Progress OpenEdge w h i t e p a p e r > Getting Started with Progress OpenEdge in the Amazon Cloud Part II: Your First AMI Instance
Table of Contents Table of Contents......................................... 1 Introduction............................................. 1 Setting Up Your AMI Instance............................... 2 Set-up Step 1 Create a Key Pair............................. 2 Set-up Step 2 Security Groups.............................. 3 Set-up Step 3 Selecting an Amazon Machine Image............... 7 Set-up Step 4 Access to Your Instance....................... 10 Working with Your Instance................................ 12 Connecting to a Windows Instance........................... 13 Connecting to a Linux Instance............................... 16 Next Steps............................................. 17
1 Introduction This is the second in a series of papers to help you understand how to work with Amazon Web Services to set up and run your Progress OpenEdge application in Amazon EC2. If you have not done so already, please read the following to gain context and insight into cloud computing in general and Amazon Web Services in particular: > > An Introduction to Cloud Computing > > Getting Started with OpenEdge in the Amazon Cloud, Part I (Introduction to Amazon) With this information, you will be ready to take the next steps outlined in this document: to create your own instances from the pre-configured Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) and then to connect to these instances from your remote location. Setting Up Your AMI Instance When preparing to install OpenEdge on a selected operating system in Amazon EC2, you need to take only a few steps to set up your EC2 environment. The following examples show you how, using Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and CentOS Linux. Open up your browser and go to http://aws.amazon.com/console and sign in to the Amazon account that you previously set up.
2 Welcome to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Console. This is is where you will do most of your EC2 work. On the left is the EC2 Navigation pane with quick links to the most used pages in the console and the Region you are currently working in: US East, in this example. The right pane has Getting Started to launch an Amazon EC2 Instance; My Resources with resources you have configured (zero counts right now, except for a default Security Group); Service Health giving a quick status of EC2; and Related Links for quick access to help and documentation. Set-up Step 1 Create a Key Pair A very important aspect of using AWS is controlling access to your Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). As part of your Amazon account, you can set up various keys, as discussed in Part 1 of this series of documents. With your account set-up you create security credentials in order to authenticate requests made to AWS. The Public Key is what you provide to others to give them access while the Private or Secret Access Key is something that you keep to yourself. Now you need to create a new Key Pair, separate from the Access Key Identifiers from Part I, for accessing and managing your instances executing in the Amazon EC2 environment. You will then need to copy the new key pair s PEM file locally for use in later steps.
3 In order to create a Key Pair, select the Key Pairs link (circled in the previous picture) in My Resources. Then select the Create Key Pair button in the middle of the page (image not shown here). Type in a Key Pair name of your choosing, for example, mykeypair. Then click Create. You will see an informational window letting you know that the Key Pair has been created and a download will begin shortly. During the download, save the Key Pair.pem file on your local system and remember what directory you save it in to access it later. You now have a valid Key Pair. Set-up Step 2 Security Groups By default, AMI instances are started with no open network ports, preventing access to the instance without explicit action after it is started. Although this is very safe and secure, it also is not useful because you will want to allow some sort of access to your instance. EC2 has a default group that opens all ports, which, of course, is itself not secure.
4 What you will probably want to do is to create some Security Groups falling somewhere in the extremes of no access and totally open access. This will allow controlled access to the Amazon instance you are running and also allow OpenEdge to operate properly within the instance. First, select the EC2 Dashboard link in the Navigation pane from the previous Key Pair set-up step. Next, select Security Group in the My Resources section. Now select the Create Security Group button.
5 Create a Security Group named Basic and add a description of Allow SSH, RDP, HTTP. As the description implies, this will allow SSH 1 (Secure Shell), RDP (Remote Desktop) and HTTP (port 80) access in this Security Group. Press Create when finished. Now add the ports in the bottom of the Security Group window in the Allowed Connections table as follows: > > Click on the Connection Method drop-down box, which initially reads Custom ; select SSH and click the Save button (accepting the default port numbers). > > Select the Connection Method drop-down box again (on the new line); select RDP and click Save. > > Select the Connection Method drop-down box once more (on the new line); select HTTP and click Save. The following picture shows the result once all of these steps have been taken. 1 Note that SSH connections are encrypted.
