This post, as well as the public evaluation is intended for Amazon Web Services customers. If you are using a different platform (such as Rackspace, HP or Microsoft Azure), our “Enterprise” version may be right for you. Please Contact us for further details.

You might also want to view our Getting Started video.

To get started click the register link and follow the instructions received in the registration email.

Once you complete the sign-up process, you’ll get to the wizard which will guide you through the rest of the process, but before we walk you through the wizard it is important to highlight the following:

Porticor creates a secured environment inside your own Amazon account. In other words, the environment created is unique to your cloud environment; you do not share your secure data with any other account. This is an important point, because as part of the wizard process a Porticor “virtual appliance” will be created inside your Amazon account.

We have invested a lot in the wizard’s ease of use, and packaged a fairly complex infrastructure into a three-step wizard. You may notice for example that the newly created virtual appliance comes complete with a dynamic DNS address under d.porticor.net, and with a fully functional public key certificate that allows you to connect to it securely.

As soon as you have registered and entered your new password, you will see the first step of the Porticor wizard.

Start by filling in the project name and description. Now move to the main wizard page:

The wizard assumes you are a current Amazon Web Services user. You have two options:

1. With Quick Launch, you need to enter your Amazon credentials and your preferred geographical region, as well as an instance size.
2. With Advanced Launch, you need to use the Amazon Management console to create your own instance from the Porticor AMI (image); you then come back to this wizard to make it into a working project.

For your first project, we highly recommend the Quick Launch option, which is the default option.

Enter your Amazon cloud credentials (there’s a link where you can get them from your Amazon account), your geographical preference and an instance size. For an initial trial project, Micro will do just fine. Click the Next button and you will see a progress bar. After a few seconds the instance is ready and you will see the last, purely informational page of the wizard.

After you press Finish, you will be redirected to your new appliance.

The Master Key screen appears. please note: Porticor requires the master key as part of the system boot process. Losing the master key will render no access to any encrypted disks, and the data stored on them cannot be recovered. Save the Master Key in a safe place and click: “OK, I have saved it!”. If all goes well, you should see the following screen:

Click continue. Your new Porticor Virtual Appliance is now ready for use!

The post Getting started with Porticor VPD for Amazon Web Services appeared first on Porticor Cloud Security.