Manage Amazon EC2 With New Web-Based AWS Management Console

Today we’re announcing the availability of the Web-based AWS Management Console, which in this first release provides management of your Amazon EC2 environment via a point-and-click interface. A number of management tools already exist: for example a popular Firefox extension known as Elasticfox; however as you read more of this post I believe you’ll agree that the new console is compelling--especially when it’s time to log in as a new AWS developer.

For starters, it’s easier than ever to gain access to your Amazon EC2 environment. The console provides access via your Amazon username and password. No more certificates or public/secret keys to manage! If you’re like me, I never seem to have my own computer at hand when I need to check the status of the Amazon EC2 farm, or for that matter when I need to launch a new instance. It’s a lot easier to log in with a username and password than to use those same credentials to retrieve my keys, configure Firefox (if it’s even on the borrowed computer) and then log in.

Then there’s the new point-and-click AJAX user interface for managing Amazon EC2 resources. No more page refreshes every time something updates; and a timer refreshes management console components, such as the status of running instances, every few seconds.

The AWS community creates an amazing selection of innovative Amazon Machine Images, or AMIs. In fact, the count is now a staggering 1200 AMIs and growing! That’s quite a menu to choose from—especially if you are a first-time user. The new Launch Instance Wizard walks you through starting your first instance; offering a short list of Linux and Windows server choices. Choose one of these AMIs, and then the wizard even suggests which ports to open in the firewall. It’s smart enough to suggest that you open SSH (port 22) for Linux images, and RDP (port 3389) for Windows instances. The wizard even suggests settings that restrict Amazon EC2 access to “your computer only”.

And as I hinted in the opening paragraph, this is just the first in a set of Console interfaces that will provide a UI layer on top of AWS infrastructure services. We’ll be adding additional Amazon Web Services in the future.

The console feature list is extensive, and provides intuitive management of all these things:

• AMI Management: browse and search AMIs, launch instances from AMIs, deregister and register AMIs
• Instance Management: launch, reboot, terminate, get console output, RDP/SSH help, etc.
• Security Group Management: create and delete security groups, add and remove permissions, configure firewall settings, open and close ports
• Elastic IP Management: create and release IP Addresses, associate IPs to instances
• Elastic Block Store: create, delete, attach and detach volumes. Take snapshots and manage snapshots.
• Key Pair management: create and delete public/private key pairs.

If you’d like to take a six minute tour of the console, I created a video (Flash format).

Finally, do you have a feature suggestion, or some other type of feedback? Feedback links are at the bottom of each page, and we welcome your input.

Mike

Comments

[Peter]

Is it US-only? I can't find support for the eu-west-1 region anywhere.

[Chris]

I'd love a way that I can create user accounts and allow other users to login and fire up certain AMI's under a shared EC2 account. For instance I might need developers or other support people I work with to be able to fire up an instance for testing reasons for a few hours, and it would be great to not have to manage that for them.

[greggles]

We have multiple people who manage our servers. It would be nice if we could select their amazon accounts as approved to manage the instances as well instead of, for example, sharing a single login to Amazon.

[Sam]

I suggest you link directly to the console with the image rather than to the image itself:

https://console.aws.amazon.com/

Sam

[Jonathan Feinberg]

Beautiful! In my opinion, you guys did everything right, focusing first on a reliable, flexible service, which can be controlled via scripts, then adding the human-readable interface later. Kudos.

[Sean ODell]

Hi,

I am very interested in the upcoming tagging feature, and would like to have the metadata stored in SDB. Would also like to see more filtering features, especially the ability to filter on metadata tags. Other features:

- ability to create more than one volume at a time.
- ability to create multiple volumes from multiple snapshots at one time.
- ability to sort on multiple columns.

If you would like to see some of these features in action, and others, you can view demos at:

http://awsmanager.com

A free of charge working version is at:

https://awsmanager.com

Regards,
Sean
====

[Vincent]

Any schedule for S3 console? I don't trust my data to third party vendors and I would prefer to have everything from Amazon "out of the box"

[Samuel]

+1 for EU

[Daniel]

Kudos to you guys for making this web console. It was definitely a bother to travel with my computer. Though I must say that I'm disappointed with the decision not to support the Opera browser. When visiting the console with the Opera browser, I get a message saying my browser is not supported.

[Paul Evans]

Very nice interface, simple and elegant, as one would expect from Amazon and it packages the intitial setup steps and routine use very crisply. I had undergone a lot of pain during my first set up

http://sharevm.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/create-a-new-ec2-ami-instance-from-an-existing-ami/

I wish I had this available then :-)

Great job!

[Kevin Campbell]

Are there any plans to allow easier switching between multiple AWS accounts like Elasticfox? I think the interface is great but a better way to log-in and switch between accounts would be excellent, until then I think Elasticfox meets my needs better.

[Thomas Nikl]

Looks very nice. A few questions/ideas.

- Seems like when I try and connect to a linux instance it gives me a menu that explains how to do it, as opposed to just opening putty (like ElasticFox). Is there a setting I have to toggle or will the AWS console not open putty for me?

- One thing EC2 REALLY needs is instance labeling. At one point I had 13 instances and it was very hard to keep track of, and that was only 13. I think this as "ec2" thing more than an "ec2 console thing" but when you launch an instance you should be able to define a "user comments" and you should be able to see, sort by and search off of this.

- s3 & sqs support would be awesome.

I will keep playing but it looks very nice without a doubt so far.

[Sarah Baker]

Nice. Compares reasonably to ElasticFox.

I personally like the sort options for the AMI view.

I've found an annoyance, at least in FireFox3. If the session times out and you log in again, you go back to the dashboard instead of the window you had been viewing. I haven't tried other clients.

I also second the requests for
- labeling volumes, snapshots and instances. A simple txt field and search capability.
- capability of access by multiple users (to avoid sharing a single login)

[Mark]

Can anyone tell me , what kind of backup strategy be adopted for daily/weekly backup.Assuming my data is available in the EBS .

Thanks
Mark