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To deploy an Amazon EC2 virtual appliance on demand through InstallAnywhere, you can use these command-line tools:

  1. Make sure that the Amazon ec2-ami-tools and ec2-api-tools packages are installed on your host machine
  2. Copy the .ami files to the host machine
  3. Use the ec2-bundle-image command to split this file into bundles:

$> ec2-bundle-image -i <Location_Of_AMI> –cert <Path_To_X509_Certficate> –privatekey <Path_To_Private_Key> -u <AWS_Account_number>

Note: This requires that the ec2-api-tools are installed.

This process will split your AMI into a set of 10MB segments and also provide a manifest XML file.

  1. Upload these files/bundles on to the Amazon cloud using ec2-upload-bundle by providing relevant parameters related to your account on Amazon:

$> ec2-upload-bundle -b <Name_Of_Amazon_S3_Bucket> -m <Location_Of_Amazon_Bundle_Manifest_XML_File> -a <Amazon_Access_Key> -s <Amazon_Secret_Key>

  1. Once these files are uploaded, you need to register the files as an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) by using the following command:

$> ec2-register <your-s3-bucket>/<image.manifest.xml>

This process will write an AMI-ID to your command prompt.

Note • The ec2-register, ec2-create-keypair, and ec2-launch-instance has a GUI version using Amazon Web Services (AWS) Management Console.

  1. To access this image, once hosted on the Amazon infrastructure, you need to have a key-pair. To create a key-pair, use the ec2-create-keypair command:

$> ec2-create-keypair <keyName> –aws-access-key <Amazon_Access_Key> –aws-secret-key <Amazon_Secret_Key>

This process will create a key-pair, store the public key of the key-pair with the Amazon EC2 and the private key is displayed in the console.

  1. Copy the generated (/displayed) key-pair key to a plain text file and store it with the extension .pem
  2. You can now launch the appliance using the ec2-run-instances command: $> ec2-run-instances $<Amazon_AMI_ID> -k <pathToKeyPair> -n <number of instances> [-z

<Amazon_Availability_Zone> ] –kernel $kernel_id –aws-access-key <Amazon_Access_Key> —

aws-secret-key <Amazon_Secret_Key>

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The kernel ID corresponding to your image can be located by looking at the AKI-ID column in the AMI locator hosted at http://cloud.ubuntu.com/ami/.

What Amazon EC2 deployment tips can you share?

 

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