- Log in to AWS
- Go to a sensible region
- Start a new instance with Ubuntu Trusty (14.04) - compute-optimised instances have a high vCPU:memory ratio, and the lowest-cost CPU time.
c4.2xlarge
is a decent choice. - Set security group (firewall) to have ports 22, 80, and 443 open (SSH, HTTP, HTTPS)
- If you want a static IP address (for long-running instances) then select Elastic IP for this VM
- If you want to use HTTPS, you'll probably need a paid certificate, or to use Amazon's Route 53 to get a non-Amazon domain (to avoid region blocking).