Cannot RDP, Ping, etc to Amazon EC2 Instance

Question

I've been trying to ping an Amazon EC2 Server on the Free Tier.

I created a:

Windows-2008-SP2-i386-Base-2012.01.12 (ami-fed396ac) Description: Microsoft Windows 2008 Datacenter 32-bit AMI provided by Amazon Status: available Platform: Windows Image size: 30 GB Visibility: Public Owner: amazon (206029621532)

and I just can't access to it. I've been trying to ping it, or RDP it, but every attermpt is unsuccessful. To do this I created a new security group called "Pingable" that basically allows ALL TCP, UDP and ICMP traffic to all IP addresses (0.0.0.0/0)(just to test why it wasn't working, but still unsuccessful).

Could you please provide some input on what have I done wrong? I reckon it's something small that I'm missing.

While doing tracert to the PublicDNS address, it hops 17 times successfully, reaches amazon, but then in amazon, after several hops gets lost...

Solution

ICMP Echo messages (Ping) are disabled by default on recent Windows versions, see Nobody Can Ping My Computer:

By default, Windows Firewall does not allow incoming ICMP Echo messages, and therefore the computer cannot send an ICMP Echo Reply in response.

The article explains how to add a new rule to address this via the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security snap-in as well, an alternate somewhat more concise approach is illustrated in Enable Ping in Windows Server Firewall?, or see Enable Ping in Windows 7 Firewall? for yet another approach.

The bigger problem is actually getting access to an EC2 instance via Remote Desktop (RDP) in the first place, which requires to retrieve the initial administrator password first, as properly explained in Connect to Your Windows Instance though.

That should be enough to get you going, for a more in-depth exploration you might want to look into the Windows on Amazon EC2 Security Guide.

Good luck!

PS: Don't forget to harden your security group again ;)