote Desktop Application on your PC. This should be done by default, but if not you can download this from Microsoft’s website. It’s available on OS X too, and Linux has programs that can access the server via RDP as well.

To connect to a Windows instance, you need to install the Remote Desktop Application on your PC

To connect to a Windows instance, you need to install the Remote Desktop Application on your PC

Right click on the instance and select Connect. You’ll be presented with a screen showing you the Public DNS which is the address you need to enter into the RDP client. To get the password for the Admin account, you need to click retrieve password and point the webpage to your keypair you downloaded earlier.

Once this has uploaded, Amazon will then display the Admin password for you. Enter this into the RDP client and connect. All being well, the Windows screen should appear, and you should be greeted with a normal Windows desktop. After this, you can get on and use the machine as you would normally.

Linux

To connect to the Linux instance, connect in a similar way to the Windows instance. Right click and select connect. At this stage, you can either connect via an SSH client in your browser or via a standalone program such as PUTTY. Using PUTTY to connect requires conversion of the PEM file - Amazon has a guide for this linked under the SSH client guide. If you’re using Mac or linux, you can easily connect using the command highlighted.

Using PUTTY to connect requires conversion of the PEM file - Amazon has a guide for this linked under the SSH client guide.

Using PUTTY to connect requires conversion of the PEM file - Amazon has a guide for this linked under the SSH client guide.

Once in, you’re presented with a command line screen and are ready to install whatever you need - using the Ubuntu AMI will require you login as user ubuntu (not root, as Amazon suggest) and sudo commands will not require additional passwords (but you still need to sudo commands).

Shutting Down

Once you’ve finished with the server and done all you need to, don’t forget to terminate it. To do this, right click the instance in the instance menu and select terminate. At this point, the instance will shutdown and Amazon will delete all data that was on the server so make sure you’ve downloaded everything you need! In using this for work purposes, I’ve found that making use of the Amazon S3 storage can prove beneficial as well, as you are able to transfer large volumes of data to it quickly from the instance. Shutdown the instance and then download from Amazon S3 in your own time - very handy for large datasets I was dealing with.

Conclusion

This guide has detailed how to get a basic EC2 instance up and running. However, what you intend to use it for, and how, will affect your choice of instance level, operating system and required system functionality. So now it’s really time for you to get started and then begin to experiment for yourself.

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