To create a machine instance, we will need to connect to our Amazon account with ElasticFox (for Firefox). Do a Google search - you’ll find it. Download and install the plugin. You will be asked to restart Firefox.

After restarting, click on “Elasticfox” from the “Tools” menu.

You will see something like this. “A” is where you can find images of machines. “B” is your current machines. Click on “Credentials” in the top left to add your Amazon account.

Give this account any name you like. The two keys are the Access Identifiers from your Amazon account. Click “Add” then “Close”.

Now, click on the “KeyPairs” tab. Add a keypair with a specific name.

A .pem file will be saved to your hard drive. Place this in a memorable spot as you will need to access it in just a few steps.

Click on the “Security Groups” tab. Add a group and give it any name and description that you like.

In the panel below, click the checkmark to add a permission. This initial permission will go from port 0 to 80. You click the checkmark again to add more ports if you know you’re going to need them (like 10000 for webmin)

Download putty. You’re going to need it to access your virtual computer. Just Google putty and click one of the downloads. For this tutorial, I will use the installer version. After downloading, run the installer.

Now, run PuttyGen from your newly installed Start Menu group.

Click “Conversions” and “Import Key”. You must select the key you saved a few steps before.

Click “Save private key” and place the file in your user directory under a folder called ec2-keys. For example “C:\documents and settings\username\ec2-keys\name.ppk”

With that file in place, return to ElasticFox and click on “Tools” in the upper right corner.

Make sure to change the SSH Key Template directory to whatever you chose when you saved your PPK file. Leave ${keyname} as it is simply a variable that changes depending on which machine you are connecting to.

We are now ready to create a virtual computer.

Click on “Refresh” under the “AMIs and Instances” tab if you don’t see anything listed. Each item in this list is an image of a computer just waiting to be activated in your cloud.

For example, type “apache” into the small input just above the list. This will filter the items leaving us with a smaller list. Right click on “ec2-public-images/fedora-core4-apache-mysql-v1.07″ if it is available and select “Launch Instance(s) of this AMI”.

Choose m1.small. You can make a stronger computer by selecting a different option. Adjust your security groups by removing default (if it’s there) and adding the group you made earlier (in this case “web_traffic”). Make sure to use the keypair (which became a pem, which became a ppk) from before.

Now, in “Your Instances” a machine will appear. It will say pending for about thirty seconds. Click “refresh” and your computer should say “ready”. Right click on this new machine and click “SSH to Public DNS Name”.

Putty will pop open. Add the rsa2 fingerprint to Putty’s cache.

We are now logged in to our fresh new (albeit virtual) computer.

Back from ElasticFox, right click on the new instance and select “Copy Public DNS Name to Clipboard”. Paste this into the URL of a new tab. This test page is being served from your new machine within the Amazon cloud.

To prove it, go back to putty and type:

vi /var/www/html/index.php

Then:

i

to edit this document then type in anything you like.

When you are done, hit escape then:
:wFinally type:

:q

to quit.

Refresh the tab you opened earlier with your Public DNS Name and you will should see it change.

From ElasticFox, click on the “Elastic IPs” tab. Click on the plus icon to add an elastic IP.

From the AMIs and Instances tab, right click on your new machine instance again. Select “Copy Instance ID to clipboard”. Go back to the “Elastic IPs” tab, right click on your new IP and choose “Associate this address”.

Paste in the instance name.

After a few minutes (took about ten for me), you can access your machine through this new IP.