Friday, 6 May 2022

How to Create EC2 Instance in AWS? | What is Amazon EC2? | SpringBoot-Deploying to AWS EC2 Instance

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Introduction

Deploying a Spring Boot RESTful service in the cloud is a game-changer. Unlike a local setup, an Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instance provides a public IP address, allowing your APIs to be accessed from anywhere in the world. In this tutorial, we will walk through the process of launching your own Linux server on AWS.

Step 1: Sign Up and Access EC2

First, create an AWS account at aws.amazon.com. Once logged in, search for EC2 under the "Compute" services category. Before launching, ensure you select the Region (e.g., US East N. Virginia) that is closest to your target audience for the best performance.

Step 2: Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

An AMI is a template that contains your operating system and software. For beginners, it is highly recommended to select the Amazon Linux 2 AMI. Look for the "Free Tier Eligible" label to avoid unnecessary costs during your first year.

Step 3: Choose Instance Type and Configure

Instance Type: Select t2.micro (1 vCPU, 1 GB Memory) to stay within the Free Tier.
Configure Details: Enable Termination Protection to prevent your server from being deleted by mistake.
Add Storage: The default is 8 GB, but Free Tier users can increase this up to 30 GB.
Add Tags: Add a "Name" tag (e.g., Spring-Boot-Server) to easily identify your instance.

Step 4: Configure Security Groups

Security groups act as a firewall. To run a Spring Boot application, you need to open specific ports:

SSH (Port 22): For remote access.
HTTP (Port 80) & HTTPS (Port 443): For web traffic.
Custom TCP (Port 8080): The default port for Spring Boot/Tomcat.

Step 5: Create a Key Pair & Launch

Before launching, AWS will ask you to create a Key Pair. Download the .pem file and keep it secure—you will need this to connect to your server from your computer. Click Launch Instances and wait for the status to change to "Running."

Managing Your Instance

You can Stop your instance when you're not using it to save on credits, or Terminate it if you want to delete the server entirely. Once running, you'll see a Public IPv4 Address—this is your gateway to the world!

Conclusion

You have successfully launched a Linux server in the cloud! This is the first step toward hosting powerful Java applications on AWS. In our next guide, we will connect to this instance and deploy our code. Happy cloud computing!