# Launching An Amazon EC2 Instance

> Source: https://www.sumonselim.com/launching-free-amazon-ec2-instance
> Author: Muhammad Sumon Molla Selim
> Published: 2023-07-02
> Tag: AWS
> Summary: Launch a free-tier Amazon EC2 instance step by step: pick the Ubuntu 22.04 AMI, choose t2.micro, create and download a key pair, set a security group, add an 8 GiB EBS volume.

**TL;DR:** To launch a free-tier EC2 instance: open **EC2** in the AWS Console and click **Launch Instance**; pick the **Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS** AMI; choose the **t2.micro** instance type (the only free-tier-eligible size); create a new key pair and download the `.pem` file, because it cannot be downloaded again; keep the default VPC and subnet; pick a security group (the permissive default is fine for a test, not for production); add an 8 GiB General Purpose SSD volume; click **Launch instance**. Part two covers SSH access and installing a web server.

I am a great fan of cloud hosting as it gives me ease and control to manage my own production environment as per my need. Luckily, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers **"[AWS Free Tier](http://aws.amazon.com/free/)"** by using which we can get hands-on experience with AWS Cloud Services at no charge for 12 months. So, I took the chance to test drive their services. Today I am going to write about launching and preparing my first instance on **Amazon EC2** service where we will host a web application developed using PHP (Laravel).

First, we will need to login to our AWS Management Console and select **EC2**. We will see a dashboard like below:

![AWS EC2 Dashboard](https://www.sumonselim.com/images/articles/launching-free-amazon-ec2-instance/Screenshot-2023-07-13-at-01.55.39.webp)

You can see lots of options there. But to launch our first instance, click on the blue "**Launch Instance**" button. You will then be prompted to choose an AMI to launch your instance. An **AMI** is a template that contains the software configuration (operating system, application server, and applications) required to launch your instance. You will also be able to set a name for your instance. Try to give a meaningful name for the instance.

I am going to select **Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS** for our instance and luckily it's eligible to use with AWS Free Tier.

![AWS EC2 Instance - Select AMI](https://www.sumonselim.com/images/articles/launching-free-amazon-ec2-instance/Screenshot-2023-07-13-at-02.01.31.webp)

Next, we will need to select our _**instance type**_. We will choose **t2.micro** type instance this time as our AMI is eligible to run on this instance type. You should know that free tier is only eligible for micro instances. If you are ready to afford some money to get more powerful instance, you can choose any other instance type that fits you the best.

![AWS EC2 Instance - Select Instance Type](https://www.sumonselim.com/images/articles/launching-free-amazon-ec2-instance/Screenshot-2023-07-13-at-02.06.52.webp)

You will need to _**create new key pair**_ which you will need to login to your instance. You can choose between RSA or ED25519 key pair type. Give the key pair a name and download the **Key Pair (.pem or .ppk)** file. Please keep in mind that you must download the **private key file** before you can continue. **Store it in a secure and accessible location.** You will not be able to download the file again after it's created.

In the next section, we will need to set the network settings for our instance. For now, you can keep using the default VPC and use the default subnet. We will discuss more about these in a future post.

![AWS EC2 Instance - Network Settings](https://www.sumonselim.com/images/articles/launching-free-amazon-ec2-instance/Screenshot-2023-07-13-at-02.15.44.webp)

Then we will need to _**configure security group**_ to set firewall rules that control the traffic to and from our instance. For now, I am going to select the **existing** security group which will allow all traffic to access our instance and all traffic from our instance to the public internet. **Please keep in mind, it's not recommended at all for production usage.** We will learn about security and best practices in a future post. For better security, you will need to modify these rules to prevent unauthorized or unintended access.

After that, we will need to _**add storage**_ to our instance. For now, I will add an EBS General Purpose (SSD) volume and allocate 8 GiB of space.

![AWS EC2 Instance - Configure storage](https://www.sumonselim.com/images/articles/launching-free-amazon-ec2-instance/Screenshot-2023-07-13-at-02.20.47.webp)

You can skip the **Advance details** section for now and see the summary of the instance that you will be creating. Click on the "**Launch instance**" button to start creating the instance. If needed you can make necessary changes, before starting the launch process.

![AWS EC2 Instance - Launch instance](https://www.sumonselim.com/images/articles/launching-free-amazon-ec2-instance/Screenshot-2023-07-13-at-02.31.24.webp)

It will take some time to complete the instance launching process. After that, you will see a page with Launch Status of your instance. Voila! You are ready with your first Amazon EC2 instance now 🙂

![AWS EC2 Instance - Instance created](https://www.sumonselim.com/images/articles/launching-free-amazon-ec2-instance/Screenshot-2023-07-13-at-02.32.31.webp)

If you visit the "**Instances**" section now, you will see that your running instance is listed there. On our next part, we will connect with our newly created instance via SSH and install the necessary software to run a web server.