I created an EC2 CentOS instance to host my php web app development version, I\'m using Sublime Text as an IDE, and SFTP plugin to upload files directly then test.
Befor
You're close...the following works for CentOS / RHEL on EC2
{ "type": "sftp", "sync_down_on_open": true, "host": "", "user": "", "remote_path": "", "connect_timeout": 30, "sftp_flags": ["-o IdentityFile=~"] }
You actually don't need to set ssh_key_file": "/home/USER/USER-EC-Virginia.pem,
ssh_key_file": "/home/USER/USER-EC-Virginia.pem,