Amazon Web Services - Setting up my Debian Server

My goal was to set-up an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account, and create a Debian Squeeze server on it.

• I followed the prompts to set-up a AWS account. This was straightforward
• Using the video Koha in 11 minutes I followed the instructions for setting up an instance (virtual server) on Amazon EC2.
• I needed to choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). Based upon my research, I wanted one from the community AMIs, Debian Squeeze 6.0, 64bit. I made sure the image I found met these specifications, and followed the simple step-by-step interface to install it.
• I found that the instructions in the video were now slightly out of date. Although the actions I needed to do were the same, things were not in the same place, or were now found later in the process. To overcome this, I used some reasoning, and tried to find the same process and see what it looked like now. This involved some outside the box thinking, as well and skipping back and forth through the video, and making sure all the steps were complete before moving on to the next stage.
• When I didn't understand why I was doing something, I would check help information, and if I still did not understand I Googled it. This was mostly to answer questions like "What the heck is SSH?" (remote access to the server command line) and "Why do I need to set up the extra 8080 port" (it's for the staff/administrative access web interface).

I was surprised at how easy I found this step. I learned that doing research and finding the instructions which worked best for me (i.e. visual format) was key to my success. Although these instructions were not perfect, I found it was important to have the creative thinking to merge several resources, as well as detective work, to complete this task. I also learned a lot about the bigger picture - what a server actually is and how the internet works. Having a solid grasp on the fundamentals makes it a lot easier to understand small details when they come up.