🛠️ Lab 2 — EC2 Web App

Type: Build-on-your-own Time: ~75 minutes Difficulty: Beginner / Intermediate Cost: Free (within free tier)

🎯 What you’ll build

Launch an EC2 instance, SSH into it, install Nginx, and serve a custom webpage. This is your first taste of “real” cloud — managing a Linux server in the cloud the same way pros do.

📋 Prerequisites

  • Lab 1 complete (you should know your way around the AWS Console now)
  • You can SSH from your laptop (Terminal on Mac/Linux, Git Bash on Windows)
  • You have a fresh EC2 key pair ready (we cover this in the walkthrough)

🛠️ AWS Services used

  • EC2 — the virtual machine
  • VPC default — networking (no custom VPC needed yet)
  • Security Groups — your firewall

📖 The full walkthrough

Open Week1_Lab2_EC2_App.html in your browser. It’s a complete step-by-step guide with screenshots, code snippets, and inline hints.

💡 The HTML file is self-contained — no install, no internet needed once you’ve cloned the repo. Just double-click to open in your browser.

🆘 If you get stuck

  1. Re-read the relevant step in the HTML walkthrough
  2. Check the Common Mistakes callouts (red boxes in the walkthrough)
  3. Expand the 💡 Hint sections for guidance
  4. WhatsApp the group with a screenshot of the error
  5. Tag your post with #week1done

🎓 Submission

  1. Screenshot of your EC2 instance running + the public IP
  2. Screenshot of the page loading in your browser at that IP
  3. Bonus: deploy a tiny Node.js API for the extra credit

⬅️ Back to Week 1