Logging in to Linux instances

In the previous section, we looked at EC2 key pairs, and associating them with instances. In this section, we're going to use a key pair to log in to a Linux instance from Windows. Then, we will add more Linux users and generate key pairs for them to use.

To connect and log in to Linux instances, we use the SSH2 protocol. We don't use a password, because we provide the private key for authentication. If you are connecting from a Windows laptop or desktop, you will need an SSH client. There have been rumors that Microsoft is planning on adding an SSH client to PowerShell, but that hasn't happened yet. There are many good free SSH clients you can use.

For this example, we're going to use PuTTY. You can download ...

Get Designing AWS Environments now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.