Free Trial: Try Amazon EC2 t4g.small instances powered by AWS Graviton2 processors free for up to 750 hours / month until Dec 31st 2023.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-t4g-instances-burstable-performance-powered-by-aws-graviton2/
Note: Although the instance is free, but I have been charge a few cents per day under category of “EC2 - Other” for type of EBS:VolumeUsage.gp2. There is no free tier or trail for EBS as far as I know.
Only follow this if you are interested with the details under the hood. If you just want to launch an instance for a quick test, refer to Free Aws Ec2 Instance by Cdk
Create a free Linux EC2 instance
Found the latest debian 11 arm64 AMI which could be launched as t4g.small
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| LATEST_AMI_NAME=$(aws ec2 describe-images --owners amazon \
--filters "Name=name,Values=debian-11-arm64*" "Name=virtualization-type,Values=hvm" "Name=architecture,Values=arm64" \
--query 'sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].[ImageId]' \
--output text)
aws ec2 describe-images --image-ids $LATEST_AMI_NAME
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Create a userData file to initialize the instance with your necessary tools
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| cat <<EOF > user_data.txt
#!/bin/bash
# Basics
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt-get -qy install --no-install-recommends curl wget zip unzip pv jqs
# SSM Agent #
wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/debian_arm64/amazon-ssm-agent.deb
sudo dpkg -i amazon-ssm-agent.deb
sudo systemctl status amazon-ssm-agent
sudo systemctl enable amazon-ssm-agent
sudo systemctl start amazon-ssm-agent
# AWS CLI v2 and Git #
sudo apt install git -y
curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-aarch64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install
rm -rf aws awscliv2.zip
# Python3
sudo apt-get install python3-pip -y
pip install boto3
EOF
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Create a IAM policy, role and Ec2 instance profile with SSM session manager permission to assign to the new instance
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| aws iam create-role --role-name "SSMInstanceRole" --assume-role-policy-document '{"Version":"2012-10-17","Statement":[{"Effect":"Allow","Principal":{"Service":"ec2.amazonaws.com"},"Action":"sts:AssumeRole"}]}'
aws iam attach-role-policy --role-name "SSMInstanceRole" \
--policy-arn "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore"
aws iam create-instance-profile \
--instance-profile-name SSMInstanceProfile
aws iam add-role-to-instance-profile \
--instance-profile-name SSMInstanceProfile \
--role-name SSMInstanceRole
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If you prefer to use existing role and Ec2 instance profile:
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| aws iam list-entities-for-policy --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore
aws iam list-instance-profiles-for-role --role-name <RoleName you picked from output of above cmd>
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Find and use a subnet within a VPC
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| # find all VPCs and chose one, etc. the first one
aws ec2 describe-vpcs --query "Vpcs[].VpcId"
VPC=$(aws ec2 describe-vpcs --query "Vpcs[].VpcId" --output text)
# find all subnets, private subnets and choose one. Private one is better, but not necessary.
aws ec2 describe-subnets \
--query "Subnets[?VpcId==\`$VPC\`].SubnetId"
aws ec2 describe-subnets \
--query "Subnets[?VpcId==\`$VPC\`] | [?MapPublicIpOnLaunch==\`false\`].SubnetId"
SN=$(aws ec2 describe-subnets \
--query "Subnets[?VpcId==\`$VPC\`].SubnetId | [0]" \
--output text)
# Create an EC2 instance which we can use SSM session manager to remote into it
aws ec2 run-instances --image-id $LATEST_AMI_NAME \
--count 1 --instance-type t4g.small \
--tag-specifications 'ResourceType=instance,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=vma-test-2-delete}]' \
--iam-instance-profile Name=SSMInstanceProfile \
--key-name vma_rsa \
--subnet-id $SN \
--user-data file://user_data.txt
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Test using aws cli and ssh
Assume you have aws cli and session manager plugin installed already.
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| aws ssm --profile ${AWS_PROFILE} --region ${region} start-session --target ${InstanceId}
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Linux: use SSH on top of Session manager
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| $ tail -4 ~/.ssh/config
# SSH over Session Manager
host i-* mi-*
ProxyCommand sh -c "aws ssm --profile dec --region us-east-1 start-session --target %h --document-name AWS-StartSSHSession --parameters 'portNumber=%p'"
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/vma_rsa
$ ssh admin@i-0fdc88fe37f8af01b
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Windows: in case you haven’t install the Session Manager plugin
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| PS C:\> curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/session-manager-downloads/plugin/latest/windows/SessionManagerPluginSetup.exe -o SessionManagerPluginSetup.exe^C
PS C:\> .\SessionManagerPluginSetup.exe
PS C:\> del .\SessionManagerPluginSetup.exe
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And the following lines in ~/.ssh/config, test it the same way as in Linux
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| PS C:\> cat ~\.ssh\config
# SSH over Session Manager
host i-* mi-*
ProxyCommand C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe "aws ssm --profile dec start-session --target %h --document-name AWS-StartSSHSession --parameters portNumber=%p"
IdentityFile C:\Users\vma\.ssh\vma_rsa
User admin
Host i-0fdc88fe37f8af01b
HostName i-0fdc88fe37f8af01b
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Config vscode to use this as remote SSH dev env
- Install ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh extension
- Control+Shift+P, SSH, connect to host
- Choose the instance ID, etc. i-0fdc88fe37f8af01b
Clean up
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| aws ec2 terminate-instances --instance-ids ${InstanceId}
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Misc
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| aws ec2 describe-images --owners amazon --filters Name=architecture,Values=arm64 --query 'length(Images[])'
aws ec2 describe-images --owners aws-marketplace --filters Name=architecture,Values=arm64 --query 'length(Images[])'
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