Later in this appendix, you will create EC2 instances.

For each Windows EC2 instance, you will ask Amazon to generate a Windows Administrator password. The passwords will be encrypted, and you will need a key pair to decrypt the passwords. You will use the passwords to connect to Windows EC2 instances.

For Linux EC2 instances, you do not need passwords. Instead, you will use key pairs to connect to instances.

Ask your network or security administrator for a key pair to use, or click Help in the AWS Management Console and search Documentation for instructions on creating a key pair.

In Windows, when you create the key pair, Amazon generates a .pem file that contains the private key you will need to decrypt the password. Depending on your browser settings, you might be prompted to download the file, or the file might be copied automatically to a predefined location on the local machine. Make sure you know the location of the file so you can provide it later to decrypt the password.