I have an amazon ec2 instance with RHEL 7.3 on it. I would like to convert this into an iso so that I can migrate it wherever I want. What are the best tools to create an iso of a virtual machine. Or how do I clone/backup this VM so that I can restore it anywhere I want?
You can work with VM and AWS programatically via AWS CLI commands.
You want to get familiar with import-task and export-task commands.
The best place to start is by reading an official AWS guides for:
Exporting an Instance as a VM Using VM Import/Export
Importing a VM as an Image Using VM Import/Export
The key information you need to pick up from the guide is this quote:
"You can't export an instance from Amazon EC2 unless you previously
imported it into Amazon EC2 from another virtualization environment."
Yes, there are solutions, one of them linked by #Nicholas Smith. That being said, if you go the unofficial route you might end up in a dark alley where help might not be available. I highly recommend and warn here to not proceed with trying to clone EC2 into VM at this point. You will spend a lot of time with a huge risk factor for future.
For you to be able to achieve what you want, you need to create a RHEL VM using any VM software, you need to load this VM into AWS and then you will be able to work with VM in AWS making any necessary changes and export again for local or transportation needs.
As you are running a widely-used Linux distribution - RHEL, you can attempt to recreate your EC2 environment manually by launching a VM that runs the same kernel version along with the same package versions. From there, you can tarball what files you need from your production instance and copy them over to your on-premise site by using SCP/SFTP.
Just get your RHEL environment into VM locally and import to AWS and you set.
Clonezilla provides functionality to create images. Generated images can be converted to ISO files.
It doesn't seem to be something that Amazon promote as a service however the aws cli tools have an ec2-unbundle command for extracting from an AMI. There's a guide here on how to download and run an EC2 AMI locally by using it.
Caveat is it appears the ec2-unbundle command currently only works on Linux and not OS X or Windows.
Related
I have a linux ec2 instance hosting some legacy tools that I need to move to another AWS. We hoped to do this by making an AMI, sharing it to the other account, bringing up the new instance from the AMI, etc.
The problem: The instance was built on an AWS marketplace image of Debian - I must opt-in to the terms and conditions (and subscribe) in order to use the image. However, it is Debian8 (https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-5pgbnftzmrgec) which is no longer offered in the marketplace. Since the base image is no longer offered, I cannot opt in.
Is it possible to just upgrade/update the source instance to Debian 9 or 10 (both are still offered in the marketplace) so that I will be able to accept the T&C? Or is there some way to tell the AMI itself to use Debian 9 instead?
If not, I am looking at an old style file-based migration, and I was really hoping not to have to get into the guts of this server (it's a legacy integration) just yet. (It's on the to-do list, I just really wanted to get the migration to our AWS account finished first.)
I found this related question, but the suggested answer does not work - I can create and share the snapshot, even create a volume, but I cannot attach/mount the volume without "accept[ing] terms and subscribe" to the underlying product (Debian 8).
Can't export a EC2 AMI to another account because the AWS Marketplace OS is obsolete
Thanks for any advice!
I'm using the Amazon Web Services emulator EC2 to run Windows server. I upgraded my instance type to the one with 4cores 16gb ram, and it worked well, but I need more storage to install visual studio. When I tried to upgrade to m5ad.xlarge to get the 150gb SSD, C: drive didn't expand like it was supposed to. I also tried adding a Volume, but that wouldn't work either. If anyone could give me a simple way or any external tutorials to complete this, that would be much appreciated, as the AWS Documentation solutions didn't work. Thanks!
Based on the comments, the issue was that the partition was not expanded. Following steps from the following AWS blog solved the problem:
How do I expand the Amazon EBS root volume of my Amazon EC2 Windows instance?
How would I go about getting CentOS 8 as a VM option in GCP/GCE? or creating my own CentOS 8 VM to run on GCP?
Any guides (README's, documents) there or contacts on how to get this done?
There is an article on GCP that talks about a technique/recipe for creating a boot image that is custom. The article is called Manually importing virtual disks. If I understand the basics of the story, you could use a technology such as VirtualBox to create a local VM image and then prepare that for import into Google Cloud Storage. From there, one could then seem to use that as a source for a new Compute Engine instance.
Currently GCP supports Centos-7 as a public image. As suggested by the previous member you can create a Custom image from source disks, images, snapshots, or images stored in Cloud Storage.
See instructions HERE
Your other option is to wait for Google to introduce Centos-8 in their supported family
Centos 8 is already available on GCE but it is without shielded VM support.
I have AWES EC-2 instances with Ubuntu 16.04 , how to migrate them to Microsoft azure?
I have their image Amazon Machine Images (AMI) on amazon web services, is there a way I could migrate the images to azure ? or the instance configuration? I prefer copy the image I have create in amazon web services (with Ubuntu 16.04 base) to azure.
I have seen this documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/migrate-tutorial-aws-azure but it does not specify Ubuntu support and it copy the instance, can I copy the image? and can it be perform with ubuntu 16.04?
As you see, all the support OS version show there. So, unfortunately, it does not support Ubuntu to migrate from AWES to Azure. For Linux, it just supports a part of Red Hat and Centos versions.
For the image, it's possible to export the VM to a VHD file and upload the Azure, but it just shows the Windows VM. You can get the whole steps from Move a Windows VM from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to an Azure virtual machine. You can try for Linux, but I'm not sure about it.
If you have any more questions, please let me know. Or if you think it's OK you can accept it :-)
I suggest you strongly consider implementing the base instance configuration as a userdata or init script. This start up script would install all required software and configuration settings on the instance.
This way you can simply run the script on the Azure instance, and it will work exactly as it would on the AWS instance.
This approach is best practice for managing a baseline configuration of any instance. You can also consider configuration management tools like Ansible to do the same.
I am writing an application which would enable my company's future clients to be able to launch Amazon aws instances with Windows OS. Hence, I would want to create windows AMIs first. The article below gives a step by step approach for creating EBS-backed windows AMIs using Amazon AWS console.
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/Creating_EBSbacked_WinAMI.html
But when I tried looking up the methods provided by CreateImageRequest API provided by Amazon SDK, I couldn't quite figure out how to replicate the AWS management console process for creating a windows image in Java. I exhausted my google searches and I came up empty. Has anyone tried this? Is this even possible at all to create Windows images through Amazon SDK?
I found that CreateInstanceRequest API has an option to specify the OS types but the options are limited to Amazon Linux or Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The documentation for CreateInstanceRequest is below:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/com/amazonaws/services/opsworks/model/CreateInstanceRequest.html
I would appreciate any useful link or code snippet. Thanks.
I don't completely understand what you are trying to achieve.
Do you want to start an instance in EC2 or with OpsWorks because your second link points to the OpsWorks documentation.
OpsWorks dosen't support Windows right now.