This article walks you through the process of deploying a workspace provider to an EC2 instance.

The use of EC2 providers is currently an alpha feature. Before using, please enable this feature under Feature Preview:

1. Log into Coder as a site manager or site admin.
2. In the top-right, click on your avatar and select Feature Preview.
3. Select Amazon EC2 (Docker) providers and click Enable.

Prerequisites

You must have an AWS access key ID and secret access key.

We recommend having the AWS CLI installed and configured as well.

IAM permissions

To manage EC2 providers for your Coder deployment, create an IAM policy and attach it to the IAM identity (e.g., role) that will be managing your resources (be sure to update or remove aws:RequestedRegion accordingly):

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Deny",
      "Action": "ec2:*",
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
        "StringNotEquals": {
          "aws:RequestedRegion": "us-east-1"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:DescribeAccountAttributes",
        "ec2:DescribeSubnets",
        "ec2:CreateSecurityGroup",
        "ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups",
        "ec2:AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress",
        "ec2:DeleteSecurityGroup",
        "ec2:ImportKeyPair",
        "ec2:DescribeKeyPairs",
        "ec2:CreateVolume",
        "ec2:DescribeVolumes",
        "ec2:AttachVolume",
        "ec2:DeleteVolume",
        "ec2:RunInstances",
        "ec2:DescribeInstances",
        "ec2:DescribeInstanceStatus",
        "ec2:TerminateInstances",
        "ec2:DescribeInstanceTypes",
        "ec2:CreateTags"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

1. Select the workspace provider type to create

1. Log into Coder as a site manager, and go to Manage > Workspace providers.

2. In the top-right next to Create Kubernetes Provider, click on the down arrow and select Create Amazon EC2 Provider.

3. Provide a name to identify the provider.

2. Configure the connection to AWS

Provide the requested configuration details to connect Coder to your AWS account:

• Access key ID: the AWS access key associated with your account
• Secret access key: the AWS secret access key associated with your account
• AWS region ID: select the AWS region where the EC2 instances should be created
• AWS availability zone: the AWS availability zone associated with the region where the EC2 instances are created

3. Provide networking information (optional)

Provide the following networking options if desired:

• VPC ID: Optional. The VPC network to which instances should be attached. If you leave this field empty, Coder uses the default VPC ID in the specified region for your EC2 instances
• Subnet ID: Optional. The ID of the subnet associated with your VPC and availability zone. If you leave this field empty, Coder uses the default subnet associated with the VPC in your region and availability zone.

4. Provide AMI configuration information

Specify the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) configuration you want to be used when launching workspaces:

• Privileged mode: Optional. check this box if you would like the workspace container to have read/write access to the EC2 instance's host filesystem

Privileged mode may pose a security risk to your organization. We recommend enabling this feature only if users need full access to the host (e.g., kernel driver development or running Docker-in-Docker).

• AMI ID: the Amazon machine image ID to be used when creating the EC2 instances; the machine image used must contain and start a Docker daemon. If blank, Coder defaults to an image that meets the requirements. If you selected a supported AWS region, this will auto-populate with a supported AMI (though you are welcome to change it)
• Instance types: Optional. The EC2 instance types that users can provision using the workspace provider. Provide each instance type on a separate line; wildcard characters are allowed
• AMI SSH username: the SSH login username used by Coder to connect to EC2 instances. Must be set if you provide a custom AMI ID (this value may be auto-populated depending on the AMI you choose))
• Root volume size: the storage capacity to be reserved for the copy of the AMI
• Docker volume size: the storage capacity used for the Docker daemon directory; stores the workspace image and any ephemeral data outside of the home directory

5. Enable external connections (optional)

Toggle external connect on if you would like to enable SSH connections to your workspaces via the Coder CLI.

6. Create the provider

Click Create provider to proceed.