AWS tutorial unlocks four 'simple' ways to access EC2—because nothing says beginner-friendly like permission roulette and serial console drama

On the second day of a hands-on exercise, a basic EC2 instance was launched in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) created on Day 1, and remote access was established. To access the EC2 instance using Amazon Web Services (AWS) Systems Manager, the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore permission was attached to the instance. A security group was created for the EC2 instance using Amazon Linux 2023 as the Amazon Machine Image (AMI). The instance was then connected to via Session Manager, and commands were run to verify the connection. The exercise demonstrated four ways to access EC2 instances, including using Systems Manager, SSH or RDP, EC2 Instance Connect, and EC2 Serial Console. This hands-on exercise is significant in the context of cloud computing and cybersecurity, as it highlights the importance of secure remote access to virtual instances in the cloud, a crucial aspect of managing infrastructure on platforms like AWS.