Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Getting Started Guide API Version 2012-12-01

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud: Getting Started Guide

Amazon Web Services Copyright 2013 Amazon Web Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. The following are trademarks or registered trademarks of Amazon: Amazon, Amazon.com, Amazon.com Design, Amazon DevPay, Amazon EC2, Amazon Web Services Design, AWS, CloudFront, EC2, Elastic Compute Cloud, Kindle, and Mechanical Turk. In addition, Amazon.com graphics, logos, page headers, button icons, scripts, and service names are trademarks, or trade dress of Amazon in the U.S. and/or other countries. Amazon's trademarks and trade dress may not be used in connection with any product or service that is not Amazon's, in any manner that is likely to cause confusion among customers, or in any manner that disparages or discredits Amazon. All other trademarks not owned by Amazon are the property of their respective owners, who may or may not be affiliated with, connected to, or sponsored by Amazon.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide

Getting Started ....................................................................................................................................... 1 Where Do I Go from Here? ................................................................................................................... 11 Document History ................................................................................................................................. 16 Please Provide Feedback ..................................................................................................................... 17

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide

Getting Started with Amazon EC2 Linux Instances

To get started using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Linux instances, complete the steps shown in the following table. You'll primarily use the AWS Management Console, a point-and-click web-based interface.You can also watch this short video to get started: How to Create a Red Hat Enterprise Linux EC2 Instance.

Tip
This tutorial has you launch and connect to an Amazon EC2 Linux instance. If you'd prefer to launch and connect to an Amazon EC2 Windows instance, see this tutorial: Getting Started with Amazon EC2 Windows Instances. For more information about Amazon EC2, see the Amazon EC2 product page.

To get started with Amazon EC2

Step Step 1: Sign Up for Amazon EC2 (p. 2) Description Create an AWS account, if you haven't done so already.

Step 2: Launch an Amazon EC2 Launch an Amazon Linux instance, which is a virtual server in the Instance (p. 2) cloud. Step 3: Connect to Your Instance (p. 6) Step 4: Explore Your Instance (p. 7) Connect to your instance.

Create an Amazon EC2 volume, attach it to your instance, and use Linux commands on your instance to make the volume available for use. Terminate your instance and delete the volume that you created.

Step 5: Clean Up (p. 9)

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide Step 1: Sign Up for Amazon EC2

Step 1: Sign Up for Amazon EC2

When you create an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account, AWS automatically signs up the account for all AWS services, including Amazon EC2. With Amazon EC2, you pay only for what you use. New AWS customers can get started with Amazon EC2 for free. For more information, see Amazon EC2 Pricing. If you have an AWS account already, skip to the next step. If you don't have an AWS account, use the following procedure to create one.

To create an AWS account

1. 2. Go to http://aws.amazon.com and click Sign Up Now. Follow the on-screen instructions. Part of the sign-up process involves receiving a phone call and entering a PIN using the phone keypad.

Step 2: Launch an Amazon EC2 Instance

Now that you're signed up for AWS, you're ready to start "computing" in the cloud. The first thing you'll do is to launch a Linux instance using the AWS Management Console. An instance is a virtual server in the cloud. You can use Amazon EC2 to set up and configure the operating system and applications that run on your instance. You can choose to launch one of the following instances: An instance within the Free Usage Tier. The Free Usage Tier enables you to launch and use an Amazon EC2 micro instance free for 12 months. For more information about the Free Usage Tier, see the AWS Free Usage Tier product page and Getting Started with AWS Free Usage Tier. A regular instance (not within the Free Usage Tier). During this tutorial you'll incur the standard Amazon EC2 usage fees for the instance, until we show you how to terminate it in the last step. The total charges to complete this tutorial are minimal (typically less than a few dollars). For more information about Amazon EC2 usage fees, see Amazon EC2 Pricing.

To launch an instance
1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/. Use the email address and password that you specified when signing up for AWS. From the navigation bar, select the region for the instance. For this tutorial, you can use the default region. Otherwise, this choice is important because some EC2 resources can be shared between regions, while others can't. For example, if you'd like to connect your instance to an existing EBS volume, you must launch the instance in the same region as the volume.

