Consider I have installed a software in an Amazon EC2 machine, activated it successfully. Now I make this as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and then launch multiple instances.
How can the software identify that this is not the original machine where the product was activated?
Usually we use Hard disk, RAM and other hardware details to identify activation and then enabled the Software, but I am not sure how to proceed with Amazon images.
Each Amazon EC2 instance has an InstanceId in the form i-0c9c9b24b3583afdc.
These IDs are unique and are not reused.
For example, the cloud-init process that runs a User Data script no first boot uses this technique to determine when to run the script. It checks whether the script has run for the given Instance ID. If it has, then the script is not run again. If an AMI is made of the instance and a new instance is launched from the AMI, it notices that the Instance ID has changed and the script runs. So, it actually runs "once per Instance ID".
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I'm bit confused about what purpose does the AMI serve.
Is AMI something which provides a platform with particular OS and other configurations to access the instance?
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is basically a copy of the disk that will be attached to a newly-launched instance. It is normally just the boot disk, but an AMI can actually contain multiple disk images.
The AMI is 'copied' to the disk of the newly launched instance. (Not quite accurate, but you can think of it that way.) Changes to the local disk do not impact the AMI.
AWS provides a number of AMIs with pre-loaded operating systems such as Windows, Amazon Linux and Ubuntu. Some of them contain additional software, such as Windows with SQL Server.
There are also community AMIs that are created by somebody other than AMI, but shared to all users. For example, a company might load a demo version of their software onto the AMI, so customers can simply launch an Amazon EC2 instance and it will have all software already loaded and configured.
An AMI is actually just a Snapshot, plus additional metadata. However, a Snapshot can only be restored to an Amazon EBS volume, whereas an AMI can be used to launch an instance. The Amazon EC2 service will then load the disk and attach it to the new instance.
It is pretty much what it's name implies - a machine image. There is, for example, a variety of Linux images. You can use an image to create a Linux instance. The AMI is not "used up" during the use - it can be used any number of times. There are also images that have an operating system such a Linux and software - for example a database server or a closed source server or pretty much anything you can imagine.
Think of the AMI as something you would use as the source for a copy machine. On the source paper there may be a little or a lot. The copier creates a new page that has whatever was on the source page. And you can make any number of copies.
Access to the instance varies on the AMI. A Linux one usually opens an ssh port while a Windows one usually uses some sort of remote desktop. The AWS console can guide you a bit but usually you'll need some documentation to know how to use the instance created from the AMI to know how to use it.
What is AWS EC2 Bundle Tasks?
Could any one please help me to understand what it is?
And any one help in showing a sample demo of it by steps or screenshot?
In the old days, before Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon EC2 instances were booted from Instance Store.
Instance Store is a disk that is directly connected to the host computer, which means that when an instance is turned off, the contents of the disk is lost (because the disk will be assigned to the next user who uses a Virtual Machine on that host).
This also meant that instances could not be stopped and started again, because the boot disk is lost.
These days, Amazon EBS provides network-attached storage, which persists even when an instance is stopped (and, if desired, even after an instance is terminated).
According to this article, Bundle Tasks is/was a process designed to get a Windows instance ready for booting from Instance Store:
See: Bundle Tasks in Amazon | Zeeshan Ali Shah's Blog
There is little reason to use this process these days.
Can you provide me with references about the startup time of a virtual machine in EC2 of type m3.xlarge.
Many thanks.
This will vary depending upon the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) used to boot the Amazon EC2 instance.
For example, Windows instances supplied by AWS take longer to boot because they go through a SysPrep process that involves a reboot the first time that the instance is used.
You should measure it yourself based upon your particular use-case.
I have a php/mysql website that I want to deploy on AWS. Ultimately, I'm going to want auto-scaling (but don't need it right away).
I'm looking at an EBS based AMI. I see that by default the "Root Device Volume" is deleted when an instance "terminates". I realize I can also attach other EBS devices/drives to an instance (that will persist after termination) but I'm going to save most user content in S3 so I dont think that's necessary. I'm not sure how often I'll start/stop vs when i would ever want to terminate. So that's a bit confusing.
I'm mostly confused with where changes to the system get saved. Say I run a YUM install or update. Does that get saved in the "root device volume"? If i stop/start the instance, the changes should be there? What about if I setup cron jobs?
How about if I upload files? I understand to an extent that it depends where I put the files and if I attached a second EBS. Say I just put them in the root folder "/" (unadvised, but for simplicity sake). I guess that they are technically saved in the "root device volume"? If I start/stop the instance, they should still be there?
