Day-3: An Introduction to the AWS Management Console
Overview:
The AWS Management Console is a web application that comprises a broad collection of service consoles for managing AWS resources.
When you first sign in, you see the Console Home page.
The home page provides access to each service console and offers a single place to access the information you need to perform your AWS-related tasks.
You can also customize the Console Home page by adding, removing, and rearranging widgets, such as recently visited, AWS Health, Trusted Advisor, and more.
In this article, you will learn:
The different sections of the Console Home
How to access account information
How to switch AWS Regions
How to work with widgets on the Console Home
Prerequisites
Before starting this guide, you will need:
An AWS account: if you don't already have one, follow the Setting Up Your Environment Getting Started guide for a quick overview.
AWS Management Console:
Console Home:
After signing up for a new AWS account and logging in, you will see the console dashboard. This is the starting point for interacting with the various AWS services and other important console components. The dashboard consists of a navigation bar at the top and several widgets in the main body of the page, which you can configure and rearrange.
We will start by taking a look at the navigation bar at the top. In the image to the right, we have highlighted five controls within the navigation bar:
Account information
Region selector
Service selector
Search box
AWS CloudShell
AWS Account Information:
The first highlighted menu contains information and links for your account. It displays the AWS Account ID, and the current user logged in to the console, along with links to navigate to the following pages:
Account - Details about your account, including the address, contact information, billing settings, and more.
Organization - AWS Organizations is an account management service that enables you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that you create and centrally manage.
Service Quotas - Quotas, also referred to as limits in AWS services, are the maximum values for the resources, actions, and items in your AWS account. When a new account is created, there are default values, such as assigning five Elastic IP addresses. These limits can be increased by logging a support ticket.
Billing Dashboard - You can use the dashboard page of the AWS Billing console to gain a general view of your AWS spending.
Security Credentials - This link will take you to your AWS IAM user's page in the IAM part of the console where you can change your password, add 2-factor authentication, generate AWS API keys, and more.
Settings - This link will take you to the General Settings configuration page. From here you can manage console global settings such as default language and region as well as preferences to optimize your console display experience.
AWS Regions:
The second highlighted menu shows the currently selected AWS Region. AWS global infrastructure is grouped into Regions, and each service is hosted in a Region, unless it is a global service, such as AWS IAM or Amazon Route 53.
The menu will display the currently selected Region, or "Global" when you have selected a global service. The text consists of the Region group, such as "US East"; the region name, such as "N. Virginia"; and the Region string used by the AWS CLI, SDK, and other services, such as "us-east-1".
When you click on the currently selected Region, a dropdown will appear with all the available Regions, and you can switch the console to a different Region by clicking on one in the list.
AWS Service Selector:
The third highlighted menu is the AWS service selector. You can use this to navigate between services grouped by top-level categories, such as Compute, which includes Amazon EC2, along with other services like AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Amazon Lightsail. This is a great way to explore the various services by category, especially if you are new to AWS.
AWS Search:
The fourth highlighted item is the search box. When you enter text into the box, the underlying search engine searches across several different locations to match the text that you entered. It will return matches in eight sections:
Services: List of AWS services
Features: List of features of AWS services
Blogs: Posts from the AWS blog
Documentation: AWS Documentation
Knowledge Articles: AWS Premium Support Knowledge Center
Tutorials: Hands-on guides from the AWS Getting Started Resource Center
Events: AWS-hosted events that are upcoming, or available on-demand
Marketplace: AWS Marketplace offerings that you can deploy in your AWS account
The Search is a quick way to find and navigate to services and resources that you are looking for. If the search engine is unable to find a match within one of these sections, the section will not be included in the list.
AWS CloudShell:
The fifth highlighted item is the AWS CloudShell icon.
By selecting this icon, you will launch a browser-based shell environment that is pre-authenticated with your console credentials.
Use this to execute AWS CLI commands or scripts using the AWS CDK from your browser.
If you add any files to CloudShell (up to the 1GB limit), it will persist the files between sessions.
CloudShell is a useful tool for securely interacting with your AWS account and is region-specific, so any files that you upload are specific to that Region.
The current selected Region is displayed in orange above the terminal.
AWS Dashboard Widgets:
The dashboard also contains several widgets to help you get started. We will discuss the widgets that appear by default, but you can move and resize these, or add different ones from the "Actions" dropdown.
AWS Health: information on events that might affect your AWS infrastructure and account
Cost and usage: an overview of service costs, with a breakdown by AWS service
Favourites: a list of your favourite AWS services
Recently visited: a list of top recently visited services
Trusted Advisor: recommendations to follow AWS best practices