2.

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide Step 2: Launch an Amazon EC2 Instance

3.

From the Amazon EC2 console dashboard, click Launch Instance.

The Create a New Instance page includes these ways to launch an instance: The Classic Wizard offers you precise control and advanced settings for configuring your instance. The Quick Launch Wizard automatically configures many selections for you, so that you can get started quickly. This tutorial guides you through the Quick Launch Wizard.

4. 5. 6.

On the Create a New Instance page, click Quick Launch Wizard. (Optional) In Name Your Instance, enter a name for the instance that has meaning for you. (If you run multiple instances, naming them helps you identify them in the console.) In Choose a Key Pair, you can choose from any existing key pairs that you've created, or you can create a new key pair. A key pair enables you to connect to a Linux instance through SSH. Therefore, don't select the None option. If you launch your instance without a key pair, then you can't connect to it. For this example, well create a key pair: a. b. c. Click Create New. Type a name for your key pair and then click Download. Save your private key in a safe place on your computer. Note the location because you'll need the key to connect to your instance.

7.

In Choose a Launch Configuration, the Quick Launch Wizard displays a list of basic configurations called Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that you can choose from to launch your instance. An AMI contains everything you need to create a new instance of a server, such as a web server or a database server. In this tutorial, well launch an Amazon Linux instance with a 64-bit operating system. If the configuration is marked with a star, this indicates that it's within the Free Usage Tier.

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Important
If you launch a regular instance, you're billed from the time that you launch the instance until the instance is stopped or terminated, even if it remains idle.

8. 9.

Click Continue to view and customize the settings for your instance. In Security Details, Security Group, you see the security group that the wizard selects for you. A security group defines firewall rules for your instances.These rules specify which incoming network traffic is delivered to your instance. All other traffic is ignored. If you're new to Amazon EC2 and haven't set up any security groups yet, AWS defines a default security group for you. The name and description for the group is quicklaunch-x where x is a number associated with your quicklaunch group. The first security group you create using the Quick Launch Wizard is named quicklaunch-1. You can change the name and description using the Edit details button. The group already has basic firewall rules that enable you to connect to the type of instance you choose. For a Linux instance, you connect through SSH on port 22. The quicklaunch-x security group automatically allows SSH traffic on port 22. If you have used Amazon EC2 before, the wizard looks for an existing security group for the type of instance youre creating.

Caution
The quicklaunch-x security group authorizes all IP addresses to access your instance over the specified ports (for example, SSH). This is acceptable for the short exercise in this tutorial, but it's unsafe for production environments. In production, you'll authorize only a specific IP address or range of IP addresses to access your instance.

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide Step 2: Launch an Amazon EC2 Instance

10. Review your settings, and click Launch to launch the instance. 11. A confirmation page lets you know that your instance is launching. Click Close to close the confirmation page and return to the Amazon EC2 console. 12. In the Navigation pane, click Instances to view the status of your instance. It takes a short time for an instance to launch. The instance's status is pending while it's launching.

After the instance is launched, its status changes to running.

13. (Optional) After your instance is launched, you can view the quicklaunch-x security group rules. a. b. On the Amazon EC2 console, in Network and Security, click Security Groups. Click the quicklaunch-1 security group to view the security rules created by the Quick Launch Wizard.

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide Step 3: Connect to Your Instance

The security group contains a rule that authorizes SSH traffic from any IP address source to port 22. If you launch a Linux instance running Apache and MySQL, the Quick Launch Wizard creates a security group that authorizes traffic to port 80 for HTTP (for web traffic) and port 3306 (for MySQL).

Step 3: Connect to Your Instance

There are several ways to connect to a Linux instance. In this step, we show you how to connect to your instance using your browser. Alternatively, there are tools you can use to connect to your instance instead of connecting using your browser. For more information, see the following topics: Connect to Linux/UNIX Instances from Linux/UNIX with SSH and Connecting to Linux/UNIX Instances from Windows Using PuTTY.