6 If you plan on using SSH, note that almost all UNIX and Linux systems come with SSH clients and that Windows systems do not. There is a free SSH client for Windows called PuTTY. If you will be running CentOS on EC2 and using a Windows desktop machine to connect to it, PuTTY will enable you to connect via SSH. You can get a copy of PuTTY and its documentation from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/. Now create a second Security Group that allows for standard OpenEdge port access, using very similar steps as before. First, select the Create Security Group button again. Then create a Security Group named OpenEdge and a description of All OE ports. Now add the ports necessary for OpenEdge to the Allowed Connections table one at a time, using the table below. Be sure to leave the Connection Method for each of these at Custom. OpenEdge Process Protocol From Port To Port Source (IP or Group) Action AdminServer TCP 20931 20931 0.0.0.0/0 Save AdminPort for DB TCP 7842 7842 0.0.0.0/0 Save NameServer (NS1) UDP 5162 5162 0.0.0.0/0 Save AppServer (asbroker1) TCP 3090 3090 0.0.0.0/0 Save WebSpeed (wsbroker1) TCP 3055 3055 0.0.0.0/0 Save Database TCP 2345 2349 0.0.0.0/0 Save OE Explorer/Mgmt TCP 9090 9090 0.0.0.0/0 Save
7 When you are finished, the screen should look like the following: Set-up Step 3 Selecting an Amazon Machine Image You are now ready to launch your first AMI instance. As a reminder, Amazon supplies a variety of pre-configured AMIs with a variety of operating systems. As a first step, you will select one of these AMIs to use as your first instance a running version of a pre-configured AMI that is yours to independently use and modify. First, select EC2 Dashboard from the Navigation pane. Then, from the Getting Started section in the EC2 Console, select the Launch Instance button.
8 If you plan on using a Microsoft Windows operating system, use the Quick Start tab and select the Basic Microsoft Windows Server 2008 AMI, as shown below. If you plan on using a Linux operating system, select the Community AMIs tab near the top; select Public Images from the Viewing pull down; and type cento5. You will see just the list of available CentOS (Community Enterprise Operating System, a free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) AMIs, which is a subset of all of the available Linux AMIs. Now Select the cer-64-centos5_10-1/image.manifest.xml image. Note that you could have chosen Fedora from the Quick Start tab, but CentOS is an OpenEdge-supported platform.
9 Regardless of which operating system you have selected, on the next page of the Request instances Wizard use the default values provided. (The diagram below shows the defaults for Windows.) These include: > > Number of Instances one instance is fine for now > > Availability Zone allows you to pick a specific zone (physical location where the Amazon computers are located) to run your instance in. This will be important later if you are running Replication or have EBS volumes in certain zones, but for now you can let EC2 decide (i.e., No Preference ). > > Instance Type the default gives you the smallest (and least expensive) for the operating systems that you have selected, which will be good enough for now and can be modified later if needed. Select the Continue button to complete this screen. On the next screen, there are some advanced options available. For now, take the defaults and select the Continue button.
10 Set-up Step 4 Access to Your Instance In the next step, you define how your instance will be accessed. This is controlled by the public and private Key Pairs. Since you ve already created a Key Pair, you can use that now as shown in the example. You can alternatively create a new Key Pair if you choose. Then select the Continue button. Finally, you need to assign a Security Group to your instance. Earlier you created two Security Groups, and you will now assign them to your instance. To do that, hold the Control (Ctrl) key on your keyboard and then click on BASIC and again on OpenEdge to highlight those two choices. Then select the Continue button. You are now given a chance to review the selections you made for your instance and can make changes if you wish. When you are satisfied with your selections, you are ready to activate the AMI as your personal instance by selecting the Launch button. Two examples of this final screen are shown below: one for a Windows instance and one for a Linux instance.
11 Congratulations! You now have your own instance of an Amazon Machine Image. If it isn t running already, it will be within minutes! Important Note: Your instance from this point on is physically executing on a machine in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. This executing instance will continue to run until such time as you explicitly terminate it. As you know, you are charged a (relatively small) fee by Amazon for every executing instance that you have, for as long as it continues to execute.
