How to connect to the inside of instance to perform maintenance and actions?

Command Line Interface Utility

SSH in Linux / Mac

• SSH allows you to control a remote machine using the command line

• A local machine controls it through web port 22
• Command line interface is going to be just as if we are inside the remote machine

ssh -i XXX.pem ec2-user@x.xxx.xx.xxx

• The command should be executed where .pem file is located
• -i: identity file
• ec2-user: Amazon has already set up this user
• @x.xxx.xx.xxx: Public IP of a instance we are trying to access

• .pem should have limited permission
• 0644: can read and write the file or directory and other users can only read it

chmod 0400 XXX.pem

• 0400: owner has read permission only

Browser based SSH

• EC2 Instance Connect
• SSH key is not needed as it uploads temporary key automatically

• 22 port must be opened in the inbound rules

Instance Roles

• When using SSH, do not configure credentials through an instance since the values can be retrieved
• Use IAM Roles to give permission to an instance