Configure Instances Internet Access

Prerequisites

Please read Workshops Organisation if you haven’t done so.

If you are attending a workshop using a Cloud-SPAN AWS account, you don’t need to complete this episode.

If you are self-studying the course or attending a workshop using your AWS account, you must complete this episode and for that you will need:

to have created and configured your AWS account as described in the episodes Create Your AWS Account and Configure Your AWS Account.
the AWS Console login details of your IAM user account: login page, username and password.

Overview

These are the main steps you will follow to configure internet access for the instances you will create with the Scripts:

Create Your Base Domain Name.
This step is optional. If you decide not to create a base domain name, or do not specify it (as described in the next episode) when creating instances, the instances created by the Scripts will be accessed (logged in) using the IP addresses allocated to the instancs by AWS.
If you decide to create a base domain name, and specify it (as described in the next episode) when creating instances, the Scripts will create a sub-domain to access each instance. If you are using an AWS institutional account, your base domain name may itself be a sub-domain within a domain name managed by your institution. Check the callout at the end of this section to ensure your based domain name is properly configured by you or your IT department.
Create Your AWS Security Group.
An AWS security group is a set of rules to configure the Internet communication ports of AWS instances. The security group you will create will enable the communication port used by the ssh program. We only need one security group as all instances need the same configuration. If you are using an AWS institutional account, you should not have any problem creating a security group — try to create it; if you cannot then contact your IT deparment.
Select an AWS Subnet to Access the Instances.
An AWS subnet is a network within an AWS region to which the instances created by the Scripts will be connected so that they can be accessed from anywhere.
This step is optional. If you do not specify a subnet-id (as described in the next episode) when creating instances, the Scripts will try to obtain a subnet-id from your AWS account. We have successfully tested the Scripts to obtain and use a subnet-id running the scripts with a personal AWS account and with an institutional AWS account. The personal account was configured to use the default subnets allocated by AWS. The institutional account was conﬁgured not to use the default subnets allocated by AWS, but other subnets conﬁgured by the IT department of our institution.
If the scripts cannot obtain a subnet-id, they will display a message describing how to obtain a subnet-id (see below the detailed instructions for this step): to search for vpc (virtual private cloud) in the AWS Console (in the search box at the top), then click on subnets on the left menu, and to copy one of the subnet-id’s displayed. NB: if no subnet-id is displayed in the AWS Console, and you are using an AWS institutional account, you will need to contact your IT department.

You must do the above steps using the AWS Console with your IAM user account. These are the instructions to login to your IAM account:

Open a new browser window and enter the address of the login page for your account IAM users. The address contains your account alias or your 12-digit account number and has this form:
- https://youraccountalias.signin.aws.amazon.com/console
- https://123456789012.signin.aws.amazon.com/console
Enter your IAM username and password. You may also get a Security check to complete.
Set the region to Ireland (eu-west-1) if it is not, by clicking on the drop-down menu at the top to the right, see top right on the page below.

1. Create Your Base Domain Name

Go to the Route 53 Dashboard

You are now logged in to your IAM account. To create your base domain name, type route 53 in the AWS search box at the top and press Enter.

Screenshot of AWS Console page in a browser with the region drop-down menu on the top right and the AWS search box in the middle top circled — .

You will be presented with the “Route 53 Dashboard”. Click on Register domain.

Screenshot of AWS Console Route 53 Dashboard page in a browser with the option Register domain on the bottom right circled — .

Choose your domain name

On the page that appears, “Choose a domain name”, you are going to:

type your base domain name — awsplaicloud is our domain name in the page below.
- You cannot use dots (.) but you can use hyphens or minus signs (-) to link a few words, for example: cloud-span or cloud-span-2023.
click on “.com -$12.00” drop-down menu to choose a top level domain (TLD) — .com was our choice.
- The cheapest TLD in AWS Route 53 is .link at US $5.00 per one year.
click Check to check for the availability of your domain name and TLD.
- You will be presented with the Availability for your-domain-name and a list of Related domain suggestions.
click the Add to cart button to the right of the domain name that you want to create (buy).
- In the page, we have already clicked on the button to the right of awsplaicloud.com which hence appears on the Shopping cart (top right).
scroll down and click Continue.

