Creating an AWS Instance - cogeorg/teaching GitHub Wiki

In some cases you're going to want to make use of a remote server. We currently live in an era, where access to cloud computing services are both easy, and affordable. A range of offerings exist, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), DigitalOcean and Microsoft Azure to name 3.

You will be expected to have familiarity with using one of these services. While your choice of provider will differ depending on your requirements, we will expect you to be be comfortable with using AWS given that access to the AWS EC2 t2.micro instance is free after you create an account. You can either create a standard account, but this will require you to provide payment details (although, your account will only be debited if you choose paid options) or, as a student you can register for a AWS Educate Starter account via AWS Educate, here. If you are new to AWS, I would recommend using AWS Educate. You will need to register with your student email address and this option does not require you to provide any payment information. Once you register, it may take a day or two for AWS to review your application and get your account all set up.

The official AWS guide to launching an instance of a Linux virtual machine is great, and walks you through the full process from launching the instance, connecting to it, and then terminating the instance again. Find it here.

Note: sometimes your OS may automatically change the suffix from .pem to .pem.txt if it does not recognise the file type. In this case, please rename the file and remove .txt from the suffix, so that the file's suffix is .pem.