Launching an Apache Web Server on an AWS EC2 Instance with User Data

I wanted to have an Apache Web Server served up on EC2. Rather than sorting the web server after the EC2 was launched, I used user data and other configurations so that at the point of the EC2 launch, the web server would function. Steps are below.

• Go to EC2 Dashboard and launch an instance in the upper righthand corner (Image 1)

Image 1

• Select Amazon Linux 2 AMI (Image 2)

Image 2

• I chose t2.micro because it was free and adequate (Image 3)

Image 3

• Enter the following commands in the user data (Yellow box in Image 4). These will make necessary updates to the environment, install Apache, start & enable the web server, and title the landing page.

#!/bin/bash
yum update -y
yum install -y httpd.x86_64
systemctl start httpd.service
systemctl enable httpd.service
echo “Hello from Kevin’s Apache Server served up on AWS EC2”

Image 4

• Add storage: Keep as default
• Add tags (Image 5)

Image 5

• Open necessary ports in Security Groups (Image 6)

Image 6

• Review Instance Launch: Looks good, ready for launch. (Image 7)

Image 7

• View launch status (Image 8). To have the instance up and running may take a minute or two.

Image 8

• In EC2 instances, view that the instance is running (Image 9). Then click the Instance ID to get a snapshot of the EC2.

Image 9

• In the EC2 Instance, copy the Public IPv4 address (Image 10)

Image 10

• Paste the address in another window to test the web server. Image 11 confirms that it worked & the mission was complete!

Image 11