These are my notes on getting started with Amazon Web Services, primarily for use with S3, SQS, and EC2. Hopefully these can help other people on a similar path.

Signing Up

OK, the first thing to do in order to get started with Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to create an account. This sounds trivial, and it pretty much is. However, there are a couple of things you should know:

1. Your AWS account is not the same as your Amazon account. You will need to re-register if you want to use the services.
2. You need to provide a way to bill you for your usage, most people will probably provide a credit card. You can change this later if you need to.
3. The email address you provide isn’t all that important. You can change it later, and verification is done through certificates at the services level.

Access

Once you have signed up for your account, the next thing you need to do is to generate an Access Key ID. Your Access Key ID is a text string that you provide AWS when you are attempting to do operations, in S3, EC2, or whatever. It uniquely identifies you as you, in an unsecure way. You can always access this through your Web Services Account Information, usually an icon in the upper right hand corner of each AWS web page.

Because the Access Key ID not secure, AWS needs a way to know that it is really you. It would be really, really bad if someone stole got a hold of your AWS identity and used it for nefarious reasons (especially since it is tied to your credit card). So, you also get a Secret Access Key that allows you to be verified in a secure manner.

Security

The Secret Access Key is also a text string, but it is used differently than the one that is used differently than the Access Key ID. The Secret Access Key is used to sign requests to secure services to make sure that AWS knows that it is really you. Although it isn’t the same as a password, you can consider this the eqivalent of your PIN number for your ATM. It is very, very important that you keep this a secret. You can always access this through your Web Services Account Information, usually an icon in the upper right hand corner of each AWS web page.

As the documentation says:

IMPORTANT: Your Secret Access Key is a secret, and should be known only by you and AWS. You should never include your Secret Access Key in your requests to AWS. You should never e-mail your Secret Access Key to anyone. It is important to keep your Secret Access Key confidential to protect your account.

’nuff said.

In addition, AWS offers X.509 Certificates, which are required for some services. However, we don’t have to worry about them now to get started.

More Info

If you want to more about the Access Key IDs and Secret Access Keys, take a look at:

• What are AWS Access Identifiers?
• Which AWS Services Support Which Request Identifiers

If you want more info about how to use AWS, take a look at:

• AWS — All of my postings about Amazon Web Services (this will be updated regularly).
• Getting Started With S3 — My step by step walkthrough for setting up, connecting to, and using S3.
• Getting Started With EC2 — My high level introduction to using EC2.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 8:27 am and is filed under AWS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.