Two screenshots put together of the AWS Console Choose a domain name page in a browser with the following items circled: on the top left the box to enter a domain, on the top right the drop-down to choose the top-level domain and to the right the Check button to check availabilty, just below that button the Add to cart button, and the bottom right the Continue button. — .

Enter the contact details for your domain

You will now be presented with the page “Contact Details for Your 1 Domain”. Do as follows in this page:

select Yes for “My Registrant, Administrative and Technical Contacts are all the same”.
select Person for “Contact Type”.
enter your contact details.
scroll down and select Enable for “Privacy Protection”.
click Continue.

Screenshot of AWS Console Contact Details for Your 1 Domain page in a browser with the following two items circled: above the middle to the right, the Yes button for the option My Registrant, Administrative, and Technical Contacts are all the same, and in the middle the Person value for the option Contact Type. — .

Check your contact details and complete order

In the page that appears, “Check your contact details” (not shown below), you will see at the top the contact details for your Registrant Contact, Administrative Contact and Technical Contact — our contacts are not shown.

Scroll down until you see options shown below.

select Disable for “Do you want to automatically renew your domain?”. If you select Enable, your domain name registration will be renewed every year which will incur the same or slightly higher cost every year. You can disable this option later if you prefer.
check the box next to “I have read and agree to the AWS Domain Name Registration Agreement”.
click Complete Order.

Screenshot of AWS Console Check your contact details page but scrolled down so that, that page title is not shown; in the part that is shown, the following items are circled: in the middle left the Disable radio button for option Do you want to automatically renew your domain, in the bottom left the checked checkbox for I have read and agree to the AWS Domain Name Registration Agreement, and on the bottom right the Complete Order button that in a browser with the region menu at the top right and AWS CloudShell option in the middle top circled — .

You will then be presented with the page below. First click Close and then Hosted zones on the left pane.

Screenshot of AWS Console Thank you for registering your domain with Route 53 page in a browser showing the callout message Order submitted successfully and the button Close on the bottom right circled; also circled is the option Hosted zones on the top left in the pane menu of the page — .

Make a note of your host zone name (domain name) and host zone id

In the page that appears, “Hosted zones”, your domain name should be listed as shown in the page below for our domain name awsplaicloud.com.

However, it may take a few (2-3) minutes for your domain name to be registered and hence to appear in the domain name list.

Refresh the page every now and then until your domain name appears. Then click “your-domain-name” (awsplaicloud.com).

Screenshot of AWS Console Hosted zones page in a browser with the domain name awsplaicloud.com in the middle bottom circled — .

In the page that appears, “your-domain-name”, click Hosted zone details, and from the details that will be displayed, make a note of both the Hosted zone name (your domain name) and the Hosted zone ID (concealed in dark grey below), as you will use them later to configure the Scripts.

Screenshot of AWS Console awsplaicloud.com domain name page in a browser with the following items circled: above the middle to the right, the drop-down menu Hosted zone details, in the midle the Hosted zone name and its value awsplaicloud.com, and below the Hosted zone ID with its value hidden. — .

If you are using an institutional AWS account:

Recall that the base domain name awsplaicloud.com was created with an AWS personal account and that instances domain names will have the form instancename-001.awsplaicloud.com, where instancename-001 will be a subdomain name within awsplaicloudcom.

