Accessing Amazon EC2 instance, instance store type, without keypair file

Question

Any ideas to gain access to an amazon EC2 instance of instance-store type (not EBS), without the keypair file? I Can't find the keypair file and it's not an ebs to be able to make an image or snapshot of.

Answer 1

I think the only ways you have a chance of accessing the files on the instance are:

1. Locate the private ssh key that corresponds to the public key which was used to start the instance, or use another ssh key or password that you might have configured on the instance after it was started.

2. Find a security vulnerability in the instance that allows you to hack into it.

3. Ask Amazon for help. This is a long shot. I don't think Amazon will usually help companies get access to disks on instance-store file systems, but I have heard of occasions where it has happened. Having a subscription to paid support would probably improve your chances a bit.

I always recommend using EBS boot instances where possible. This is just one of a number of reasons. If it were an EBS boot instance, then you could get access to the root file system using the following method described on my blog:

Fixing Files on the Root EBS Volume of an EC2 Instance
http://alestic.com/2011/02/ec2-fix-ebs-root

Unfortunately, this is not possible with instance-store.