12 Please be mindful of this as you continue to work with your instance. From a development standpoint, one of your goals may be to configure your instance, install your OpenEdge application, save it as a permanent AMI of your own, and then terminate execution of the instance. Once you have your own AMIs, you are free to start an instance whenever needed and to terminate that instance when it is appropriate to do so. Working with Your Instance To review, you have selected an Amazon Machine Image that you would like to run as your own instance, configured it, and now have it running. To be specific, the pre-configured virtual image of the selected AMI is now executing on some machine in the Amazon EC2. Since you cannot go to the physical machine and log in, everything you do with your instance is done remotely using a tool, such as the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection or the Secure Shell (SSH), running on a local computer. After you clicked on Launch in the previous step, you arrived at a new page where you can select View your instances on the Instance page (which is the choice taken in this example). Alternatively, you can Close this window, return to the Navigation pane, and then select your instance from the Navigation pane.
13 If you now select your instance (by clicking on the check box at the beginning of the row), you will get detailed information as shown below (a Windows example in this case). Note that the Status indicates that the instance is running. Connecting to a Windows Instance To do anything useful with your instance, you need to connect to it. The mechanism to accomplish this with the Windows operating system is the Remote Desktop feature on your personal computer. To get information on this, including how to connect manually or by using a Remote Desktop shortcut file, select the Instance Actions drop-down from the tool bar under My Instances and select Connect.
14 You will be shown information about using the Remote Desktop Connection. Before you try to connect to your instance, you will need the Administrator password for Windows running as part of your instance. Remember, your instance is simply an operating system running on some machine in the Amazon EC2, and like any operating system you will need login credentials to gain access. To obtain the Administrator password that was pre-configured by Amazon, select the Instance Actions drop-down from the tool bar under My Instances and then Get Windows Admin Password. But not so fast Amazon does not want to hand out Administrator passwords to just anyone who asks! You need to open the mykeypair.pem file
15 that you saved earlier, and copy the contents of the file into the Private Key box in order to prove who you are. Then click on Decrypt Password. Once you have done this, save the decrypted password for the Remote Desktop connection that you are about to make. Now, open the Remote Desktop tool (typically from the Start menu, Programs folder, and then the Accessories folder), and connect to your Amazon instance using the public DNS that is displayed in the My Instances page. (An example is shown at the beginning of this section on Working with Your Instance. ) Note that your instance must be running in order to connect to it. In addition, even though the instance Status is listed as running, it may take several minutes before you can connect. If Remote Desktop can t connect initially, wait a few minutes and try again. During the Remote Desktop connection process, you will be asked for your login credentials. Enter the decrypted System Administrator password from the steps above in order to complete your Windows login. You are now logged into the Amazon machine running your instance and can carry out any operation on that instance that you could with any other machine that you have successfully logged into (and have privileges to carry out).
16 Two points of particular interest: > > You may want to copy files from your personal computer to your Amazon instance. For example, there may be one or more installation kits that you would like to copy to the instance, so that you can carry out a local installation of that software. > > You also have the opportunity to map disk drives on your local/ personal computer to your Amazon instance. This can be a convenience if you have files set up on your local machine and prefer not to have to copy them to the Amazon instance. To map drives, use the Remote Desktop options to select and map local drives to the remote Amazon machine. This can be useful if you have your install DVD images on your local disk or have the installation disk in your local DVD drive. Connecting to a Linux Instance To do anything useful with your CentOS instance, you need to connect to it. You can accomplish this by using a remote access tool such as Secure Shell (SSH) on your personal computer. For information on this, select the Instance Actions drop-down from the tool bar under My Instances and select Connect. The connect option screen provides you all the help you need to connect to your running instance from a UNIX SSH (including a line you can cut and paste to your terminal). Note that the public DNS network address is supplied in this screen and is used as an example below.
17 If you are using a Windows machine to access your Linux instance, you will need something like PuTTY, a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Windows and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. You will also need to convert your mykeypair.pem file (downloaded from previous steps) to a PPK file for use with PuTTY. For documentation on this see the Amazon EC2 documentation Web page. Once you have logged into your Linux instance, you can carry out any operation on that instance that you could with any other machine that you have successfully logged into (and have privileges to carry out). Next Steps At this point you have successfully selected and started an Amazon Machine Image as your own personal running instance, using the operating system of your choice. You are also able to connect from your local computer to the machine in the Amazon EC2 that is running your instance. You are free to make use of your instance in any way that you would use a machine that you operate locally, the only restriction being that anything you do must be done remotely. You do not have physical access to the Amazon computer that is running your instance!
18 Please continue with the next paper in this series, Getting Started with the Amazon Cloud; Part III, to learn how to install, configure, and operate OpenEdge on your Amazon instance, and how to create your own AMIs from your modified instance.
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