AWS EC2 Setup for Ansible

What is EC2?

Amazon EC2 provides virtual servers in AWS. For Ansible labs you need:

• 1 control node — Ansible installed here
• 2+ managed nodes — targets Ansible configures

Laptop
  ↓ SSH (PEM)
Control Node (Ansible)
  ↓ SSH (passwordless)
Managed Node 1
Managed Node 2

Launch instances

1. Open AWS Console → EC2 → Launch instance
2. AMI: Ubuntu Server (LTS)
3. Instance type: t2.micro / t3.micro (Free Tier ok for learning)
4. Create or select a key pair (download the .pem)
5. Security group inbound:
   • SSH 22 from your IP (required)
   • HTTP 80 if you will test Nginx in the browser
6. Launch and note public IPs

Key pair

A key pair is how you SSH into Ubuntu EC2:

• Private key = .pem on your laptop (never commit to Git)
• Public key = installed on the instance by AWS at launch

chmod 400 ~/Downloads/control-node.pem
ssh -i ~/Downloads/control-node.pem ubuntu@<CONTROL_PUBLIC_IP>

Public IP vs Elastic IP

Private IP

Used for traffic inside the VPC. Prefer private IPs between control and managed nodes when they share a VPC and you do not need public SSH to every managed host.

Lab server layout

Connect and verify

chmod 400 control-node.pem
ssh -i control-node.pem ubuntu@<IP>
uname -a
sudo apt update

Practical tasks

1. Create 1 control + 2 managed Ubuntu instances
2. Confirm SSH from laptop to each with the correct .pem
3. Open security group SSH only to your IP
4. Record public IPs for inventory later