# Tutorial prerequisites and considerations
<a name="getting-started.before-you-begin"></a>

Before you can get started with Amazon Keyspaces, follow the Amazon setup instructions in [Accessing Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra)](accessing.md). These steps include signing up for Amazon and creating an Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM) user with access to Amazon Keyspaces.

To complete all the steps of the tutorial, you need to install `cqlsh`. You can follow the setup instructions at [Using `cqlsh` to connect to Amazon Keyspaces](programmatic.cqlsh.md). 

To access Amazon Keyspaces using `cqlsh` or the Amazon CLI, we recommend using Amazon CloudShell. CloudShell is a browser-based, pre-authenticated shell that you can launch directly from the Amazon Web Services Management Console. You can run Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) commands against Amazon Keyspaces using your preferred shell (Bash, PowerShell or Z shell). To use `cqlsh`, you must install the `cqlsh-expansion`. For `cqlsh-expansion` installation instructions, see [Using the `cqlsh-expansion` to connect to Amazon Keyspaces](programmatic.cqlsh.md#using_cqlsh). For more information about CloudShell see [Using Amazon CloudShell to access Amazon Keyspaces](using-aws-with-cloudshell.md).

To use the Amazon CLI to create, view, and delete resources in Amazon Keyspaces, follow the setup instructions at [Downloading and Configuring the Amazon CLI](access.cli.md#access.cli.installcli).

After completing the prerequisite steps, proceed to [Create a keyspace in Amazon Keyspaces](getting-started.keyspaces.md).