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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-01T22:10:20+00:00

I’d like to launch a Windows 2008 (64bits, base install) instance programmatically, kinda like

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I’d like to launch a Windows 2008 (64bits, base install) instance programmatically, kinda like clicking on the Launch Instance link & following the “Create a New Instance” wizard.

I read about this command ec2-run-instances, I tried running it on putty using this syntax:

/opt/aws/bin/ec2-run-instances ami_id ami-e5784391 -n 1
–availability-zone eu-west-1a –region eu-west-1 –instance-type m1.small –private-key /full/path/MyPrivateKey.pem –group MyRDP

but it always complain that:

Required option '-C, --cert CERT' missing (-h for usage)

According to the documentation, this option isn’t required!!

Can someone tell me what’s wrong anyway? I’m just trying to programmatically launch a fresh Windows install, run some tests on the clouds & shut it down after that.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The error message is correct (just try adding --cert 😉 – to what documentation are you referring here?

    The requirement is clearly outlined in the Microsoft Windows Guide for Amazon EC2, specifically in Task 4: Set the EC2_PRIVATE_KEY and EC2_CERT Environment Variables:

    The command line tools need access to an X.509 certificate and a
    corresponding private key that are associated with your account    . […]

    You can either specify your credentials with the –private-key and
    –cert parameters every time you issue a command or you can create environment variables that point to the credential files on your local
    system. If the environment variables are properly configured, you can
    omit the parameters when you issue a command    .

    [emphasis mine]

    Maybe the option of using environment variables has been misleading somehow somewhere?

    Alternative

    Please note that you can ease and speed up working with EC2 considerably by using alternate scripting environments covering the same ground, in particular the excellent boto, which is a Python package that provides interfaces to Amazon Web Services.

    Boto uses the nowadays more common authentication scheme based on access keys only rather than X.509 certificates (e.g. an AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID / AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY pair), which furthermore can (and should) be managed via AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to avoid the risk of exposing your main AWS account credentials in the first place. See my answer to How to download an EC2 X.509 certificate with an IAM User account? for more details on this.

    Good luck!

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