However, if I terminate an instance, then those changes/uploads are lost. But if I set the "root device volume" to not delete on termination, then I can launch a new instance with the changes there?
In terms of auto-scaling. Someone said to leave the "root device volume" to default delete so that when new instances are spun up/shut down, they don't leave behind zombie EBS volumes that are no longer needed (and would require manual clean-up)?
Would something like this work: ?
Setup S3 bucket (for shared image uploads)
Setup Amazon RDS / mysql
Setup DynamoDB (for sharing php sessions)
Launch EBS-backed AMI (leave as default to delete "root device volume" on
termination). Make system updates using yum/etc. Upload via sftp
PHP/HTML/JS/CSS files (ex: /var/www/html). Validate site can save
images to S3, share sessions via DynamoDB, access mysql via RDS.
Make/clone your own AMI image from your currently running/configured
one. Save it with a name that indicates site version/date/etc.
Setup auto-scaling to launch the image created in #5
I'm mostly concerned with how to save my configuration so that 1) changes are saved in-case i ever need to terminate an instance (before using autoscale) and 2) that auto-scaling will have access to the changes when I'm ready for it. I also don't want something like the same cron-job running on all auto-scaling instances.
I guess I'm confused with "does creating my own AMI image in #4" basically replace the "saving EBS root device volume" on termination? I can't wrap my head around the image part of things vs the storage part of things.
I get even more confused when I read about people talking about if you use "Amazon Linux" then the way they deploy updates every 6 months makes it difficult to use because you are forced to use new versions of software. How does that affect my custom AMI (with my uploaded code)? Can I just keep running yum updates on my custom AMI (for security patches) and ignore any changes to amazon's standard AMIs? When does the yum approach put me at risk for being out-of-date?
I know there are a host of things I'm not covering (dns/static IPs/scaling metrics/etc). That instead of uploading files then creating an AMI image, some people have their machine set to pull files from git on startup (i dont mind my more manual approach for now). Or that i could technically put the php/html/css/js on S3 too.
Sorry for all of the random questions. I know my question might not even be totally clear, but I'm just looking for confirmation/advice in-general. There are so many concepts to tie-together.
Thanks and sorry for the long post!
Yes, if you install packages, upload files, set up cron jobs, etc. and then stop the EBS-based instance, everything will still be there when you restart it.
Consequently, if you create an AMI from that instance and then use it for your autoscaling group, all the instances of the autoscaling group will run the cron jobs.
Your steps look good. As you are creating an AMI, your changes will be saved in that AMI. If the instance is terminated, it can be recreated via the AMI. The modifications made on that instance since the AMI creation will not be saved though. You need to create an AMI or take a snapshot of the EBS volume if you want a backup.
If you make a change and want to apply it to all the instances in the autoscaling group, you need to create a new AMI and apply it to your autoscaling group.
Concerning the cron jobs, I guess you have 2 options:
Have 1 instance that is not part of the autoscaling group running them (and disable the cron jobs before creating the AMI for the autoscaling group)
Do something smart so only one instance of the autoscaling group runs them. Here is the first page I hit on Google: https://gist.github.com/kixorz/5209217 (not tested)
Yes, creating your own AMI image basically replaces the "saving EBS root device volume" on termination.
An EBS boot AMI is an EBS snapshot of the EBS root volume plus some
metadata like the architecture, kernel, AMI name, description, block
device mappings, and more.
(From: AWS Difference between a snapshot and AMI)
Yes, you can automatically run yum security updates. To be completely identical to the latest Amazon Linux AMI, you should run all yum updates (not only security). But I wouldn't run those automatically.
Let me know if I forgot to answer some of your questions or if some points are still unclear.
I have an Amazon EC2 Micro instance running using EBS storage. This more than meets my needs 99.9% of the time, however I need to perform a very intensive database operation as a once off which kills the Micro instance.
Is there a simple way to restart the exact same instance but with lots more power for a temporary period, and then revert back to the Micro instance when I'm done? I thought this seemed more than possible under the cloud based model Amazon uses but it doesn't appear to simply be a matter of shutting down and restarting with more power as I first thought it might be.
If you are manually running the database operation, then you can just create the image of the server, launch a small or a high cpu instance using the same image, run the database operation and then create the image and launch it again as a micro instance. You can also automate this process by writing scripts using AWS APIs.
In case you're using an EBS-backed AMI you don't have to create a new image and launch it. Just stop the machine and issue a simple EC2 API command to change the instance type:
ec2-modify-instance-attribute --instance-type <instance_type> <instance_id>
Keep in mind that not all instance types work for every AMI. The applicable instance types depend on the machine itself and the kernel. You can find a list of available instance types here: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/