301 — Launch an EC2 Instance

Beginner

Find the Amazon Linux 2023 AMI for your region, launch a t2.micro instance with run-instances, wait for running state, and terminate — all from the CLI.

Learning Objectives

Find an Amazon Linux 2023 AMI ID for the active region using the CLI

Create an EC2 key pair and save the private key with correct permissions

Launch a t2.micro EC2 instance using aws ec2 run-instances

Monitor instance state until it reaches running using aws ec2 wait

Retrieve the public IP address of the running instance

Terminate the instance and verify it enters the terminated state

Step 1

Find the latest Amazon Linux 2023 AMI

Query EC2 for the most recent Amazon Linux 2023 AMI in your active region. AMI IDs are region-specific — the ID that works in us-east-1 will not work in eu-west-1.

Commands to Run

AMI_ID=$(aws ec2 describe-images \
  --owners amazon \
  --filters "Name=name,Values=al2023-ami-2023*" \
  "Name=architecture,Values=x86_64" \
  --query "Images | sort_by(@, &CreationDate) | [-1].ImageId" \
  --output text)

echo "AMI ID: $AMI_ID"

What This Does

Amazon Linux 2023 AMIs are published by Amazon (owner ID amazon).

The filter on al2023-ami-2023* scopes results to standard AL2023 images — the 2023 after the prefix matters, because a looser al2023-ami-* pattern would also match al2023-ami-minimal-* (stripped-down images without common tools).

The x86_64 filter excludes ARM images. sort_by(@, &CreationDate) | [-1] selects the newest image.

The result is stored in a shell variable so every subsequent command can reference it without retyping the long ID.

Expected Outcome

AMI ID: ami-0abcdef1234567890

The exact ID will differ by region and change as Amazon publishes new AMIs.

Any value starting with ami- is correct.

Pro Tips

1
AMI IDs change when Amazon releases a new build. Always query for the latest rather than hardcoding an ID — hardcoded IDs go stale and run-instances will return InvalidAMIID.NotFound.
2
AWS also publishes the latest AL2023 AMI ID as a public SSM parameter — a one-liner alternative to the describe-images query: AMI_ID=$(aws ssm get-parameters --names /aws/service/ami-amazon-linux-latest/al2023-ami-kernel-default-x86_64 --query "Parameters[0].Value" --output text)
3
To also see the AMI name and creation date: aws ec2 describe-images --owners amazon --filters "Name=name,Values=al2023-ami-2023*" "Name=architecture,Values=x86_64" --query "Images | sort_by(@, &CreationDate) | [-1].{ID:ImageId,Name:Name,Created:CreationDate}" --output table
4
Ubuntu users: the equivalent query uses --filters "Name=name,Values=ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-*-22.04-amd64-server-*" --owners 099720109477

Common Mistakes to Avoid

⚠️Omitting --output text — without it, the AWS CLI returns a quoted JSON string like "ami-0abcdef1234567890", which makes the value unusable in shell variable assignments.
⚠️Running the query without setting your default region. If AWS_DEFAULT_REGION is unset and no --region flag is passed, the CLI uses the region in ~/.aws/config. Verify with: aws configure get region

Was this step helpful?