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I was wondering if it was possible to connect to an Amazon ec2 instance via VNC, but instead of installing a VNC server in the target machine, somehow connect it to the hypervisor's graphics output and mouse/keyboard input. This would be handy for a few reasons:

  • I could see what's happening to my virtual machines before the VNC (or RDP for windows instances) service started. For example, if a machine isn't booting, I can see what the boot messages are.
  • I can run OSes like Android without having to somehow modify them to use a VNC server.
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Do you have access to the hypervisor? – SpacemanSpiff Dec 16 '11 at 8:10
After reading some of the answers I gather I don't, also there's nothing in the Amazon console which suggests I might. It will probably be a feature they release in future. – Matt Lyons Dec 17 '11 at 9:51

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Here are a few answers to your questions

Amazon will not give you access to the Hypervisor machine.

You can get boot messages from your instance through CLI or the EC2 Management Console, just right click on an instance and select "Console"

Unfortunately the only way you can get a VNC server is to install one.

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Understandable, thanks for that. The console doesn't really help, I have looked but it didn't really give any meaningful information. – Matt Lyons Dec 17 '11 at 9:49
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I don't think that you can do it with amazon instances. for VNC you need to enable that port on Host machine Because of security reasons amazon is not going to do that, until you have your dedicated server.

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