How I Launched My First EC2 Instance on AWS (Beginner Guide)

Hey there 👋

I just started learning AWS and wanted to share how I launched my very first EC2 instance. It was a bit confusing at first, so I figured writing this might help someone else who's just starting out too.

Let’s get into it 👇

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So, What is EC2?

EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud. Basically, it's like a computer (virtual machine) you can run on the internet. You can install stuff on it, run scripts, host websites, whatever.

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What I Needed Before Starting

• An AWS account (made one at aws.amazon.com — they have a free tier).

• Some basic terminal knowledge (but not a lot).

• A laptop and some patience 😅

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Steps I Followed to Launch EC2

1. Logged into AWS Console

   • After logging in, I searched for “EC2” in the search bar at the top.

2. Clicked “Launch Instance”

   • This is basically creating a virtual machine.

3. Chose an OS

   • I picked Amazon Linux 2 AMI because it was free-tier eligible and beginner-friendly.

4. Instance Type

   • Selected t2.micro — it’s free for a year.

5. Left the default settings

   • Didn’t mess with networking, storage, or anything fancy.

6. Security Group

   • Allowed SSH from My IP only (important for security).

   • Didn’t allow anything else for now.

7. Key Pair

   • Created a new key pair and downloaded the .pem file.
     Super important! Without this, you can’t log in.

8. Clicked “Launch”

   • And boom, my instance was up and running in about 30 seconds.

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How I Connected to It

Opened my terminal and ran this:

ssh -i my-key.pem ec2-user@<EC2-PUBLIC-IP>

And I was in! It felt kind of cool being on a remote machine that I launched myself 🤓

What I Did Inside EC2

• Ran sudo yum update -y

• Installed NGINX just to try it out

• Even created a simple index.html file and served it
  (might write about that next)

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Don’t Forget This!

Terminate your instance when you’re done so AWS doesn’t charge you.
Go to the EC2 dashboard > Instances > Select > Actions > Terminate.

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Final Thoughts

Launching EC2 wasn’t as hard as I thought. The UI was a little intimidating, but once I clicked around, it made sense.
Next, I might try connecting to Instance via SSH )Windows and MacOS).

Hope this helps someone! Feel free to drop your experience in the comments. ✌️