At AWS re:Invent 2020, AWS CloudShell was announced as a new service. A browser-based shell that provides access to AWS services from your web browser. This feature has been available in Azure and Google Cloud in some form for some time now; AWS CloudShell now brings the same capability to AWS.

AWS CloudShell has unquestionably made many AWS tasks easier. CloudShell inherits your current user’s credentials, so there is no need to authenticate; simply click the AWS CloudShell icon, and you are ready to go.

AWS CloudShell itself provides a managed Amazon Linux 2 environment. The service already includes the tools that commonly need to be pre-installed. CloudShell gives you 1 GB of persistent storage, so any files or scripts you create will persist across sessions. Even better, the 1 GB is per region and has no associated cost. You can also use the 1 GB of storage to customize your CloudShell environment to your liking, just like you would your laptop or virtual machine.

In the future, AWS CloudShell will be an essential tool. Check out the AWS blog post for more details on the announcement.

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