Use Putty to connect to your AWS EC2 Instance
- Putty is free (they like donations)
- Convert the Amazon .pem to .ppk
- Only basic skills required
- Get connected in under 5 mins
Overview of what’s ahead
If you need to get a handle how to convert Amazon’s key pair that comes in .pem format to use in Putty – then you are in the right place…. read on.
In this article I will go through step by step on how to get up and running with Putty to connect to Amazon AWS.
We will cover the following:
- How to use PuTTYgen to convert your private Amazon key (.pem file) to use in Putty
- How to configure Putty to connect to an Amzon AWS EC2 Instane
Assumptions:
- Familiarity with Installing software on Windows
- Administrator privileges in Windows
- Knowledge of how to create key pairs on Amazon AWS for EC2 instances
- How to install programs on Windows is way beyond the scope of this tutorial.
- Ability to follow a basic recipe
If you find this guide helped you out consider tossing a beer or a cafe our way 🙂
Tools used in this tutorial
So here’s what we’re going to need to make this all happen.
- A tool called Putty (free)
- An account on AWS (free)
Step One: Download and install Putty
Okay so let’s first get putty downloaded and installed on the local machine
If you already have putty or another SSH client you can skip ahead.
You can download the file here or follow the instructions below
Of course you can always head over to the Putty website to do the download of the software.
Choose that one and choose the link where it says “you can download Putty here.”
Choose the link that matches your OS and if in doubt get the 32bit version as that should still work on a Windows 64bit machine anyway.
The link to the software here are directly from the respective tool’s sites and are placed here simply for the reader’s convenience.
Step Two: Configure and Connect to your Linux machine using Puttygen and Putty
Process Key Pair
Okay time to fire up Putty and login to the instance you just created.
First we need to convert the Private Key downloaded in the previous step into some thing Putty can use.
Putty comes with a tool called PuTTYgen that we use to take the Amazon Key and convert it.
Go to your Apps in Windows and search for PuTYYgen and run the program.
Next up is to locate the key that we downloaded when setting up the Amazon AWS Instace.
Follow the steps in the screen shots in the gallery below to configure the Key for use in Putty.
Always be sure to take note where you store the files. Perhaps create a folder where you store all of these assets.
Putty Config
Now it is time to setup a Putty session that is used to install, configure and start and stop services on the AWS machine.
1. Enter the IP address of the machine to connect to
2. Give the Session a name
3.. Save it
4. Click on Data
5. Enter the login user nameÂ
6. Click on Auth
7. Click on Browse
8. Search for the Amazon .pem file of your private key that downloaded when you created the Amazon Instance
9. Click on open
10. Click on Session
11. Click on Save
Click Open to connect the AWS Instance
Follow the steps in the screen shots below to configure Putty.
In Closing
The whole process to install and convert an Amazon key is pretty darn quick when you think about it. Once it’s done you’re done for life on knowing how to leverage Putty with Amazon
Chip in for a beer? 🙂
