Create an EC2 gateway server instance

- [Instructor] So the next thing that we're going to need to do is to create an EC2 instance. An EC2 instance is essentially just a virtual machine that runs inside of the Amazon cloud. The reason why we're creating this virtual machine instance is because it will eventually run the Microsoft routing and remote access services. Later on in this course, we're going to be creating an Azure VPN and we're going to need a way to communicate with that VPN. And we're gonna do that with a routing and remote access services virtual machine. So let's go ahead and create that virtual machine now. Right now I'm logged into the AWS console, and I'm looking at a list of the services that are available to me. And I got here by clicking on services up here at the top. And if you look at the compute section, which you can see in the upper left corner, you can see that the very first option on the list is EC2. I'll go ahead and click on EC2 now. And that's going to take me into Amazon EC2. We're looking at the EC2 dashboard. So because we want to create an instance, what I'm going to do is click on launch instance. And launching an instance consists of several steps. The first step is choosing an Amazon machine image. So if you look at the screen, you can see that we have a choice between several different types of EC2 instances that we can create. For the purposes of this video, we need to create a Windows instance. So I'm going to scroll down. And you can see that we have quite a few different Windows instances that are available to us. There's an option for Windows Server 2016. And if I continue to scroll down, you can see that we have another Windows Server 2016 option. And then down here we have Windows Server 2012 R2. Windows Server 2012. And the list goes on. For the purposes of this video, I'm gonna use Windows Server 2012 R2. But what I'm going to show you works just as well with Windows Server 2016. So I'm just going to click on select. And then the second step in the process is to choose the instance type. Now the instance type refers to how big the instance is, or how powerful it's going to be. In other words, how many virtual CPUs, how much memory, and how much storage are going to be associated with the instance. Now because I'm creating a lab environment, I'm gonna go with the smallest instance type. But in a production environment, you would want to choose an instance type that's capable enough to handle the workload that you're going to be throwing at it. So I'm going to go with the defaults here. And I'm gonna click on next configure instance details. So now we're taken to the third step of the process. And there are several details that we need to provide for the instance that we're creating. First we need to specify the number of instances that we want to generate. In this case we only need one virtual machine. So I wanna make sure that the number of instances is set to one. Next, if I go down to the network section, you can see that this instance is going to by default be associated with our default VPC. What I need to do instead is associate this with the VPC that I created in one of the earlier videos. So if I click the down arrow, you can see that I have an option of choosing my AWS PoseyLab VPC, which I'll go ahead and do now. Then we choose the subnet. Now in this particular case there's only one subnet so we don't really have to worry too much. But if we had multiple subnets we would want to select the appropriate subnet from the list. Then if I come down just a little bit more, you can see that we have an option to auto-assign public IP. And this is set by default to use the subnet settings, which the subnet has configured to disable the assignment of public IPs. Now we're going to need a public IP associated with this VPC. Otherwise what we're going to do won't work. So what I'm going to do is click on the down arrow. And I'm gonna choose the enable option. And that will allow a public IP to be associated with this EC2 instance that we're creating. Now we don't have to worry about any of the other options on the screen for the purposes of the EC2 instance that we're creating. So what I'm going to do is click next add storage. And then on the storage screen, we're allowed to specify how much storage we want to allocate to the instance. The default in this case is 30 gigs. That's going to be plenty for what we're doing. In a production environment, you would probably want a big more space. So I'm gonna click next add tags. Now because this is a lab environment, I'm not gonna worry about tagging this EC2 instance. But in production it's always a good idea to use tags as a way of documenting why you created an instance and what that instance is being used for. So I'll click next configure security group. And I'm gonna go with the default here. And then I'm gonna click on review and launch. Now when I do that I'm taken to a screen that shows me a summary of some of the choices that I've made. And I'm going to click launch. Now in order to access the instance that we're creating, we have to use a key pair. You can see that I have an option here to choose an existing key pair. That's what we want to do. And I'm going to choose a key pair that I already created called AWS Azure. Now if you didn't have a key pair already available to you, then what you could do is just choose the option to create a new key pair. But since I've already got one, I'm going to use that. And then we have to select this checked box saying that I acknowledge that I have access to the selected private key. And that without that file, I won't be able to access the instance. So I do have the file on hand. So I'm just going to click on launch instances. And it takes a little while to create the instance. So the virtual machine is finished being created. And the way that we can take a look at it is by going back to the EC2 dashboard, which you can see right here, and you'll notice that I've got one running instance. So I'll go ahead and click on the running instance link. And here we can see the instance that we just created. So we can verify that the instance does exist and that it's currently running. And that the instance is healthy because two out of two checks have been successful.