Labs AWS Deploy Your First EC2 Instance

Deploy Your First EC2 Instance

Build foundational cloud infrastructure by deploying a hardened, publicly accessible EC2 instance with a properly scoped security group, IAM instance profile, and SSH access — understanding every decision along the way.

Last updated 02/2025

Beginner

Prerequisites

• Active AWS account (Free Tier eligible)
• Basic understanding of what a server is
• SSH client installed (Terminal on macOS/Linux, Windows Terminal or PuTTY on Windows)

Objectives

• How EC2 instances are positioned within AWS networking constructs
• How to design a minimal, correctly scoped security group
• How IAM instance profiles decouple credentials from running instances
• How to connect to a running instance via SSH and validate system state
• How to identify and eliminate all billable resources after the lab

Start Lab

Lab Sections

01 Introduction and Context 02 Conceptual Foundations 03 Environment and Base Setup 04 Core Implementation 05 Security Layer 06 Scalability and Reliability 07 Observability 08 Final Architecture Integration

Prerequisites

Objectives

Lab Sections

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