To connect to your instance through a web browser

1. You must have Java installed and enabled in the browser. If you don't have Java already, you can contact your system administrator to get it installed, or follow the steps outlined in these pages: 1. Install Java 2. Enable Java in your web browser

2. 3. 4. 5.

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/. In the Navigation pane, click Instances. Right-click your instance, and then click Connect. Click Connect from your browser using the Java SSH client (Java Required). AWS automatically detects the public DNS address of your instance and the key pair name you launched the instance with. In User name, enter the user name to log in to your instance.

6.

Note
For an Amazon Linux instance, the default user name is ec2-user. For Ubuntu, the default user name is ubuntu. Some AMIs allow you to log in as root. So in this example, you may need to change the user name from ec2-user to the appropriate user name. 7. 8. The Key name field is automatically populated for you. In Private key path, enter the fully qualified path to your .pem private key file.

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide Step 4: Explore Your Instance

9.

Click Save key location, and then click Stored in browser cache to store the key location in your browser cache. This ensures that the key location will be detected in subsequent browser sessions, until your clear your browsers cache. 10. Click Launch SSH Client.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

When prompted to add the host to your set of known hosts, click No. If necessary, click Yes to trust the certificate. Click Run to run the MindTerm client. If you accept the license agreement, click Accept. If this is your first time running MindTerm, a series of dialog boxes ask you to confirm setup for your home directory and other settings. 16. Confirm settings for MindTerm setup. A screen opens and you are connected to your instance. Congratulations! You've successfully launched and connected to a Linux instance. If you'd like to explore the instance, continue to the next step. Otherwise, skip to Step 5: Clean Up (p. 9) to terminate the instance so that you don't continue to incur charges.

Step 4: Explore Your Instance

Now that you've connected to your instance, you can use it in the way that you'd use a Linux computer sitting in front of you. Let's take a look at the default storage for the instance. In MindTerm, run the following command to view the mounted volumes.
$ df -h

For a micro instance, your output should look something like this.

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Filesystem /dev/xvda1 tmpfs

Size 8.0G 298M

Used 1.1G 0

Avail Use% Mounted on 6.9G 14% / 298M 0% /dev/shm

The /dev/xvda1 volume is the root device volume. It contains the image used to boot the instance. Notice that there's room to install additional software on your instance. For example, you can use yum to download and install packages on your instance. If you need additional storage for data, a simple solution is to add Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes to your Amazon EC2 instance. An Amazon EBS volume serves as network-attached storage for your instance. Let's add a volume to the instance that you've launched. First we'll use the EC2 console to create an Amazon EBS volume and attach it to the instance, and then we'll connect to the instance and mount the volume.

To create and attach an Amazon EBS volume

1. 2. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/. In the Navigation pane, select the Region in which you created your instance and click Instances. The console displays the list of current instances in that region. Select your Linux instance. In the Description tab in the bottom pane note the Zone for the instance. In the Navigation pane, in Elastic Block Store, click Volumes. The console displays a list of current EBS volumes in that region. (You should see the EBS volume that serves as the root device volume for your instance.) Click Create Volume. In the Create Volume dialog box, configure the following settings: Leave the volume size blank. (We'll let the snapshot we select determine the size of the volume.) Select the same Availability Zone that you used when you created your instance. Otherwise, you can't attach the volume to your instance. Select a snapshot that contains a public data set hosted by AWS. This enables us to quickly and easily create a volume that is formatted and contains data. The Free Usage Tier provides up to 30 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage; therefore, select a public data set that is smaller than 30 GB. We will use snap-2767d046 -- This is a 10,000 song..., which contains the Million Song Sample Dataset. This data set is 5 GB in size. Select the Standard volume type. This creates a standard EBS volume.

3.

4. 5.

Now click Yes, Create. This creates a new volume (its state is available, and its snapshot is snap-2767d046). 6. 7. Right-click the newly created volume and select Attach Volume. In the Attach Volume dialog box, click the following settings: Select your Linux instance from the list. Specify the device name /dev/sdf.

