Making an SSH connection to an AWS EC2 server

Owned by Support
Last updated: Aug 10, 2021 by Netsarang Support

The following are instructions for connecting to an SSH session using Xshell on an AWS(Amazon Web Service) Linux instance.


  1. On the last step of creating a Linux instance on Amazon, create a public and private key pair and download it to your PC.




  2. Open Xshell and register the private key file by using the Import option.



    By default, AWS keys have no set password. We recommend you click Properties and set a user password.

  3. Create an Xshell session file for the AWS EC2 instance.



  • Verify the host's IP address from the AWS instance.





  • For user name, there are instructions for access information in the AMI which was selected when created the EC2 instance.
    Typically, root or ec2-user is used. For this case, since we selected Amazon Linux, we will us ec2-user.
  • For password, enter the password you designated in step 2.
  • Press OK to save the session file.



4. From the Sessions dialog box, run the session you created above.