How To Connect To Amazon EC2 Linux Instance Using PuTTY Private Key On Windows

When first setting up an Amazon EC2 server, you receive an ssh key to connect to the instance. Example: contoso.pem

Convert Amazon EC2 PEM files to PPK
Open Puttygen, if you dont have puttygen, you can get it for download at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html


OR use PuTTYgen from WinSCP, go to Windows Start Menu -> All Programs -> WinSCP ->Key Tools -> PuTTYgen

• Now click Conversions > Import.
• Choose your PEM file that was downloaded from the Amazon EC2 dashboard
• Click on Save Private Key and name it something .ppk
• Voila, use your ppk to login through Putty to your Amazon EC2 Instance

Use putty to access cloud server

• Open PuTTY and enter your host

• Select “data” on the left hand side under “auto-login username” enter the user “root”

• Select “Auth” on the left hand side then under “private key for authentication” select the .ppk file we just created with PuTTYGen.
• Go back to the top(Session) and connect to your instance.

• Open putty connection