CloudPath Academy

Your guide to AWS certification success

Amazon Web Services AWS Broken Labs

Lab 04 - Instance Access II

Difficulty: Beginner Service: Amazon EC2, AWS IAM, AWS Systems Manager

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. But when you try to connect to the instance using Session Manager, the option is unavailable.

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 Allows inbound traffic on ports 80 and 22
AWS::EC2::Instance t2.micro running Amazon Linux 2023 with Apache web server

The stack deployed without errors. The web page loads.

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-04-instance-access-ii.yaml
  4. Enter a stack name (e.g., brokenlabs-ec2-lab-04) 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 displays correctly.

Now try to connect using Session Manager:

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

Expected: you can click Connect to open a browser terminal. Actual: the Connect button is grayed out with the message:

The instance does not have the required prerequisites to use Session Manager.

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

Note: If you created any resources outside the stack while fixing the lab, or attached anything to the stack’s resources by hand, remove those first. The full solution in hints.md lists any extra cleanup steps.

  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