I recently added an article in which I took a first look into Amazon AWS. I used the commmand line tools, this time I’m gonna use the provided AWS Management Console.

On first login, my first thought is that this probably is easier than the command line tools. First of all I’m going to change the region I am in. This can be done in the left hand corner.

Key Pair
First I have to create a key pair, so I can access my windows instance by RDP later on. Creating it is really easy, when you’re prompted to download it do so, cause I haven’t found a way to download the keypair via the console later .

Security Group
The best thing to do now is to create a security group, which allows RDP to the instances you start. The option to add a RDP rule is also provide when you launch an instance, but this one add’s a rule for all Ip addresses to access your instance. Probably that is not what you want.
To add a new security group or to add a new rule to to default group, click on the security groups link in the menu.

Amazon Machine Image
Next, let’s look for an AMI to begin building my new instance. For that I click on AMI’s in the menu. On the next screen I can see all kind of AMI’s. I can filter them on Image Type (Amazon, Owned by Me, Public, 32 Bits, 64 Bits,etc..) and on Platform (Windows, Debian, Red Hat, SUSE, etc…). I know I’m going for a 32 bits small windows instance. When I filter on this one, it still confusing to see if you’re choosing the correct AMI. When you select one you will see some more information, but in my opinion not enough to decide if you have the correct one.

So to be sure I have the correct AMI, I am going to look up the AMI  ID here, and search for it in the Management Console. When you press “Launch Instance”, you will be presented by a pop-up box, which ask’s you for the security group to place the instance in. Just skip this screen if you created an access rule earlier.

On the next screen you can choose your instance type (small or medium), how many instances, your key pair and in which security group to place it. Just press launch and after a few minutes you will see the instance running in the “Instances” menu.

Password
When you see you’re instance running, select it and in the top menu bar there is a button called [More Action], click it and press [Get Windows Password], to retrieve the windows administrator password. For this you need the private key file you created earlier (section key pair above). Open this file and copy the complete content, including the Begin and End lines (Ex: "—–BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY—–"). Press [Decrypt Password]. When I did this, I received an IE notice stating that a script was running which could slow down my computer. I just let the script run (the message will appear quite a few times) and eventually I got my admin password.

Connecting
Now I can press [connect] in the top menu bar. Nice feature is that I can download an RDP shortcut.

Now use the RDP file to connect, fill in your password and you’re ready to configure your instance.