Using an AWS institutional account, your base domain name will likely be something like cloud-span.aws.york.ac.uk, and instances domain names will have the form instancename-001.cloud-span.aws.york.ac.uk, where:

york.ac.uk is the base domain name of the University of York, and has two parts: the domain name per se, york, and the domain suffix or top-level domain (TLD), ac.uk, which must be chosen among various other suffixes such as: .com, .edu, .net, .org, .link, etc.
aws is a subdomain managed by the IT department to identify AWS domains used by a department or project within the university — similar subdomains are gcp for Google Cloud Platform, and azure for Microsoft cloud platform.
cloud-span is the subdomain configured by the IT department for the Cloud-SPAN project. Note that words separated by a hyphen (-) count as a single word in domain and subdomain names. It is the dot . that separates a domain name into subdomains, though some subdomains pairs are handled as one, for example: co.uk is handled as one TLD by AWS and probably by other providers of domain names.
instancename-001 is the subdomain for the instance-001 created by the Scripts.
IMPORTANT: while both cloud-span and instancename-001 are both subdomains (respectively within aws.york.ac.uk and cloud-span.aws.york.ac.uk), they are configured differently:
- cloud-span is configured as a host zone (as awsplaicloud.com was configured above), and hence has an AWS host zone id. You need to configure, or ask your IT department to configure, your base domain name as a host zone so you can configure the Scripts with the corresponding host zone name and host zone id.
- instancename-001, instancename-002.., instancename-999 are configured by the Scripts as A Records (which map domain names to IPv4 addresses) within the specified host zone.

2. Create Your AWS Security Group

Create and name your security group

On the page that appears, “Security Groups”, click Create security group — ignore the default security group if it is listed.

Screenshot of AWS Console Security Groups page in a browser with the button Create security group circled. — .

You will be presented with the page “Create security group”. In this page you are going to type a name and a description for your security group, as shown below:

Screenshot of AWS Console Create security group page in a browser with options Security group name and Description circled. — .

Create the inbound rules for your security group

Now scroll down the page until you see the heading Inbound rules:

Screenshot of AWS Console Create security group page in a browser, scrolled down and showing the button Add rule circled. — .

We are going to specify for inbound rules:

Click the Add rule button four times so that four rows appear.
On the left column (labelled Type), select SSH for rows 1 and 2 and Custom TCP for rows 3 and 4.
On the third column (labelled Port range) enter the number 8787 on rows 3 and 4.
On the fourth column (labelled Source), select Anywhere-IPv4 for rows 1 and 3 and Anywhere-IPv6 for rows 2 and 4.

The first four columns of the table should now look like this:

Type	Protocol	Port Range	Source
SSH	TCP	22	Anywhere-IPv4
SSH	TCP	22	Anywhere-IPv6
Custom TCP	TCP	8787	Anywhere-IPv4
Custom TCP	TCP	8787	Anywhere-IPv6

There is no need to define outbound rules nor tags.

Scroll down to the end of the page and click Create security group.

Make a note of your security group id

You should now see a page like the one below showing the details of your security group including the inbound rules you created. Make a note of your security group id at the top (concealed in dark grey in the page below), as you will use it later to configure the Scripts.

Screenshot of AWS Console Cloud-SPAN Security Group page in a browser showing the security group ID circled but hidden. — .

3. Select an AWS Subnet to Access the Instances

Go to the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Dashboard

To select an AWS Subnet, type vpc in the AWS search box at the top and press Enter. Check that you are in the Ireland region and set it thus if not.

Screenshot of AWS Console page in a browser with the region drop-down menu at the top right and AWS search box in the middle top circled — .

You will be presented with the “VPC Dashboard”. Click Subnets.

Screenshot of AWS Console VPC Dashboard page in a browser with the option Subnet on the menu pane on the left and on the body page on the left circled, and the region drop-down menu on the top right showing Ireland circled as well. — .

Choose a subnet and make a note of its subnet-id

In the page that appears, “Subnets”, you will see the three subnets available in the Ireland region. Choose one and make a note of its subnet-id as you will use it later to configure the Scripts.

Screenshot of AWS Console Subnets page in a browser showing the resource IDs of the subnets available in the Ireland region, in the middle of the page, circled. — .