Create an Virtual Window Server for Development on AWS

Steps to Create and Connect to a Windows Virtual Machine on AWS

  • Log on to your AWS Console as an IAM user who has permission to create EC2 instances
  • Create an EC2 instance and make sure to create KeyPair
    • Make sure you check the individual price when selecting the instance type
  • Open the new EC2 instance and click Connect to view the instruction on how to connect
    • Download the RDP file
    • Find the Password by decrypting the public key (the pem file from the Create EC2 step)
  • Download Windows RDP (Remote Desktop)
  •  Create a new connection profile using the RDP file, then connect to the new instance using the decrypted password
  • After development, stop (not terminate) the instance so you are not being charged for the Compute price.
  • If you are done with this instance and no longer need it, you can terminate it so that you don’t need to pay for the storage price.

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DynamoDB Primer

What is DynamoDB It’s AWS-managed, serverless, NoSQL database technology created by AWS and used widely in AWS solutions. Design a DynamoDB table Say I want to create a restaurant and need to store the menu items in a dynamoDB table. I would only need to define the “primary key”, which is a unique key but … Read more

Create a New AWS Account

You can create an AWS account for free, as long as you provide an email address and a credit card. For the first year, you can use the 12-month Free Tier offering in your first 12 month of account creation. Not all AWS resources are Free Tier eligible, so make sure before creating any AWS resources.

To create an AWS account, simply go to https://aws.amazon.com and click on “Create an AWS Account”.

The account creation process will ask you for your email address, address, as well as a valid credit card. After email verification, you can then log in to your new AWS account.

This video shows my step of creating an new AWS account

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DynamoDB PlayList

(image from https://www.awsgeek.com/Amazon-DynamoDB/ by Jerry Hargrove)

DynamoDB was based on a 2007 paper and was introduced for general release in 2012, almost 10 years ago. It is used not only directly by the AWS customers but also internally by many of AWS services.

This blog contains a curated list of DynamoDB videos from re:Invent as well as AWS tech talks.

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