If you need a MacOS environment for development or testing, but don’t have a physical Mac handy, it’s easy to create one using AWS. However, there are a couple potential gotchas to know about along the way, including dedicated hosts, quotas and costs (about $25 just to create the instance).
In this hands-on tutorial, I’ll walk you through how set up a dedicated host (and resolve any associated quota issues) and then create an EC2 Mac instance on top of it. I also cover costs and quotas associated with the host. From there, we’ll use VNC Viewer to log into the instance to get the GUI experience. Finally, and VERY IMPORTANTLY, we’ll cover how to delete your EC2 Mac instance and dedicated host.
Code used in the demos to install/start VNC and update password: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UTumHP60uXoXnNQzl42smOEUOiOKp8kz4RRPW6h6IuE/edit?usp=sharing
??If you’re interested in getting AWS certifications, check out these full courses. They include lots of hands-on demos, quizzes and full practice exams. Use FRIENDS10 for a 10% discount!
– AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner: https://academy.zerotomastery.io/a/aff_n20ghyn4/external?affcode=441520_lm7gzk-d
– AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate: https://academy.zerotomastery.io/a/aff_464yrtnn/external?affcode=441520_lm7gzk-d
00:00 – Getting started with creating a Mac EC2 Instance in the AWS Management Console
00:48 – But wait! What is this dedicated host thing?
01:14 – The basics of Dedicated Hosts in AWS
01:37 – But wait! How much is this going to cost?
02:41 – Creating a Dedicated Host for a Mac EC2 instance
03:24 – But wait! Why can’t I create a Dedicated Host? Quotas!
05:18 – Resuming creation of the Mac EC2 instance
06:59 – SSH-ing to the Mac EC2 instance
09:00 – Installing and launching VNC on the Mac EC2 instance
09:21 – Updating the password for ec2-user
09:46 – Connecting to a Mac EC2 instance using VNC Viewer
11:13 – IMPORTANT! Deleting your AWS resources