 Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)

3. Steps to create EC2 Instance (Screenshot)

Step 1) In this step,

 Login to your AWS account and go to the AWS Services tab at the top left corner.
 Here, you will see all of the AWS Services categorized as per their area viz. Compute,
Storage, Database, etc. For creating an EC2 instance, we have to choose Computeà EC2 as in
the next step.

 Open all the services and click on EC2 under Compute services. This will launch the
dashboard of EC2.

Here is the EC2 dashboard. Here you will get all the information in gist about the AWS EC2
resources running.
Step 2) On the top right corner of the EC2 dashboard, choose the AWS Region in which you want to
provision the EC2 server.

Here we are selecting N. Virginia. AWS provides 10 Regions all over the globe.
Step 3) In this step

 Once your desired Region is selected, come back to the EC2 Dashboard.
 Click on ‘Launch Instance’ button in the section of Create Instance (as shown below).
  Instance creation wizard page will open as soon as you click ‘Launch Instance’.

Choose AMI
Step 1) In this step we will do,

1. You will be asked to choose an AMI of your choice. (An AMI is an Amazon Machine Image.
It is a template basically of an Operating System platform which you can use as a base to
create your instance). Once you launch an EC2 instance from your preferred AMI, the
instance will automatically be booted with the desired OS. (We will see more about AMIs in
the coming part of the tutorial).
2. Here we are choosing the default Amazon Linux (64 bit) AMI.
Choose EC2 Instance Types
Step 1) In the next step, you have to choose the type of instance you require based on your business
needs.

1. We will choose t2.micro instance type, which is a 1vCPU and 1GB memory server offered by
AWS.
2. Click on “Configure Instance Details” for further configurations
  In the next step of the wizard, enter details like no. of instances you want to launch at a time.
 Here we are launching one instance.

Configure Instance
Step 1) No. of instances- you can provision up to 20 instances at a time. Here we are launching one
instance.
Step 2) Under Purchasing Options, keep the option of ‘Request Spot Instances’ unchecked as of now.
(This is done when we wish to launch Spot instances instead of on-demand ones. We will come back
to Spot instances in the later part of the tutorial).

Step 3) Next, we have to configure some basic networking details for our EC2 server.

 You have to decide here, in which VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) you want to launch your
instance and under which subnets inside your VPC. It is better to determine and plan this prior
to launching the instance. Your AWS architecture set-up should include IP ranges for your
subnets etc. pre-planned for better management. (We will see how to create a new VPC in
Networking section of the tutorial.
 Subnetting should also be pre-planned. E.g.: If it’s a web server you should place it in the
public subnet and if it’s a DB server, you should place it in a private subnet all inside your
VPC.

Below,

1. Network section will give a list of VPCs available in our platform.

2. Select an already existing VPC
3. You can also create a new VPC

Here I have selected an already existing VPC where I want to launch my instance.
Step 4) In this step,

 A VPC consists of subnets, which are IP ranges that are separated for restricting access.
 Below,

1. Under Subnets, you can choose the subnet where you want to place your instance.
2. I have chosen an already existing public subnet.
3. You can also create a new subnet in this step.
  Once your instance is launched in a public subnet, AWS will assign a dynamic public IP to it
from their pool of IPs.

Step 5) In this step,

 You can choose if you want AWS to assign it an IP automatically, or you want to do it
manually later. You can enable/ disable ‘Auto assign Public IP’ feature here likewise.
 Here we are going to assign this instance a static IP called as EIP (Elastic IP) later. So we
keep this feature disabled as of now.
Step 6) In this step,

 In the following step, keep the option of IAM role ‘None’ as of now. We will visit the topic of
IAM role in detail in IAM services.
Step 7) In this step, you have to do following things

 Shutdown Behavior – when you accidently shut down your instance, you surely don’t want it
to be deleted but stopped.
 Here we are defining my shutdown behavior as Stop.
Step 8) In this step,

 In case, you have accidently terminated your instance, AWS has a layer of security
mechanism. It will not delete your instance if you have enabled accidental termination
protection.
 Here we are checking the option for further protecting our instance from accidental
termination.
Step 9) In this step,

 Under Monitoring- you can enable Detailed Monitoring if your instance is a business critical
instance. Here we have kept the option unchecked. AWS will always provide Basic
monitoring on your instance free of cost. We will visit the topic of monitoring in AWS Cloud
Watch part of the tutorial.
 Under Tenancy- select the option if shared tenancy. If your application is a highly secure
application, then you should go for dedicated capacity. AWS provides both options.
Step 10) In this step,

 Click on ‘Add Storage’ to add data volumes to your instance in next step.

Add Storage
Step 1) In this step we do following things,

 In the Add Storage step, you’ll see that the instance has been automatically provisioned a
General Purpose SSD root volume of 8GB. ( Maximum volume size we can give to a General
Purpose volume is 16GB)
 You can change your volume size, add new volumes, change the volume type, etc.
  AWS provides 3 types of EBS volumes- Magnetic, General Purpose SSD, Provisioned IOPs.
You can choose a volume type based on your application’s IOPs needs.

Tag Instance
Step 1) In this step

 you can tag your instance with a key-value pair. This gives visibility to the AWS account
administrator when there are lot number of instances.
 The instances should be tagged based on their department, environment like Dev/SIT/Prod.
Etc. this gives a clear view of the costing on the instances under one common tag.

1. Here we have tagged the instance as a Dev_Web server 01

2. Go to configure Security Groups later
Configure Security Groups
Step 1) In this next step of configuring Security Groups, you can restrict traffic on your instance
ports. This is an added firewall mechanism provided by AWS apart from your instance’s OS firewall.

You can define open ports and IPs.

 Since our server is a webserver=, we will do following things

1. Creating a new Security Group

2. Naming our SG for easier reference
3. Defining protocols which we want enabled on my instance
4. Assigning IPs which are allowed to access our instance on the said protocols
5. Once, the firewall rules are set- Review and launch