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Create Key Pair

Requirements​

The Nautilus DevOps team is strategizing the migration of a portion of their infrastructure to the AWS cloud. Recognizing the scale of this undertaking, they have opted to approach the migration in incremental steps rather than as a single massive transition. To achieve this, they have segmented large tasks into smaller, more manageable units. This granular approach enables the team to execute the migration in gradual phases, ensuring smoother implementation and minimizing disruption to ongoing operations. By breaking down the migration into smaller tasks, the Nautilus DevOps team can systematically progress through each stage, allowing for better control, risk mitigation, and optimization of resources throughout the migration process.

For this task, create a key pair with the following requirements:

  1. Name of the key pair should be devops-kp.

  2. Key pair type must be rsa

Note

The solution can be implemented using both the AWS Cloud Console and the AWS CLI. This document outlines the CLI-based approach to accomplish these tasks. It is recommended to first explore the AWS Cloud Console for hands-on experience and a practical understanding of the process before utilizing the CLI approach, unless specifically instructed otherwise.

Steps​

To create a key pair named devops-kp with the type rsa using the AWS CLI, follow these steps:

Define variables for the key pair name and key pair type:

KEY_PAIR_NAME="devops-kp"
KEY_PAIR_TYPE="rsa"

Create the key pair and save the private key to a file:

aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name $KEY_PAIR_NAME --key-type $KEY_PAIR_TYPE --query "KeyMaterial" --output text > ${KEY_PAIR_NAME}.pem

Set the correct permissions on the private key file:

chmod 400 ${KEY_PAIR_NAME}.pem

Validate the key pair creation:

aws ec2 describe-key-pairs --key-name $KEY_PAIR_NAME

Here is the complete script with all the steps combined:

# Define variables for the key pair name and key pair type
KEY_PAIR_NAME="devops-kp"
KEY_PAIR_TYPE="rsa"

# Create the key pair and save the private key to a file
aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name $KEY_PAIR_NAME --key-type $KEY_PAIR_TYPE --query "KeyMaterial" --output text > ${KEY_PAIR_NAME}.pem

# Set the correct permissions on the private key file
chmod 400 ${KEY_PAIR_NAME}.pem

# Validate the key pair creation
aws ec2 describe-key-pairs --key-name $KEY_PAIR_NAME

Validation Output:

The aws ec2 describe-key-pairs command should return details about the key pair, confirming that it has been successfully created.

{
    "KeyPairs": [
        {
            "KeyName": "devops-kp",
            "KeyPairId": "key-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
            "KeyType": "rsa",
            "KeyFingerprint": "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx"
        }
    ]
}

This confirms that the key pair devops-kp has been successfully created with the type rsa, and the private key has been saved to a file named devops-kp.pem with the correct permissions set.

Resources​

AWS CLI Docs