This is step 1 of 7 of Hands-On Project 1 for Amazon Web Services. In this step, you sign up for an AWS account (if you don’t have one), and create an IAM user so you don’t need to use the root user to access your account.
Create your AWS account
To do the hands-on projects on AWS, you will most likely need a standard billable account backed by a credit card or debit card. If you have a credit card you are willing to use, that is the easiest/safest solution. Amazon does allow you to pay with a debit card as well, so you have the option of purchasing a pre-paid credit card or debit card and using that to pay for AWS services.
You can create a standard billable account here: https://portal.aws.amazon.com/billing/signup
AWS has two additional offerings that you might want to take advantage of (though these will not provide enough resources to complete the projects on this site):
- Free Tier Account: A Free Tier account provides services free of charge, but with limitations. At least one of the virtual machines we will build needs more horsepower than the Free Tier allows. You could however sign up for this account in parallel with your main account to obtain some free services to play with. Sign up here: https://aws.amazon.com/free/
- AWS Educate Account. Amazon has an online training series called AWS Educate that you can follow for free. The series might be a good add-on to what we cover on this site, if you have the interest and time. Sign up here: https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/
Please follow the instructions to create a standard billable account on AWS.
Create a Non-Root User in Your Account
AWS has a service called Identity and Access Management (IAM) which is used to control access to the services and resources within your account. When you first create your account, you have only a root user. Amazon strongly recommends that you do not use the root account to do routine work in your account. Following these instructions, please create a non-root IAM user to be the administrator for your AWS account:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/polly/latest/dg/setting-up.html
Best practice is to create a group with Administrator privileges and add your admin user to the group. That way, if you later have to add a second administrative user, you can add the user, put the user into the administrative group, and the user will inherit all the privileges that the group has.
Set aside your root credentials and use the administrator account for pretty much everything. Make sure you have your passwords securely stored in a place you can find them if you forget them.
Set Up an Account Alias
When you login to AWS, you need to provide either your account number (12 digits) or an account alias. It’s probably easier to remember an account alias, so you should set one up within your account. These instructions provide the details:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/console_account-alias.html
My account alias is “mdenzien”. Unique, and very easy to remember and type.