Creating an EC2 Instance and Installing IIS: A Beginner's Guide

#tutorial #cloudcomputing #aws #beginners

INTRODUCTION

The setup of the IIS web server and the creation of an EC2 instance on AWS were covered in this tutorial. You may set up a Windows-based web server in the cloud and make it ready to host websites or apps by following these instructions. This guide offers a strong foundation for working with AWS and IIS, regardless of your level of experience or want to improve your cloud skills.

AWS (Amazon Web Services):
A comprehensive cloud platform offering a wide range of services like computing, storage, and databases to build and scale applications.

EC2 Instances: Virtual servers in AWS that provide resizable compute capacity for hosting applications and running workloads in the cloud.

IIS (Internet Information Services): A web server from Microsoft used to host websites, applications, and services on Windows servers.

Following are steps to be taken:

Login to AWS Management Console
Navigate to EC2 Dashboard
Launch a New Instance
Give the instance a name
Select a Windows Server AMI. in this case I'm selecting the free Microsoft Windows server 2025 Base
Choose Instance Type and create new key pair
Allow http to have access to web server
cross-check your settings and launch instance

Connect to Your Instance

Use RDP to connect to the instance with the administrator credentials.
Upload private key file, navigate and select the downloaded key file and decrypt key
copy the password
open the downloaded RDP file and connect
paste the copied password

Install IIS Web Server

Search for PowerShell on the desktop, run as Admin
Enter the command Install-WindowsFeature -Name Web-Server-IncludeManagementTools

Test the IIS Web Server

You can verify that IIS has been installed just by pasting the ip address of the VM in a browser

Notice the IIS web server was successfully accessed from the public internet.

Conclusion

This blog post explains how to create an AWS EC2 instance and configure it using IIS as a web server. You will first choose a Windows Server AMI, set up instance information, then start your EC2 instance using the AWS Management Console. After establishing an RDP connection, you will install IIS to host web content and check the configuration by going to the default IIS website.

With the help of this tutorial, you can start developing scalable and accessible web apps by learning how to set up a Windows-based web server in the cloud.
I hope this post added value to your cloud computing experience