Although (at least with the bitnami stack) you can deploy your WAR files to Tomcat using the manager, sometimes you need to upload other files (e.g. database scripts) to your AWS instance.

I like using Filezilla as it makes FTP easy, so was happy to find I could use it to move local files to my EC2 instance.

It needs a bit of set up in order to use your AWS key but it’s pretty simple. Here’s a quick how to. You’ll need the following:

• Putty – You’ll probably be already using this to connect to AWS – download page
• Pageant – An SSH authentication agent for Putty – download page
• Your AWS key pair file converted to a Putty PPK file. There are a few resources that descrive how to convert a PEM to a PPK file. Basically you do this using PuTTYGen from the same download location as above.

Once you’ve installed all of the above, launch Pageant (in Windows it lives in your system tray) and then add your PPK converted key-pair file.

Then launch Filezilla and make a new connection to your EC2 instance using its public name. You can find this through right-clicking on the instance and then choosing connect. A dialog box comes up with the connection details.

Make sure that you select SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol as per the image and have the right user name and then you’re done. Happy transferring!