How to Register a Global AWS Account
Preparation:
1. An email address. This email will be used as your AWS account.
2. A Phone Number. This can be mobile number or telephone number. If it’s a telephone, make sure it’s easy to reach, because AWS will call you during the registration process.
3. A credit card that can pay in US dollars. The credit card can be Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club or others that works.
Surely you will be needing a computer that connects to the internet. You are going to be using a browser to access AWS website to do the registration.
Detailed Steps:
You need to sign in our global website http://aws.amazon.com to register AWS account. You can always click on the language button at the up-right corner to switch to English.
Overall, registration of AWS account’s step include following steps:
1. Create Account
2. Payment Method
3. Identity Verification
4. Confirmation
Step 1, Create Account
Click the link below, it will lead you to the following page.
https://portal.aws.amazon.com/billing/signup#/start
Enter the email address you decide to use (which will become your AWS account.)
Enter PW and confirm it.
Give a name of your account, this can be changed later in your personal account settings.
As you click “Continue”, this page will show up:
At this page you will need to fill the Contact Information. Select Professional if you intend to use this AWS account within your company, educational institution or organization. Otherwise, select Personal. Then fill the blanks, all fields are required. Click “Create Account and Continue”.
Step 2: Payment Method
In this page there are two major information. One is just for the credit card info, the other one is billing information. You can enter a new address, or you can use the address that you provided earlier. Click “Secure Submit”, go to the next page after you finished. At the same time it will deduct 1 dollar from your credit card to test if it’s working probably (the dollar will return to your credit card).
Step 3: Identity Verification
AWS use phone calls to verify your identity. So you will be needing a phone to answer the call from AWS. The first step of the verification is to enter your phone number, as the following picture:
After entering the number, typing the security check. Click “Call Me Now” button, the AWS will give you the call. At the same time, there will be a 4-digit Pin Number showing on the page.
Then you need to enter the 4-digit Pin Number on the screen (now you know why you need a reachable phone). Normally the verification will be done after you entered the Pin, and the screen will show that too. But if you entered the wrong Pin Number, the screen will remind you the pin’s wring, and ask you to enter it again. Due to the connection of the phone might not be stable, sometimes occurs that users enter the right Pin, but the page shows wrong. Now you just need to try using another phone. Normally it will be solved. But you can always communicate with Amazon AWS to help you to solve issues.
Step 4: Choose a Support Plan
After the verification, you will be entering to the Support Plan page, as the following:
There’s four levels of technical support in AWS, includes Basic, Developer, Business and Enterprise. The default selection during your registration is the free, basic tech service. You can always choose a suitable Support Plan for your operation. You can click on the link to see more detailed tech service of the Plans: http://aws.amazon.com/cn/premiumsupport/
Step 5: Confirmation
Click the “Continue” button from the last page to get here. The registration page will show the confirming information as the follows:
Now you can click on “Launch the AWS Management Console” to login to the Admin Console in AWS to enjoy the services. You’ve successfully resisted the AWS account, now you need to enter your email account and your password, then login and enjoy!
Illustrations of the FreeUsage Tier
In order to help the new AWS users to get started. AWS provides FreeUsage Tier. In this Tier you can try out the AWS services that you’re interested in, start new apps, test the exited apps.
Here’s some reminder of the Tier:
1. You account is ready to enjoy the FreeUsage Tier, there’s no other applications needed. AWS doesn’t have trial accounts, every sign ups from 20th Oct, 2010 have the right to use the Tier. If there’s any additional fee, will be deducted from the billing.
2. The Tier does have a limitation in time and the use of the resources. It starts from the day you created your account, and it will last free for 12 months. Every month there will be a limitation of the resources. For example, EC2. Every month you can use 2 Micro Instance, each for 750 hours (we count a month as 31 days, 744 hours). One based on Linux (Amazon Linux、RHEL or SLES). The other one based on Windows Server (When you are creating EC2 project, there will be “Free Tier Eligible” tags on the AMIs that’s free). Others like EBS、S3、RDS、DynamoDB and some other services also have the limitations accordingly. So if you are off the limit, AWS will count the price for the extra usage.
3. The Free Tier’s resource limitation counts as months. If there some usage left from last month, it won’t transfer to the next month.
Click the link for more info on the Free Tier: http://aws.amazon.com/cn/free/
