In the last tutorial, we saw the methods to be followed in order to setup an account with Amazon Web Services (AWS) , which provides the cloud computing infrastructure. We also obtained the credentials (like key pairs, account id, access key etc) for accessing the account. In this tutorial, I will show you how to launch an instance in the cloud. By instance we are actually referring to the AMI (Amazon Machine Image), which is the virtual operating system that we will be running in the cloud.

Setup

Before we proceed further, we also need to purchase few more items so that we can handle all types of basic data. One is the IBM D2 (which is the database developed by IBM) and Websphere Smash (which is the web application development and execution environment from IBM). You may note that as these being PAYG (Pay as you Go) services you won’t lose any money at this stage.

You can go to this page and select the ‘DB2 Express-C’ from the ‘Information Management Products’ list (see the screenshot shown below) for making the purchase:

This will allow to choose the option ‘Develop and Deploy on AWS’ option.

You may enter the payment details in the Amazon web page and obtain the activation key.

You also need the IBM websphere which you can opt for from this page. Once again you have to enter the payment details and confirm the order.

Done!

Launching Instance

Go to http://aws.amazon.com and click on ‘Sign in to the AWS Management Console’. You will be redirected to the console home page after this phase.

Creating Key Pairs:  As you can see we have selected the ‘EU West zone’ which means that your data will be stored in this location of the globe. For accessing the cloud in this zone, you need to create a new key pair for this zone (If you are in another zone, then you need a new key pair for that zone as well). All you need is to go the ‘Key Pairs’ section (see the side bar) and click on the ‘create key pairs’ button. That page will allow you to generate the key pairs and save them to your local system. You may rename  it as ‘EU-west key’ so that you can easily recall.

Security Group: Another setup that you need is to setup a new security group. Click on the ‘create security group’ button and gave a name to your new security group (see the screenshot given below)

Then, select the new security group created and scroll down to see the properties. Here you can specify which all connections you want to accept.

For example, I am going to add HTTPS, SSH and a custom protocol, so that all these ports will be open and will accept connections.

Once you have done that, go back to the Dashboard and select instances. Here you can find  the ‘launch instance’ button. By clicking on the same, you will get a set of AMIs available. Select the one which you want to run.

Then, select the key pair which you generated just before. And choose the security group you created in the previous stage (not the default one).

And follow the instructions shown. Finally, the system will ask you to review the configuration and launch the AMI. You can go back to the ‘instances’ menu and see the new instance there.

If you click on the running instance, you can see the details (you may note that, the public DNS shown here is the address of your system in the cloud and you can use this URL for accessing the AMI).

You can right click on the instance and select the terminate option in order to shutdown your AMI.

I’ll be posting more tutorials on Cloud soon! Check back later……..

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