Synchronizing SSH Keypairs Across EC2 Regions

Problem

You have created a keypair in one EC2 region and you would like to use the same keypair in other regions.

Solution

Use the import_key_pair method to upload the public key portion of your existing key to each region.

Discussion

EC2 regions are completely independent, and resources like keypairs created in one region are not accessible in other regions. If you want to have the same keypair available in multiple regions, you can use a technique similar to that used in Uploading Your Own SSH Keypair to copy the same keypair across multiple EC2 regions, as shown in Example 2-6. Make sure you have generated the public key file from your .pem file first.

Example 2-6. Upload SSH Keypair

import boto.ec2

def sync_keypairs(keypair_name, public_key_file):
    """
    Synchronize SSH keypairs across all EC2 regions.

    keypair_name    The name of the keypair.
    public_key_file The path to the file containing the
                    public key portion of the keypair.
    """
    fp = open(public_key_file)
    material = fp.read()
    fp.close()
    
    for region in boto.ec2.regions():
        ec2 = region.connect()
        # Try to list the keypair.  If it doesn't exist
        # in this region, then import it.
        try:
            key = ec2.get_all_key_pairs(keynames=[keypair_name])[0]
            print 'Keypair(%s) already exists in %s' % (keypair_name,
                                                        region.name)
        except ec2.ResponseError, e:
            if e.code == 'InvalidKeyPair.NotFound':
                print 'Importing keypair(%s) to %s' % (keypair_name,
                                                       region.name)
                ec2.import_key_pair(keypair_name, material)