CloudPath Academy

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Amazon Web Services AWS Broken Labs

Lab 05 - Instance Access III

Difficulty: Intermediate 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 open a Session Manager terminal to investigate the instance, 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 Allows inbound traffic on ports 80 and 22
AWS::IAM::Role IAM role for the instance
AWS::IAM::InstanceProfile Attaches the role to the instance
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-05-instance-access-iii.yaml
  4. Enter a stack name (e.g., brokenlabs-ec2-lab-05) 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, WebPageURL, and RoleName

The Problem

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

Now try to open a Session Manager terminal:

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

Expected: a browser-based terminal opens. Actual: the button is grayed out, or the connection fails with an error about the instance not being available in 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

  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)
  4. Verify in IAM → Roles that the lab role no longer appears

Resources