Connect a Lab Computer to AWS

This documents how to perform the one-time process to connect a lab computer to your Amazon Web Services cloud.

  1. Navigate to your cloud-courier-infrastructure Github repository in a web browser.

  2. Click on the “Actions” tab.

  3. On the far right, in the “Filter workflow runs” box, put in branch:main

  4. In the center of the screen under “workflow run results”, click the topmost entry.

  5. In the center of the screen, you should now see a box labeled pulumi-prod / pulumi, click that.

  6. In the center of the screen, you should now see a variety of grey steps on a black background. Click on “Pulumi Up” to expand it.

  7. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. Under --outputs:--, you should be able to see the name of the computer you just created (e.g. cambridge--cytation-5), you can also search for it in the upper right box.

  8. You should see something with the format of location--computer-name-activation-script (e.g. cambridge--cytation-5-activation-script). Next to it, you should see some text starting with $dir and ending with 'AmazonSSMAgent';. Copy that chunk of text.

  9. On the lab computer, open the start menu and type “Windows Powershell” and open it (you do not need to open it in Administrator mode).

  10. Paste the text you copied into the Powershell window and press Enter.

  11. During the installation process, you will likely be prompted to allow the installation of the Amazon Web Services SSM Agent—press yes (this single step requires administrator permissions).