Launch an AWS Ec2 instance for free

July 16, 2019 / Nirav Shah

How to Launch an AWS EC2 Instance In Amazon Free Tier Account

AWS wants more and more people and organizations to launch their workloads in their Cloud Infrastructure and so To promote and make more and more people start using AWS Cloud Infrastructure they have an Introductory Plan called AWS Free Tier.

There they provide majority of services with a specified limit of usage every month for a consecutive 12 months period for newly created accounts. All you have to do is create a New Account and this Plan will be attached to your new account by default.

If you use the resources under their specified free tier limit; then No need to pay a single cent for that month and if you plan your resource usage accordingly for the next 11 months; then you will be hosting your Content on AWS’s Best-in-the-Market Cloud Infrastructure for $ 0; YES!!! $ 0 for 1 year straight.

We will guide you through the procedure of launching an Instance in your AWS account to host your application but, the prerequisite would be for you to have a brand new AWS account which you should be able to create by clicking on the “Create a Free Account” on this page.

After all the account creation formalities are done; Log-In into your AWS A/C and:-

• • When you Log-In into your Account, you are greeted with the AWS Console.

• • • Look for the “Services” drop-down on the upper-left side of the console just after the “AWS” logo and click on it and a panel will drop-down listing all the services that AWS provides. Click on the “EC2” service under the “Compute” group.

• • • When the EC2 Dashboard loads make sure you switch your region to “US East (N. Virginia)” as that is the region were every new feature is first tested and introduced as well as has the most cheap services (so that you are charged as little as possible even after the first 12 months).

• • • Once you are done with that, click on “Instances” under the “INSTANCES” section shown on the Left-Pane.

• • • Now, you are greeted with a console which says “You do not have any running instances in this region”. Click on any one “Launch Instance” button from the 2 available to start the procedure to launch an Instance.
    • After clicking the “Launch Instance” button you will start a Step based procedure.

Steps To Launch an EC2 Instance in your AWS account

• • • The 1st Step is to “Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI)” which basically means choose an Operating System on which you would like to host your data. AWS maintains a wide type of Operating Systems containing different versions of Windows Servers, Linux Operating-Systems (Amazon’s Linux, Ubuntu, RHEL, centOS, etc.). We will choose the latest version of Ubuntu as Ubuntu is widely supported for multiple platform installation and maintenance and all OS related troubleshooting is easy to do due to the huge community support fromUbuntu Developers. At the time of writing “Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS (HVM), SSD Volume Type” is the latest available version of Ubuntu so we will choose that; future readers are advised to choose the latest version of Ubuntu available at their time of reading for best ubuntu experience.

• • The 2nd Step is to ”Choose an Instance Type“ where we will choose the CPU and RAM that our Cloud Server will have. Here, we choose “t2.micro” as it is the only instance that is “free tier eligible” and we will not be charged for the first 750 Hours (it is more than 24 Hrs * 31 Days = 744 Hrs) every month which means it can be used for every month without ever reaching its maximum free tier limit and so you will never be charged for the month.

    Once, the Instance-Type has been chosen; click on the “Next: Configure Instance Details” situated on the lower-right corner besides “Review and Launch” to go to the next step.

• • The 3rd Step is to “Configure Instance Details”;

    we will leave most of the options to their default ones over here and only change the things which we think needs changes like; under “Enable termination protection” we will tick the box “Protect against accidental termination”.

    

    Once the following things have been done; click on “Next: Add Storage” situated in the lower-right corner just after “Review and Launch”.

• • The 4th Step is to “Add Storage”; it basically means adding disk-space to your Server to store and host your website from; AWS Default value is 8-GB of Elastic Block Storage (EBS) but can be changed as per personal requirements.

    Under the “Free Tier” every AWS account gets a total of 30-GB of Elastic Block Storage, but we will go with the default 8-GB over here. After the following is done, click on “Next: Add Tags” situated in the lower-right corner besides “Review and Launch”.

