AWS - Series - EC2 - Creation of Windows Operating System machine's

Hello All

In this blog, we are going to see the topic around EC2 in AWS series , like what is EC2, how to create , Manage and connect the servers using RDP

 EC 2 - Elastic Compute Cloud

What is EC2 ?

Elastic Compute Cloud is a web service that provides secure, sizeable compute capacity in the cloud to build the servers in different operating  systems like windows and Linux flavour . In Simple , this EC2 is a place where we create a machines and manage them

Before we are going to create a servers in AWS, we should understand the regions, on which we are going to create the servers 

There are many  regions available in AWS where the AWS datacenters are located across the global  

Based on the azure global infrastructures , there are many regions available in there respective locations like, APAC, NA, EMEA, ME, AZ and NZ

Inside the regions, there are multiple availability Zones are available which are are named based out with their the directions

Eg - In India, Mumbai and Hyderabad is the regions of AWS datacenter

Inside Mumbai or Hyderabad, There are multiple Zones available for high availability and integrity 

sample :  

 ap-south-1a,

 ap-south-1b

 ap-south-1c

If any of the servers are done in one of the availability zone, It will transfer the server to another zone for data high availability  - These are called Availability Zones

What are the logical components available inside EC2 to create and manage the servers

1. Server Names 

2. AMI, Snapshots , Volumes,

3. Instance Type

3. OS Deployment Windows / Linux

4. Security Groups - Firewall rules for Inbound and Outbound

5, Load Balancing

5. Auto Scaling Groups (ASG)

3. Elastic IP (EIP)

7 Key pair

8. Login ports for RDP and SSH

Instance creation for Windows Machine

Currently there is no instance running 

Click on Launch Instances

Name your server as you like

AMI - [Amazon Machine Image]

Choose the windows and Microsoft windows server 2022 base

As am using free Tier account. its suggested to use the OS

Instance Type 

Its nothing but , Its RAM choosing 

Key pair ( Login)

A key pair, consisting of a public key and a private key, is a set of security credentials that you use to prove your identity when connecting to an Amazon EC2 instance

i can say key pair is for authenticate the server login when you connect to windows and Linux machines 

Create New pair key

it will open the below window on the screen

Name the key pair as you like below and choose .PEM as Private Key file format and finally create key pair

Private Key format

.PEM - This private key is mainly used for windows based OS platforms

.PPK   - his private key is mainly used for LINUX  based OS platforms

We can use .PEM file to connect Linux OS , by using the conversion  tool called Putty GEN. we will see it later.

Once you click the Create key pair, it will download one file with extension .PEM

Keep it n safe place , we will use the .PEM key file while login in to the windows server

Network Settings :

Keep this settings as of now as it its 

Storage Section :

For  windows machine 30 GB is eligible for gp2 [General Purpose] Free Tier

No need to go with Advance option at this  time

Click on LAUNCH INSTANCE

Please note , There are around 65, 536 ports are available per servers, each ports are serving different purpose , which can be control  to allow or bloc via security firewall rules - Inbound and outbound

Example

RDP - Remote Desktop - Port 3389 for windows 

SSH -port 22 for Linux

It can be say as RESERVED PORTS

Login Credentials

Default User name for windows Machine is Administrator - [CAPS -  A]

Default User Name for LINUX based machine  is ec2-user

How to take RDP with KEY PAIR Login

Safely use the password for Administrator during the login authentication page

STATUS CHECK

Once you launch the instance. the state become RUNNING and status check is initialising 

Note : Please wait until the server instance status check turned in to  2/2 Check Passed

What is 2/2 Check Passed

If status checks shows status 2/2 checked passed, then the instance is in healthy state.

AWS EC2 provides status checks that detect the problems with the underlying EC2 system used by the individual system. There are two types of checks performed every five minutes, which return a pass or a fail status. The two checks are:

1. System Reachability Check, which confirms that AWS is able to get the network packets to the user’s instance.
2. Instance Status Check, which detects a problem within the EC2 instance.

If both the checks are passed, the overall status of the instance will be OK. If one of the checks fails, the overall status of the instance will be impaired. The following guide demonstrates how to set the status check alerts for the instance.

The sample probable reasons for the failure of status checks include:

A) System connectivity Checks:

• Loss of network connectivity
• Loss of system power
• Software issues on the physical host
• Hardware issues on the physical host

B) Instance Status Checks:

• Mis-configured networking or startup configuration
• Exhausted memory
• Corrupted file system
• Incompatible kernel

Public IP  [Public IP can be seen in the selected instance Detail Section]

Use MSTSC to connect your machine using default Administrator login name with Key pair password