====== Creating an EC2 Instance ======

Once you have at least one EC2 account registered with VM2 and one EC2-generated SSH key, you can create your first EC2 system. The steps to do this are :

  - On the left menu, open the **Create System** link and click on **Create EC2 instance**. This will open the **Create New System** page.
  - In the **System description** field enter a short description, like //Foo Corp's webserver//.
  - From the **SSH key for root** menu, select one of your keys. Typically you will only have one.
  - If you have multiple EC2 accounts registered, select one from the **EC2 account** menu. At the time of writing, Amazon only allowed 20 active instances per account.
  - From the **EC2 image to start** menu, select the image that defines the initial operating system and software stack for the instance. For webhosting you can use the **virtualmin-pro** image, or you can go with one of the base operating systems supplied by Amazon. Or if you have created your own EC2 images, you can select one of those.
  - Because the selected image may include old packages, you should set the **Update Virtualmin packages?** field to **Yes**, so that VM2 will install all available updates after instance creation.
  - Finally, click the **Create System** button to start the creation process.

Amazon is generally pretty fast to create new instances, and no data needs to be copied from the VM2 master to the new system. Typically this takes about 5 minutes, and VM2 will display each step taken in the system creation process.

Assuming that everything works, the new virtual system will be added to the left menu. You will be able to use VM2 to reboot it, update it, or create Virtualmin domains on it, just as you could for any real system. If you no longer need this zone, it can be completely removed with the **Delete System** link on the left menu.