Connecting to your EC2 Instance

Owned by Selvyn Wright
Last updated: May 07, 2017
1 min read

To connect to your instance using your key pair

To connect to your Linux instance from a computer running Mac or Linux, specify the .pem file to your SSH client with the -i option and the path to your private key. To connect to your Linux instance from a computer running Windows, you can use either MindTerm or PuTTY. If you plan to use PuTTY, you'll need to install it and use the following procedure to convert the .pem file to a .ppk file.

(Optional) To prepare to connect to a Linux instance from Windows using PuTTY

  1. Download and install PuTTY from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/. Be sure to install the entire suite.

  2. Start PuTTYgen (for example, from the Start menu, choose All Programs, PuTTY, and PuTTYgen).

  3. Under Type of key to generate, choose SSH-2 RSA.

  4. Choose Load. By default, PuTTYgen displays only files with the extension .ppk. To locate your .pem file, choose the option to display files of all types.

  5. Select the private key file that you created in the previous procedure and choose Open. Choose OK to dismiss the confirmation dialog box.

  6. Choose Save private key. PuTTYgen displays a warning about saving the key without a passphrase. ChooseYes.

  7. Specify the same name for the key that you used for the key pair. PuTTY automatically adds the .ppk file extension.