Lab Guide: Create Your First Amazon EC2 Instance (Linux)

Welcome to QA's Lab Guide for Create Your First Amazon EC2 Instance (Linux).

The most common concern students report is being unable to connect using Putty. In order to explain it in more detail, you can find the steps below.

1. Ensure that the lab environment has loaded 100% before launching.

2. Log in to the AWS console using the provided credentials for the lab.

3. Please ensure that the previous steps were followed strictly. 

4. In this step: Converting a PEM Key to a PPK Key, Please download PuttyGen as you needed to convert the file you downloaded when the instance was created. 

   1. Open putty gen, and it should look like this. Click load, and it should open file explorer.
      

   2. Make sure that the file explorer is on "all files," then start looking for the file you have downloaded earlier so that you can load it:
      

   3. Once loaded, save it as "Private Key" with “no passphrase.” I usually just save it as keypair.ppk
      

   4. Go to EC2 and get the IPV4 public address for your instance:

   5. Open your putty application and enter the required details and under host enter the public  IPV4 address:

   6. Then go to SSH-Auth and browse for the PPK key you have converted earlier:

   7. Click accept here: 

   8. Use ec2-user as the login name:

If you are getting an error on this part where the key is not authenticating, the error would be in the previous steps highlighted. Most of the time, it is on the download and conversion step. Please make sure all requirements are fulfilled, especially when you save the converted file to .ppk, and it should be a "private key."

Please also consider checking that your device and network are not blocking any environments from loading. You may want to try the following troubleshooting steps:

1. Log off from the platform and close all open browsers

2. Clear cache and cookies. (very important to clear the stored URL that may have been causing the error leading to the broken link)

3. Ensure direct network connectivity is used versus VPN/ proxy, which tends to block connection

4. Please make sure no antivirus or firewall is blocking the environment from connecting

5. Start a fresh browser window and log back in, and allow cookies if prompted

Other tests to check connection issues:

1) Use a different network
2) Try opening the lab using a different browser and device

I hope you have found these extra tips helpful!

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please let us know by emailing support@cloudacademy.com

Happy Training!