In case of dedicates servers, we are allowed to install any software. Does Amazon EC2 instance allow to install tools?
Yes, EC2 is like a virtual machine that create to your own spec, and then request copies of it to be started by Amazon.
There is lots more information on this site:
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs
Yes, EC2 provides the same as a dedicated server plus you can replicate the image and start multiple instances.
Your question has already been answered. But to even illustrate the point futher. Amazon EC2 even allows you to setup your own operating system.
As far as I can tell it must be a unix/linux operating system, but you can go so far as to build your own kernel
limitless possibilites here.
Related
What is the difference between an AWS EC2 instance and a docker container instance? When should I use one over the other?
When you get an EC2 instance it will provide the base installation of that specific operating system with some additional AWS packages installed such as the SSM Agent.
There are then AMIs that are prepared for specific usecases such as SQL Server, or in this case pre-configured with AWS Orchestration services (either ECS or EKS) which have the usecase software installed.
If you're not familiar with Docker I would suggest running it in your local environment first so that you can become familiar with it. Yes people have been moving towards containers and serverless but you need to ensure you are able to support this in production.
With containers being deployed you will need to understand the orchestration layer that you're using. It's very easy to see containers as an alternative to a virtualisation layer, but there are many differences to how these operate.
Take a look at the What is Docker? page for further explanations.
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?
Just to give you a context... I'm new to the aws world and all the services that provides.
I have a legacy application which I need to share some binarys with a client, and I was trying to use a ec2 instance (Amazon Linux AMI) with samba, to map it into a windows local machine.
I was able to establish a conection with another ec2 instances (same vpc), just as a tryout. But I wasn't able to do so with my windows machine or even with a linux vm I have.
The inbound rules for this concept ec2 instance was fully open (All traffic allowed).
Main question
Is it possible to do? Share a file system between a ec2-instances with a (over internet) local machine?
Just saying:
S3 storage isn't an option.
And in my region FSX still ain't implemented and for latency reasons is a no go.
Please ask as many questions you want, I'll try to anwser them as fast as I Can.
Kind Regads.
TL;DR - it's possible, but there's no 'simple' solution (in my opinion).
I thought of two possible solutions that you can implement, here we go ...
1: AWS EFS, AWS Direct Connect and Docker
A possible solution would be using AWS Elastic File System (EFS), AWS Direct Connect and a Docker Linux container.
Drawbacks
If it's the first time you encounter with the above AWS services or Docker, then it's going to be a bit of a journey to learn about them
EFS pricing - it's not so cheap, and you also need to consider the inbound and outbound traffic, it's best to use the calculator that is in the pricing page
EFS performance - if you only share files then it should be okay, but if you expect to get high speeds, then remember that it's not an EBS volume, so for higher speeds you need to pay more money
AWS Direct Connect pricing - you also need to take that into consideration
Security - I'm not sure how sensitive your data is, but you need to make sure you create a very strict VPC, with Security Groups and Network Access List rules - read about the VPC Security Best Practices
Steps to implement the solution
Follow the Walkthrough: Create and Mount a File System On-Premises with AWS Direct Connect and VPN, also, here are the steps on how to combine it with Docker
(Optional) To make it a bit easier - for Windows to "support" Linux file-system, you should use Windows Git Bash. If you're not sure how to use install 3rd-party apps in Windows Git Bash (like aws-vault) then read this blog post
Create an EFS in AWS, and mount it to your EC2 instance, read more about it here
Use AWS Direct Connect to connect to your VPC from your local Windows machine
Install Docker for Windows on your local machine
Create a Docker Volume, and mount the same EFS to that volume - a good example for this step
Test it - SSH to your EC2 instance, create a file on the EFS volume and then check in your local Docker Linux container that this file appears on the EFS volume
I omitted the security steps because it's up to you how strict you want your solution to be.
2: Using S3 as a shared file-system
You can try out this tool s3fs-fuse, but you'll still need to use a Docker Linux container since you're on Windows. I haven't tested it but it looks promising. You can read this blog post, it's a step-by-step tutorial on how to do it, and also shares some other possible solutions.
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.
Can IBM Integration Bus((and /or Websphere message Broker) be implemeted on AWS ? Can my on-premise ESB be migrated to AWS Cloud ?
Thanks in Advance
AWS EC2 allows importing VMs into an AMI then you can start an EC2 instance using that image. If you are new to AWS you can check the link below
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/vm-import/
However, you should be careful about IIB license and how many machines you can install it on before regesting the AMI in a launch configuration and create an autoscaling group and set a scaling policy that can start instances more that what you purchased.
That's very much possible. There are several possible approaches.
1. IIB on EC2
Installing and configuring IIB on an EC2 instance is very much similar to doing the same in on-premise servers. Only difference is that the physical server is in AWS Cloud. While this approach gives you maximum flexibility to design your architecture any way, it does not take advantage of the basic features of the cloud.
2. Quick Start
IIB is available for deployment under AWS Quick Start. You can read more about this here. This helps you get started quickly by setting up the entire environment in a few clicks. But, if you're planning to migrate your existing architecture to AWS, this may not suit you as the architecture is pre-defined with limited options for customization.
3. IIB on Containers
ACE 11 provides better support for containerization. You can read more about running IIB 10 on containers here and ACE 11 on containers here. After this, the containers can be deployed into fully managed containers such as AWS Elastic Container Service or your own container configuration such as Docker on EC2.
Yes of course, AWS provides the IAAS and you just install whatever you want inside. Make sure you open ports, use specific credentials for the instalation (dont use admin) and everything should work.
IBM also provides docker images of integration bus v10 and APP Connect Enterprise v11. This is true for all their integration tools, MQ, API Management and more.
Not restricted to AWS.