Now click Yes, Attach.You'll notice in the Details pane for your volume that the volume state is in-use and that it is attached to your instance with the device name /dev/sdf. However, if you return to MindTerm and run the df -h command again, you won't see the volume yet. That's because we need to mount the volume to make it available. To mount a volume based on a snapshot, run the following commands.

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$ sudo mkdir /mnt/song-data $ sudo mount /dev/sdf /mnt/song-data

Note
If you didn't specify a snapshot when you created the volume, the new volume is an empty volume. Before you can mount an empty volume that you create, you must format it using the sudo mkfs command. For more information, see Making an Amazon EBS Volume Available for Use. Now when you run the df -h command, you'll see output like the following.
Filesystem /dev/xvda1 tmpfs /dev/xvdf Size 8.6G 313M 5.0G Used 1.2G 0 4.3G Avail Use% Mounted on 7.4G 14% / 313M 0% /dev/shm 442M 91% /mnt/song-data

To view the contents of the new volume, run the following command.
$ dir /mnt/song-data

The output shows the following directory structure.

AdditionalFiles data LICENSE lost+found README

At this point, you should have a basic understanding of instances and how you work with them. When you're finished with your instance, don't forget to clean up any resources you've used and terminate the instance, as shown in the next step.

Step 5: Clean Up
Now that youve completed this tutorial, you can customize the instance to meet your needs and keep using it.

Important
Remember, if you launched an instance in the Free Usage Tier, there are no charges. However, if you launched a regular instance, as soon as your instance starts to boot, you're billed for each hour or partial hour that you keep the instance running, even if the instance is idle. You'll stop incurring charges for a regular instance as soon as the instance status changes to shutting down or terminated. When you've decided that you no longer need the instance, you can terminate it. Terminating an instance effectively deletes it. You can't reconnect to the instance after you've terminated it. This differs from stopping the instance; you are still charged for a stopped instance, and you can restart a stopped instance. For information about the differences between stopping an instance and terminating an instance, see Stopping Instances.

To terminate the instance

1. 2. 3. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/. Locate your instance in the list of instances on the Instances page. Right-click the instance, and then click Terminate.
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4.

Click Yes, Terminate when prompted for confirmation. Amazon EC2 begins terminating the instance.

Amazon EBS volumes can persist even after your instance goes away. If you created and attached an EBS volume in the previous step, it was detached when you terminated the instance. However, you must delete the volume, or you'll be charged for volume storage if the storage amount exceeds the limit of the Free Usage Tier. After you delete a volume, its data is gone and the volume can't be attached to any instance.

To delete the volume

1. 2. 3. 4. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/. Locate the volume that you created in the list of volumes on the Volumes page. Right-click the volume, and then click Delete. Click Yes, Delete when prompted for confirmation. Amazon EC2 begins deleting the volume.

Finding Additional Tutorials

This tutorial is focused on learning to use Amazon EC2. For tutorials that show you how to use additional AWS products and services with Amazon EC2, see Getting Started with AWS Documentation.

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide AWS Account and Security Credentials

Where Do I Go from Here?

Topics AWS Account and Security Credentials (p. 11) Ways to Access Amazon EC2 (p. 11) Designing Your Application for the Cloud (p. 12) Learn More about Amazon EC2 (p. 12) Amazon EC2 Resources (p. 15) Amazon EC2 is a rich service offering many features that we haven't covered in this guide, such as creating your own AMIs, using persistent storage, monitoring instance health, load balancing, and virtual private networking. This topic provides links to additional resources that will help you deepen your understanding and use of Amazon EC2.

AWS Account and Security Credentials

So far you signed up for the service, got an AWS account and security credentials, and then completed a short exercise covering the essential product functions. Now that you're finished with the exercise, we recommend that you check with an administrator or coworker in your organization to determine if he or she already has an AWS account and security credentials for you to use in future interactions with AWS. If you're an account owner or administrator and want to know more about AWS Identity and Access Management, go to the product description at http://aws.amazon.com/iam or to the technical documentation at Using AWS Identity and Access Management.

