Creating A New AWS EC2 Key For A 3rd Party Developer

Introduction

This guide will take you through the steps to create a new Key and then add it to your EC2 instance. There are 3 main steps. 

1. Create a new Key Pair in AWS
2. Generate the Public Key from the Key Pair 
3. Adding the Public key to your EC2 authorized_keys file 

If in doubt on step 3 ask someone who is more experienced or technically advanced to perform it. Steps 1 and 2 can be done without any risks. 

Step 1: Create a new Key Pair

1. Go to AWS Management Console

2. Click on EC2

• While Keys are a security function you’ll find them under EC2 and not IAM options, this is due to their usage on instances rather than users. 

 3. Click on Key Pairs

• This is on the left hand menu, you might need to scroll down to see the option.

4. Give the Key a descriptive name “name-of-the-key”

• If you’re working with Allcode on building a cloud service perhaps allcode-dev-key for example. 

 5. Click on Create key pair 

• The key will be automatically downloaded to your computer. 

• Keep this key safe, this is the only time it can be downloaded

Step 2: Generate the Public Key from the Private Key