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This guide assumes you’ve already configured your AWS organization in Opal.
The following diagram illustrates how Opal connects to AWS EC2. Use this guide to learn how you can add EC2 instances to Opal. 1920 With Opal, you can grant ssh access to any EC2 instance running on Amazon to your developers in minutes. We make this easy by using AWS’s Systems Manager API. To make this available for your organization, you’ll have to enable a few things.

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Add an EC2 instance

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1. Enable Secure Session Manager (SSM)

By default, EC2 instances don’t allow ssh sessions using Secure Session Manager. You’ll need to attach the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore AWS-managed policy to your EC2 instance profile. If an instance profile doesn’t exist on that instance you’ll have to create one. To determine if your EC2 instance already has a role attached to it, you can check in the AWS Console using the following instructions:

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1a. Check the AWS Console

First navigate to your running EC2 instances using this link*.

View your EC2 instances in the console.

Now click on the instance ID of the EC2 in question, and verify whether a role is attached already.

EC2 instance with an IAM role already attached.

If a role already exists then skip to Step 1c. Otherwise, proceed to Step 1b.

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1b. Create an IAM role

If you already had a role attached skip to the next section. Otherwise, create a new IAM role using the steps below:

Create a new IAM role.

Attach the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore and CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy policies to your new role.

Find the policy that enables SSM on your instance.

Finally, you should attach your newly created role to your EC2 instance. Since your instance didn’t originally have a role attached, you’ll need to restart it. You can now skip to step 2!

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1c. Add the SSM policy to your existing role

Click on the role in the EC2 dashboard to attach a role to it.

Attach policies to an existing IAM role.

Now search and find the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore policy and attach it to your existing profile.

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2. Tag your EC2 instance

To have Opal automatically import your EC2 instance, you’ll need to tag it. You can do this using the AWS Console, CLI, or Terraform below:

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AWS Console

Navigate to your EC2 instance in the EC2 Dashboard.

Find your EC2 instance in the dashboard.

Select “Manage tags” and add the opal tag as seen below.

Add an "opal" tag with an empty value.

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AWS CLI or Terraform

aws ec2 create-tags \
  --resources "i-0000000000" \
  --tags "Key=opal,Value="

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Optional: Enable KMS Encryption

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1. Create an Opal KMS key

To enable KMS encryption, first create a KMS key with the following alias: opalssmkms. Under advanced settings, make sure to make this key multi-regional.

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2. Enable encryption

You can enable encryption in the Session Manager console in AWS by going to Systems Manager > Session Manager > Preferences > KMS Encryption and selecting the key created in the previous step.

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Access your instance in Opal

If you followed the above steps to configure your EC2 instance, it should now show up in Opal.

EC2 instances in Opal.

Permissions to EC2 instances are session-based, meaning they require your developers to initiate a session when they want to access that instance. They can do so by clicking the “Connect” button. 2312 Once they’re connected, they can SSH instance using an in-browser command line or in their own terminal!

Using an EC2 session in Opal.