Ways to Access Amazon EC2

This guide showed you how to launch and terminate an instance using the AWS Management Console. You can continue using Amazon EC2 through the console, or try one of the other interfaces.

Continue Using the Console

The AWS Management Console includes many other functions besides just launching and terminating instances. To learn more about how to use Amazon EC2 through the console, go to the Amazon Elastic

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide Use the Command Line Interface

Compute Cloud User Guide. The console also has online Help to assist you; just click the Help button in the console.

Use the Command Line Interface

To get started with Amazon EC2's Java-based command line interface, go to the Getting Started section in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide. These command line tools are a fast way to use EC2 without coding to the API or using a library.

Use an Existing Library

If you prefer to use Amazon EC2 through a programmatic interface, there are libraries and resources available for the following languages: Java PHP Python Ruby Windows and .NET

For libraries and sample code in all languages, go to Amazon EC2 Sample Code & Libraries.

Code Directly to the Web Service API

If you want to write code directly to the Amazon EC2 Query API, go to Making API Requests in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide. You'll learn how to create and authenticate API requests, and how to use Amazon EC2 through the API actions. For a complete description of the API actions, go to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud API Reference.

Designing Your Application for the Cloud

AWS solutions architects and evangelists created white papers to help you design your application so that it's fault tolerant, scalable, and elastic. For more information, go to AWS Cloud Computing Whitepapers.

Learn More about Amazon EC2

The following are additional features of Amazon EC2.

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud

You can use Amazon EC2 with Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, a service that enables you to create an isolated portion of the AWS cloud called a VPC. With Amazon VPC, you can create a virtual network topologyincluding subnets and route tablesfor your EC2 resources. For more information, go to the Amazon VPC product page and the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud User Guide.

Creating Your Own AMIs

Amazon and other reputable sources offer AMIs that you can launch. However, you might want to create your own custom AMIs. You can modify instances of Amazon AMIs or other reputable public AMIs as
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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide Importing Your Own Virtual Machines

needed and create your own custom AMIs from them. For general information about AMIs, go to AMIs and to Creating Your Own AMIs in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide. You can choose between Amazon S3 or Amazon Elastic Block Store as the root device for your AMI (for a brief description of Amazon EBS, see Amazon Elastic Block Store (p. 14) later in this section). We recommend using instances backed by Amazon EBS, because they launch faster and use persistent storage. For more information, go to AMIs Backed by Amazon EBS in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Importing Your Own Virtual Machines

You can import a virtual machine or volume from your own data center into Amazon EC2. For more information, go to Importing Your Virtual Machines and Volumes into Amazon EC2 in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Instance Types
To meet the needs of different organizations and applications, Amazon EC2 instances are available in different sizes and CPU/memory configurations. For more information, go to Instances in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Tags
You can add optional metadata to your instances, AMIs, and other EC2 resources to help you categorize and manage them. For more information, go to Using Tags in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Elastic IP Addresses
You might want to have static IP addresses for your instances. Amazon EC2 provides elastic IP addresses that can be dynamically remapped to different instances. For more information, go to Elastic IP Addresses in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Security Groups
You might be concerned about keeping others from accessing your instances, both inside and outside the Amazon network.You can create other security groups (beyond the basic group we used in this guide) to meet your security requirements. For more information, go to Network Security Concepts in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Availability Zones
You might want to build a geographically dispersed, fault tolerant architecture on Amazon EC2. You can place instances in different geographic regions and isolate instances within those regions using Availability Zones. This provides geographic flexibility and affordable fault tolerance. For more information, go to Region and Availability Zone Concepts in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Amazon Linux
AWS provides Amazon Linux AMIs, which are supported and maintained Linux images optimized for the EC2 environment. For more information, go to Amazon Linux AMI.

