How AWS Tracks Which Account Launched an EC2 Instance
MOJAHID UL HAQUE
DevOps Engineer
How Does AWS Know Which Account Launched an EC2 Instance?
Ever wondered what happens behind the scenes when you launch an EC2 instance? How does AWS track which account is requesting it? Well, here's a fun deep dive into the mechanics.
Originally posted on LinkedIn
View original postRelated Posts
Stop Leaving AWS Credits Unclaimed - That Outage Might've Owed You Money
Remember the AWS outage on October 20th? Six hours down. Over 100+ services affected. Millions of users impacted. Everyone's talked about the RCA, multi-region setups, and resilience planning. But here's what most teams completely miss: 👉 You might be owed money. The SLA Reality Check AWS makes uptime promises like: - Cognito — 99.9% - DynamoDB — 99.99% (and 99.999% for Global Tables) - EC2, Lambda, CloudFront… all have their own SLAs. Now, do the math: 6 hours of downtime in a 30-day month = 99.17% uptime. That's below every single SLA above. What That Means for You If your services were affected, you're entitled to service credits — typically 10–25% of your monthly bill. So if you spend $10K/month on Cognito or DynamoDB… that's real money sitting unclaimed. How to Claim It (Takes 10 Minutes) 1. Go to your AWS Support Center 2. Open a new case 3. List the affected services 4. Reference the SLA breach 5. Submit before the end of the second billing cycle AWS won't credit you automatically. You have to ask. The Takeaway Yes — improve your DR and multi-region strategy. But also — don't forget to claim what you're owed. It's quick, it's legit, and your FinOps team will thank you.
DevOps Rescue Story: Recovering an EC2 Instance Without a PEM Key
"Lost PEM? No SSH? SSM dead? Don't panic — AWS always leaves a backdoor for those who know where to look." Yesterday I ran into one of those heart-sinking moments: an EC2 instance was completely locked out. - PEM key gone → SSH impossible - SSM agent broken → root volume full, wouldn't start even after EBS expansion - EC2 Instance Connect failing Basically… the instance was bricked. Or so it seemed. The Recovery Playbook I Followed 1. Spun up a helper EC2 instance with a fresh key pair. 2. Detached the root volume from the locked instance → attached it to the helper. 3. Mounted the volume → discovered the partition still capped at 100GB even though the EBS size was already 150GB. 4. Ran growpart + resize2fs → filesystem finally stretched to the full 150GB. (49GB free instantly.) 5. Cleared old logs and temp files for breathing room. 6. Added a new SSH public key into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. 7. Detached the fixed root volume → reattached it back to the original instance. 8. Rebooted → boom! SSH worked with the new PEM, and the SSM Agent sprang back to life.
AWS Summit India Online 2025 - Key Points from Sessions
Excited to share that I attended the AWS Summit India Online 2025 on June 26! Key Points from the Sessions - Focus on Generative AI: Learned how AWS services like Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker are making it easier for organizations to implement and scale Generative AI solutions in real-world business environments. - AI from POC to Production: Sessions stressed moving beyond experimentation with Gen AI, highlighting frameworks and best practices for deploying production-ready AI and delivering genuine business value. - Cloud Security & Reliability: Gained insights into AWS's secure, scalable cloud infrastructure, which includes Indian regions for low-latency, resilient operations. - Data & Application Modernization: Explored strategies for modernizing applications, leveraging AI and analytics to enable smart, data-driven decisions. - Industry Use Cases: Discovered success stories in automating customer support, generating content, and industry applications across fields like finance, retail, healthcare, and media. - Responsible & Ethical AI: Learned about building trust in AI, governance, and using AWS guardrail tools for responsible adoption. - Networking & Community: Connected with a vibrant tech community and learned from AWS experts and business leaders through live Q&As and interactive workshops.