CloudPath Academy

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Amazon Web Services AWS Broken Labs

Lab 02 - Instance Access I

Difficulty: Beginner Service: Amazon EC2

Cost: This lab uses a t2.micro instance (Free Tier eligible). If left running outside the Free Tier, the cost is approximately $0.30/day. Delete the stack when you are done.

Scenario

Your team deployed a web server on EC2. The website loads fine in the browser. But when you try to open a terminal session on the instance using EC2 Instance Connect, the connection fails.

What Was Deployed

Resource Purpose
AWS::EC2::VPC Dedicated VPC for the lab
AWS::EC2::Subnet Public subnet with internet access
AWS::EC2::InternetGateway Internet gateway attached to the VPC
AWS::EC2::RouteTable Route table with a default route to the internet
AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup Security group for the instance
AWS::EC2::Instance t2.micro running Amazon Linux 2023 with Apache web server

The stack deployed without errors. Apache is installed and the web page is accessible.

Deploy the Lab

  1. Open the AWS CloudFormation console
  2. Click Create stack > With new resources (standard)
  3. Select Upload a template file and upload lab-02-instance-access-i.yaml
  4. Enter a stack name (e.g., brokenlabs-ec2-lab-02) and click Next > Next > Submit
  5. Wait for the stack status to reach CREATE_COMPLETE (takes 2–3 minutes)
  6. Open the stack Outputs tab — you will see InstanceId, InstancePublicIP, and WebPageURL

The Problem

First, confirm the web page loads — open WebPageURL from the Outputs. The AWS Broken Labs page should display correctly. The web server is healthy.

Now try to connect to the instance:

  1. Open the EC2 console and select your instance
  2. Click Connect > EC2 Instance Connect > Connect

Expected: a browser-based terminal opens. Actual:

Failed to connect to your instance
Error establishing SSH connection. Please try again.

Fix the Lab

Diagnose why the problem occurs and fix it so the result matches Expected above.

Need help? Open hints.md for progressive hints.

Cleanup

  1. Open CloudFormation, select your stack, and click Delete
  2. Wait for the stack to reach DELETE_COMPLETE (or disappear from the list)
  3. Verify in the EC2 console that the instance no longer appears (or shows Terminated)

Resources