AWS Account and Free Tier

Before you can use any AWS service, you need an AWS account, and you should protect it from day one.

Creating an AWS Account

To sign up you need:

An email address that you check often
A phone number for verification
A debit or credit card (many Pakistani bank cards work if online international payments are turned on)

The steps are:

Go to the AWS website and click Create an AWS Account
Enter your email and an account name, for example ayesha-learning
Verify your email and choose a strong password
Enter your contact details and card details
Verify your phone number with an SMS code
Choose the Basic support plan, which is free

AWS may charge a very small amount (about 1 US dollar) to check the card, and then return it.

The Root User

The email and password you signed up with belong to the root user. The root user can do everything, including closing the account and changing payment details.

Because it is so powerful:

Turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA) for the root user straight away
Do not use the root user for daily work
Create a normal IAM user for yourself instead (you will learn this in the IAM chapter)

Never create access keys for the root user. If those keys leak, an attacker controls your whole account.

The AWS Free Tier

AWS offers a Free Tier so you can learn without paying. It has three kinds of offers:

Kind	What it means	Example
Free trials	Short trials of some services	A free trial of a monitoring service
12 months free	Limited free use for the first year	Small EC2 server hours each month
Always free	Small free limits that never end	1 million Lambda requests per month

The exact limits change over time, so always check the Free Tier page before you start a service. Use the smallest options (for example t2.micro or t3.micro servers) when learning.

Setting a Budget Alert

The most important thing a beginner can do is create a budget. AWS will email you when your spending goes over a limit.

In the console: Billing and Cost Management then Budgets then Create budget, and choose the Zero spend budget template. You get an email as soon as you spend even one cent.

You can also create a budget from the CLI. First save this as budget.json:

Example

json

{
  "BudgetName": "monthly-5-dollars",
  "BudgetLimit": { "Amount": "5", "Unit": "USD" },
  "TimeUnit": "MONTHLY",
  "BudgetType": "COST"
}

Then run:

Example

bash

aws budgets create-budget --account-id 123456789012 --budget file://budget.json

Installing and Configuring the AWS CLI

The AWS CLI lets you control AWS from your terminal. After installing it from the AWS website, check the version:

Example

bash

aws --version

Output

aws-cli/2.17.0 Python/3.11.8 Windows/10 exe/AMD64

Then connect it to your account with an IAM user's access key:

Example

bash

aws configure

Output

AWS Access Key ID [None]: AKIAEXAMPLEKEY
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: ****************
Default region name [None]: ap-south-1
Default output format [None]: json

Keep your access keys secret. Never put them in code that you upload to GitHub. Bots scan GitHub for leaked AWS keys within minutes.

Cleaning Up

When you finish a lesson, delete what you created: stop or terminate servers, delete databases and empty buckets you do not need. Many surprise bills come from a forgotten server running for a month.

Exercise

What is the best way to avoid a surprise AWS bill while learning?

Use the root user for everythingCreate a budget alert and delete resources when you finishChoose the largest server sizeTurn off email notifications