Specifying Security Credentials in Amazon Web Services AWS EC2

At cfobjective this year Chris Peterson gave a great presentation on running coldfusion in the cloud. In his demo he showed Amazon EC2 and showed how he used it for cloud computing. I was excited about this and I have been checking it out.

Right off the bat I got confused on how to enter my security credentials. I created a key pair and tried to enter that, but it didn't work. So after a couple weeks (I only was able to look at it for a few minutes a couple of different times) I found out what was going on. To get the necessary information, I had to go to the AWS EC2 website and after you login you click "Account" then you click "Security Credentials". Now, after this click, I always have to logon again. NO problem. Then, down below, you will see a section "Access Credentials" with 3 tabs, Choose the "Access Keys" tab, it is probably already selected since it is the first one. You see where it says "Your Access Keys" you can see the Access Key Id, and you simply click on show under the "Secret Access Key" column to see your Secret Key.

Then, using elsaticfox I click on credentials, or it prompts me for them. You can enter anything for the "Account Name" and the AWS Access Key and AWS Secret Access Key where those that we saw above.

Seems simple enough but one of those things that tripped me up.