Introduction to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

This lab walks you through the steps to launch and configure a virtual machine in the Amazon cloud. You will practice using Amazon Machine Images to launch Amazon EC2 Instances and use key pairs for SSH authentication to log into to your instance. For a demonstration, see the video below.

What's a qwikLAB?

A qwikLAB is a live hands-on learning environment along with a set of instructions to walk you through a real-world scenario based use-case. In a Lab you will have access to the actual environment you want to learn about, not a simulation or demo environment. Labs may be accessed through a standard browser anywhere there is Internet access. Many Labs require Lab Credits or an Access key to run (see FAQs for details), but we also have a variety of introductory free Labs as well.

What's a Learning Quest

A qwikLABS Learning Quest is a collection of Labs and learning materials that have been chosen to help you gain mastery of a specific topic. We partner with subject matter experts to choose the Labs in a Quest and design an ideal sequence of learning activities to help you reach your learning goal in the most efficient and effective way.

Quests make it easy for you to track your progress and decide what Labs will be the best aligned to your goal and skill level. They take the guess work out of learning a new skill allowing you to focus on what’s really important, learning something new! Finishing a Quest also helps you earn badges, which is a great way to show off your new skills.

What's a Badge?

A Badge is a digital sign of achievement. You earn badges when you complete qwikLABS Learning Quests. To complete a Quest you must finish the required number of Labs assigned in that Quest. You can also earn badges by contributing to theqwikLABS community, like giving reviews and writing comments about Labs you’ve completed.

Why do Badges matter?

Badges help you keep track of all the new skills you’ve learned. Badges help verify your skills and can be shared, downloaded, and added to personal materials like resumes, portfolios, websites, and profiles. Badges help you demonstrate and document the knowledge you learn in Labs.