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I'm new to the Amazon EC2 platform and marketplace, so I need some help with the questions I have.

Currently our company is trying to create a customized Linux AMI to put into marketplace, and I'm responsible for setting up the whole thing. I'm not quite sure about the following things when customers load one new instance:

  1. Do they have the access to the Linux system that we pre-configured when they get the instance? I assume "no" because they need the private key to SSH but only I have the key. Please let me know otherwise.

  2. How is the security group applied for the new instance? Are the customers responsible for setting up the firewall rules or is the security group bound to the instance when I create the AMI?

  3. By default the instance does not have any public IP addresses, and currently I have to manually fetch an Elastic IP address and hook it to the instance. Is this the responsibility of the customer when they load an instance?

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Do they have the access to the Linux system that we pre-configured when they get the instance? I assume "no" because they need the private key to SSH but only I have the key. Please let me know otherwise.

Yes they do. Amazon will reject your submission to the marketplace if you embed any SSH keys into the AMI so you cannot use your own. The users' own keys will get added to the instance when it's launched.

How is the security group applied for the new instance? Are the customers responsible for setting up the firewall rules or is the security group bound to the instance when I create the AMI?

Security groups are applied to instances, not AMIs. So the customer would be responsible for setting this up. However, if your application requires a specific security group configuration, you may wish to distribute a CloudFormation template with your AMI that makes it easier for the customer to set everything up correctly.

By default the instance does not have any public IP addresses, and currently I have to manually fetch an Elastic IP address and hook it to the instance. Is this the responsibility of the customer when they load an instance?

Yes, it's the customers' responsibility. However, a CloudFormation template could help here as well.

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  • This means that customers will have full ssh access to the new instance they created, right?
    – Shang Wang
    Mar 15, 2013 at 21:50
  • Yep. It's not all that different than selling a commercial application to customers who then install it on their own hardware.
    – jamieb
    Mar 15, 2013 at 22:01

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