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide Amazon EC2 Running Windows

Amazon EC2 Running Windows

Amazon EC2 can run Microsoft Windows Server, with or without Microsoft SQL Server. For more information, go to the Amazon EC2 Running Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server page. Also, go to Instance Families and Types and look for Windows Instance Types in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Reserved Instances
You might want to run a set of full-time or nearly full-time instances but also bring down your costs. Amazon EC2 supports an additional pricing option that enables you to make a low one-time payment for each instance to reserve and receive a significant discount on the hourly usage charge for that instance. For more information, go to On-Demand and Reserved Instances and to Reserving Amazon EC2 Instances in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Spot Instances
If you're flexible about when you need instances and want to bring down your costs, Amazon EC2 lets you bid for unused Amazon EC2 capacity and run your instances for as long as your bid exceeds the current Spot Price. For more information, go to the Amazon EC2 Spot Instances product page and Introduction to Spot Instances.

Amazon Elastic Block Store

You might need more space than is provided on the instance, or you might need a permanent storage solution. Amazon Elastic Block Store enables you to create volumes that can be mounted as block devices by Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon EBS volumes behave like raw unformatted external block devices, and they persist past the life of an Amazon EC2 instance. For more information, go to the Amazon Elastic Block Store product page. Also go to Amazon Elastic Block Store in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Monitoring Instances
You might need a solution for monitoring your instances. Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service for Amazon EC2 that is designed to gather, aggregate, store, and retrieve metrics. For more information, go to the Amazon CloudWatch product page and the Amazon CloudWatch Developer Guide.

Load Balancing
You might need a solution for load balancing requests to your instances. Elastic Load Balancing offers the ability to evenly spread requests across your running Amazon EC2 instances. For more information, go to the Elastic Load Balancing product page and the Elastic Load Balancing Developer Guide.

Automatically Scaling Instances

You might want to automatically scale up and down the number of instances you use. Auto Scaling enables you to automatically increase or decrease the number of running Amazon EC2 instances in response to your web applications usage and the configuration you define. For more information, go to the Auto Scaling product page and the Amazon Auto Scaling Developer Guide.

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide Micro Instances

Micro Instances
Amazon EC2 offers micro instances, which provide a small amount of consistent CPU resources and allow you to burst CPU capacity when additional cycles are available. They are well suited for lower throughput applications and web sites that consume significant compute cycles periodically. For more information, go to Micro Instance Concepts in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Cluster Instances
Amazon EC2 offers cluster instances for your High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications. These instances provide you with high-bandwidth, low-latency inter-node communications for advanced computational applications such as computational fluid dynamics, computational biology, and materials research. For more information, go to Using Cluster Instances in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Public Data Sets

Amazon EC2 provides a repository of public data sets, such as the mapping of the human genome and the US census data, that you can seamlessly integrate into your AWS cloud-based applications. For more information, go to the Public Data Sets on AWS page. Also go to Using Public Data Sets in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.

Amazon EC2 Resources

The following table lists related resources that you'll find useful as you work with Amazon EC2. Resource AWS Resources Description A central starting point to find documentation, code samples, release notes, and other information to help you create innovative applications using AWS. A community-based forum for discussing technical questions related to Amazon EC2. A high-level overview of the current release. The home page for AWS Technical Support. The primary web page for information about AWS Support, a one-on-one, fast-response support channel to help you build and run applications on AWS. A central contact point for inquiries concerning AWS billing, accounts, and events. This form is only for account questions. For technical questions, use the Discussion Forums.

Amazon EC2 Discussion Forum

Amazon EC2 Release Notes AWS Support Center AWS Support

Contact Us

You can also find additional information about Amazon EC2 in the Amazon EC2 Articles & Tutorials area of the AWS web site.

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Document History
The following table describes the important changes to this guide. Change Explore your instance Description We've added a new section that steps you through attaching an Amazon EBS volume to your instance and making it available for use. Structurally, the tutorial pages were consolidated into a single web page.This web page is also included in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide. Use the New Java-Based SSH Client You can connect to your Linux instance from your web browser using 5 March 2012 a Java-based SSH client. Release Date 19 October 2012

Public Release The first release of the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Getting Started Guide.

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Please Provide Feedback

Your input is important to help make our documentation helpful and easy to use. Please tell us about your experience getting started with Amazon EC2 by completing our Getting Started Survey. Thank you.

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