AWS EC2

Deploy and manage Amazon EC2 compute instances for production, staging, and development workloads.

When to Use This Skill

• Launching new compute instances for application hosting
• Building golden AMIs for consistent deployments
• Setting up auto-scaling groups behind load balancers
• Migrating workloads to Spot instances for cost savings
• Troubleshooting instance connectivity, performance, or launch failures
• Creating launch templates for repeatable infrastructure

Prerequisites

• AWS CLI v2 installed and configured (aws configure)
• IAM permissions: ec2:*, autoscaling:*, elasticloadbalancing:*, iam:PassRole
• An existing VPC with subnets (see aws-vpc (aws-vpc))
• SSH key pair created (aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name my-key --query 'KeyMaterial' --output text > my-key.pem)

Instance Type Selection Guide

Launch an Instance

# Launch a production web server
aws ec2 run-instances \
  --image-id ami-0abcdef1234567890 \
  --instance-type t3.medium \
  --key-name my-key \
  --security-group-ids sg-12345678 \
  --subnet-id subnet-12345678 \
  --iam-instance-profile Name=EC2AppProfile \
  --metadata-options "HttpTokens=required,HttpEndpoint=enabled" \
  --block-device-mappings '[{
    "DeviceName": "/dev/xvda",
    "Ebs": {
      "VolumeSize": 30,
      "VolumeType": "gp3",
      "Iops": 3000,
      "Throughput": 125,
      "Encrypted": true
    }
  }]' \
  --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=instance,Tags=[
    {Key=Name,Value=web-server-01},
    {Key=Environment,Value=production},
    {Key=Team,Value=platform}
  ]' \
  --user-data file://userdata.sh

# Launch with IMDSv2 required (security best practice)
aws ec2 run-instances \
  --image-id ami-0abcdef1234567890 \
  --instance-type t3.micro \
  --metadata-options "HttpTokens=required,HttpPutResponseHopLimit=1,HttpEndpoint=enabled" \
  --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=instance,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=secure-instance}]'

User Data Scripts

#!/bin/bash
# userdata.sh - Bootstrap a web server on Amazon Linux 2023
set -euxo pipefail

# System updates
dnf update -y

# Install and start web server
dnf install -y nginx
systemctl enable nginx
systemctl start nginx

# Install CloudWatch agent
dnf install -y amazon-cloudwatch-agent
/opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl \
  -a fetch-config -m ec2 \
  -s -c ssm:AmazonCloudWatch-linux

# Install CodeDeploy agent
dnf install -y ruby wget
cd /home/ec2-user
wget https://aws-codedeploy-us-east-1.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/latest/install
chmod +x ./install
./install auto

# Signal CloudFormation (if launched via CFN)
# /opt/aws/bin/cfn-signal -e $? --stack ${AWS::StackName} --resource ASG --region ${AWS::Region}

Launch Templates

# Create a launch template with full configuration
aws ec2 create-launch-template \
  --launch-template-name web-server-template \
  --version-description "v1 - AL2023 with nginx" \
  --launch-template-data '{
    "ImageId": "ami-0abcdef1234567890",
    "InstanceType": "t3.medium",
    "KeyName": "my-key",
    "SecurityGroupIds": ["sg-12345678"],
    "IamInstanceProfile": {"Name": "EC2AppProfile"},
    "MetadataOptions": {
      "HttpTokens": "required",
      "HttpEndpoint": "enabled"
    },
    "BlockDeviceMappings": [{
      "DeviceName": "/dev/xvda",
      "Ebs": {
        "VolumeSize": 30,
        "VolumeType": "gp3",
        "Encrypted": true
      }
    }],
    "TagSpecifications": [{
      "ResourceType": "instance",
      "Tags": [
        {"Key": "Environment", "Value": "production"},
        {"Key": "ManagedBy", "Value": "launch-template"}
      ]
    }],
    "Monitoring": {"Enabled": true},
    "UserData": "'"$(base64 -w0 userdata.sh)"'"
  }'

# Create a new version of the launch template
aws ec2 create-launch-template-version \
  --launch-template-name web-server-template \
  --source-version 1 \
  --version-description "v2 - updated AMI" \

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