• • The 5th Step is to “Add Tags”; what it basically does is adds a custom name-tag on all the resources to make it look clutter-free. We are going to set a key name “Name” with the key-value “free-server”

    After adding the Key Value click on the “Next: Configure Security Group“ situated on the lower-right corner beside “Review and Launch”.

• • The 6th Step is to “Configure Security Group” where what you basically do is create a instance-based firewall where you can allow traffic from the internet to the Instance.

    In the “Security group name” enter the name related to the website you are going to host to reduce clutter in security group identification. We are going to keep the name “free-serverSG” so that we know in the future when we review our account that this Security-Group is created for the “free-server” tagged Instance.

    

    In the protocols and ports that need to be enabled, for 22 port you can make it open for a single IP if you have a Static-IP connection. But, if you do not have a Static-IP; keeping it open to the world is the only option. We will allow 22 access over here only to our Specific Static IP to increase server security.

    

    After setting up Instance Security Group finally click on “Review and Launch” situated at the lower-right corner beside “Previous”.

• • In the 7th Step, you get to review all the steps and settings that you performed in the last 6 Steps so that you can make any last minute changes before you finally launch the instance.

    Review all the settings and double check whether all the prescribed steps have been taken; then click on “Launch” situated at lower-right corner besides “Previous”.

    

    On clicking on “Launch” you are greeted with a “Select an existing key pair or create a new key pair” which recommends you to create a key pair which you will use to connect with the instance securely and which will shield the instance from brute-force attacks/dictionary attacks.
    You are provided 3 options :-

    • Choose an existing key pair (if you already have a key pair created in AWS).
    • Create a new key pair (will create a new key pair and will enter it inside the instances ssh configuration).
    • Proceed without a key pair (will skip this process and will launch the instance without any key-pair protection).

    We will select “Create a new key pair” and give the key pair name “free-server” and then download the key-pair and store it somewhere securely as this is the only chance to download the pem file and afterwards there is no way provided to download existing key pairs due to security reasons.

    

    After downloading and storing the pem file in a safe place click on “Launch Instances” situated at the lower-right side of the popup. The Page will show “Your instances are now launching”

    

    You can either navigate back to the ec2 Instance page from where you launched the instance or click on the unique instance-id shown on the screen.

    

• • Now, scroll down on the left pane of ec2 Dashboard to see “NETWORK & SECURITY” and in it click on “Elastic IPs”.

    You will see a blank console saying “You do not have any Addresses in this region”.

    

    Click on “Allocate new address” and in the next screen let everything be set to default and click on “Allocate”.

    

    On clicking on “Allocate” a Unique static IP will be provided to you like the one shown in the below image.

    

    Now, click on “Close” and you will be taken back to the “Elastic IPs” where now you see the Elastic IP that was recently allotted to you.

    

    Now, click on “Actions” situated beside the “Allocate new address” and then click on the second option “Associate address”.

    

    You will be taken to another page containing multiple options

    

    Let the “Resource type be “Instance”; and then click on the “Instance” and your recently launched instance will be listed there.

    

    And in the second “Private IP” the selected instances “Private IP” will be shown, select it also.

    

    Skip the Reassociation option for now as that is not required now and click on “Associate”. The association process will start and after completion this page will be shown.

    

    Click on “Close” and you will be taken back to the same “Elastic Ips” page which now be showing some more data like to which instance this Elastic IP is attached to.

    

    The whole reason behind adding an elastic IP is the allocated public-IP to the newly launched instances are always dynamic and will compulsorily change if you stop and then again start your Instance. The aftereffect will be your server’s IP-address will not be the same as the one that you pointed to in your DNS records. Due to this, you won’t be able to view your wordpress website from the domain name. To stop this whole thing from happening we attached an Elastic IP to the Instance.

    Now, scroll-back up in the left-pane of the AWS Console and find “INSTANCES” under which click on “Instances”.

    

    Here, if you see the Elastic-IP is now shown as “Elastic-IP: 3.221.64.141”.

    Your, Free-Server is launched and ready for you to log-in into and setup for your custom code requirements.

Also Read:

How to Connect an AWS Windows EC2 Instance

AWS Free Tier Official page.