This article is aimed at complete AWS beginners who want to start their learning journey on the right foot. Taking your first steps on AWS can be fairly intimidating, and the information, while plentiful, can be quite scattered. Here, I documented the first steps you should take when creating a new AWS account.

First, head to AWS and create your account. This will be your root account.

Multi-Factor Authentication

It’s recommended to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on this account. To do so, once you’re logged in, click on your account alias in the top bar, then “My Security Credentials”. You should see MFA on that page. Just follow the steps to enable MFA using your preferred method.

Create an IAM Account with Administrator Permissions

As a best practice, you should never use the root account except for tasks that can only be done by the root account. Instead, you should create an IAM account with Administrator permissions The AWS Documentation has an excellent article on this. It’s a good idea to enable MFA on this account as well.

Set Some Budget Alerts

You can also enable budget alerts through the billing console if you don’t want to be surprised by a large bill. Personally, I set my monthly budget to 20$ and set up email alerts at 50%, 80% and 100% of my budget.

Voilà! You are now ready to start experimenting on AWS!

TL;DR

• Don’t use the root account
• Enable MFA
• Set up budget alerts

Did I miss something you should do before starting your first project? Tell me about it in the comments!