The target audience for this article is IT professionals who are familiar with some network architectures but have not yet ventured into the cloud. By reading this article, you will quickly understand how to launch your own cloud server and operate it through SSH connections.

1. Log in to your AWS Management Console: If you don't have an account yet, you'll need to create one.
2. Navigate to the EC2 Dashboard: After logging in, click on "Services" in the upper left corner, and then select "EC2" under "Compute".
3. Launch an Instance: On the EC2 Dashboard, you will find a blue "Launch Instance" button. Click on it to start the process of launching your server.
4. Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI): AMIs are pre-configured server templates that you can use to launch an instance. For a Linux server, you might select the "Amazon Linux 2 AMI" which is free tier eligible.
5. Choose an Instance Type: Instances are virtual servers. You can choose different types based on your needs for memory, compute power, etc. For a basic Linux server, you might choose the "t2.micro" instance, which is also free tier eligible.