Connect to your Linux instance using EC2 Instance Connect
Amazon EC2 Instance Connect provides a secure way to connect to your Linux instances over Secure Shell (SSH). With EC2 Instance Connect, you use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies and principals to control SSH access to your instances, removing the need to share and manage SSH keys. All connection requests using EC2 Instance Connect are logged to AWS CloudTrail so that you can audit connection requests.
You can use EC2 Instance Connect to connect to your instances using the Amazon EC2 console or the SSH client of your choice.
When you connect to an instance using EC2 Instance Connect, the EC2 Instance Connect API pushes an SSH
public key to the instance metadata where it
remains for 60 seconds. An IAM policy attached to your user authorizes your user to push
the public key to the instance metadata. The SSH daemon uses
AuthorizedKeysCommand and AuthorizedKeysCommandUser, which are
configured when EC2 Instance Connect is installed, to look up the public key from the instance
metadata for authentication, and connects you to the instance.
Tip
EC2 Instance Connect is one of the options to connect to your Linux instance. For other options, see Connect to your Linux instance using SSH. To connect to a Windows instance, see Connect to your Windows instance using RDP.
Pricing
EC2 Instance Connect is available at no additional cost.
Region availability
EC2 Instance Connect is available in all AWS Regions, except the Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region. It is not supported in Local Zones.
Contents
For a blog post that discusses how to improve the security of your bastion hosts using
EC2 Instance Connect, see Securing your bastion hosts with Amazon EC2 Instance Connect
