Sign up for Amazon Web Services (AWS Credentials)

Objective

This document will walk you through the sign-up process for Amazon's Web Services. You will sign up for Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Queue Service, and Simple DB. You will also learn how to get your AWS credentials:

Access Key ID
Secret Access Key
Private Key
X.509 Certificate
AWS Account Number

Sign Up for EC2

To sign-up for Amazon's Web Services, go to http://aws.amazon.com and click the Click here to signup! link.

If you already have an Amazon account, simply login. If you are a new user, you'll need to register and create a new account.

Now you will need to signup for EC2, so click on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud link.

02-aws_select_ec2 (1).gif

Then click on the Sign up For this Web Service link.

Enter your credit card information and click Continue.

Provide your billing address information and click Continue.

Click the Complete Sign Up button.

Repeat this process for the Amazon Simple Queue Service and the Amazon Simple DB service.

AWS Access Keys

Once you've signed up for these services, navigate to the main page and hover your cursor over the Your Web Services Account button and click on AWS access Identifiers.

For safety reasons, your Secret Access Key will be hidden. Click on the Show link to display your Secret Access Key.

Save your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key. Later, you will need to enter them into the RightScale Dashboard. You can also generate a new Secret Access Key at any time by clicking the Generate button. But, remember to update the key in the Dashboard.

AWS X.509 Certificate

You will also need to create a X.509 certificate that combines your Public and Private Keys in an encrypted format.

Click on the Create New button to create a new certificate. Be sure to save your X.509 Certificate. Later, you will also need to enter it ino the Dashboard.

Download your Private Key file (pk-xxxxxx.pem) and X.509 Certificate file (cert-xxxxxx.pem) locally as plain text files. Here is what the files will look like:

Once again hover your cursor over the Your Web Services Account button, but this time click the AWS Account Activity link.

Your AWS account number is the number you see displayed without the dash marks. Be sure toopy this number locally. You will need to add your AWS account information into the Dashboard.