Adding Keypair to existing EC2 instance

Question

I have two instances running which I cannot shutdown. I am currently unable to establish a secured shell connection to these instances. The reason is I do not have Pem file or the key pair that is required. Can I create a new Key Pair to create a connection with the existing instances.

If this isn't possible is there some other way I can get into the instances?

Answer 1

No you can't. The reason is KeyPair associated to an instance cannot be replicated or replaced. It is a one time thing.

There is an outside chance of recovery, if it's an EBS boot AMI, here you can stop it and then take a snapshot of the volume. And then create a new volume from it. And be able to use it back to start the old instance, create a new image, or recover data.

This comes with risk of losing your data at ephemeral storage