# Before you set up Amazon EMR
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Complete the preliminary tasks detailed in this section before you launch an Amazon EMR cluster for the first time. These include setting up your AWS account if you need one and and taking steps to set up secure communication.

## Sign up for an AWS account
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To get started with AWS, you need an AWS account. There are two ways to sign up for AWS. If you want complete control over account configuration and where your content is stored, or if you have regulated workloads such as HIPAA or FedRAMP, use [Sign up for AWS (advanced)](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/accounts/latest/reference/getting-started.html). If you are a new user and want to use a login you already own to sign in to AWS and create an AWS environment with preconfigured defaults in select [AWS Regions](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/accounts/latest/reference/project-regions.html), use [Sign up for AWS](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/accounts/latest/reference/sign-in-new.html).

## Create an Amazon EC2 key pair for SSH
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**Note**  
With Amazon EMR release versions 5.10.0 or later, you can configure Kerberos to authenticate users and SSH connections to a cluster. For more information, see [Use Kerberos for authentication with Amazon EMR](emr-kerberos.md).

To authenticate and connect to the nodes in a cluster over a secure channel using the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol, create an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) key pair before you launch the cluster. You can also create a cluster without a key pair. This is usually done with transient clusters that start, run steps, and then terminate automatically.


| If... | Then... | 
| --- | --- | 
| You already have an Amazon EC2 key pair that you want to use, or you don't need to authenticate to your cluster. | Skip this step. | 
| You need to create a key pair. | See [Creating your key pair using Amazon EC2](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-key-pairs.html#having-ec2-create-your-key-pair). | 

## Next steps
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+ For guidance on creating a sample cluster, see [Tutorial: Getting started with Amazon EMR](emr-gs.md).
+ For more information on how to configure a custom cluster and control access to it, see [Plan, configure and launch Amazon EMR clusters](emr-plan.md) and [Security in Amazon EMR](emr-security.md).