Working with AWS

Last updated: 06.13.2020

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to show how to work with AWS.

Prerequisites

You must have an Amazon AWS Account

After you create your account, You must create a new IDM User

1. Click on Services menu
2. Click on IAM link
3. Click on the Users link on the left menu.
4. Click the Add User button
5. In the User Name text box, enter the user name
6. Under the Access Type section, select the checkbox Progammatic Access
7. Click the Next: Permissions button
8. Click the Create Group button
9. In the Group Name text box, enter EC2Editor
10. Give the group the AmazonEC2FullAccess policy
11. Click on the Create Group button
12. Click on the Next: Tags button
13. Click on the Next: Review button
14. Click on the Create User button
15. Click on the Download .csv button.

⚠️ The downloaded .csv will be called credentials.csv. Keep this file safe. It contains your AWS Access Key ID and your AWS Secret Access Key. These keys can give any users access to your environment and cost you money.

Installation

Installing Python 3 on Windows

1. Download the executable for Python 3.8.0 here.
2. Run the executable.
3. Open up a terminal
4. Type python3.8 --version
5. The output should show you are running Python 3.8.0.
6. If you see a different version, you might have to set the PATH variable

Installing Python 3 on Fedora

1. Open up a terminal
2. sudo dnf install python3.8
3. Type python3.8 --version
4. The output should show you are running Python 3.8.0

Instructions

Working with the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI)

1. Open up a terminal

2. export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="<Your Access Key Id in your credentials.csv>"

3. export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="<Your Secret Access Key Id in your credentials.csv>"

4. Navigate to a directory where you plan on putting your python virtual environments.

   ⚠️ You must always work out of a virtual environment. Virtual environments prevent you from corrupting your default system virtual environment and allow users to install different software for each virtual environment.

5. Run python3.8 -m venv venv_aws

6. To activate your virtual environment on Windows, you run ./venv_aws/Scripts/activate

7. To activate your virtual environment on Fedora, you run source ./venv_aws/bin/activate

8. Run python --version. This is the version of Python running in your virtual environment.

9. Run pip install --upgrade pip

10. Run pip list. This should list the modules currently installed in your environment. Notice how aws-shell is not present.

11. Run pip install aws-shell==0.2.1. The command installs the aws-shell with the version of 0.2.1 in the virtual environment.

12. Run pip list to confirm aws-shell is installed.

13. Configure the aws-shell environment:

    • Type aws-shell. The aws-shell will launch.

    • Type configure. You will be prompted for several values:

      • AWS Access Key ID = This is the Access key ID in your credentials.csv file. Do not enter any value as this is provided by your AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID environment variable.

      • AWS Secret Access Key = This is the Secret access key in your credentials.csv file. Do not enter any value as this is provided by your AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY environment variable.

      • Default region name = This is the AWS Region the aws-shell will use by default. A listing of AWS regions are described here.

        Here are a couple of examples:

        1. us-east-1 = Located in the US East Region in the state of Ohio.
        2. us-west-1 = Located in the US West Region in the state of California.
        3. eu-central-1 = Located in Frankfurt, Germany.

      • Default output format = This is the output format when running commands on the shell. You do not have to enter a value here.

    You are now ready to start working with the aws-shell.

14. Run ec2 describe-regions

    The output provides all the details of the listed AWS Regions.

15. Run .exit to exit the aws shell

16. Run the following by replacing us-east-1 with the AWS region you want to use:

aws ec2 describe-images --region "us-east-1" > images_in_my_region.txt

1. Open the file images_in_my_region.txt and search for an image.
2. Once you find the image you want to use, copy the ImageId to a safe location. The ImageId can be used in Terraform to launch an AWS instance. The ImageId is the same as the ami.Take a look at the [terraform-for-beginners](https://github.com/bretmullinix/terraform-for-beginne rs) repo to start working with Terraform and use the ImageId you found.