Posted by netname on February 17, 2010 at 7:36pm
Hi,
I moved pressflow to an ESB and it works great ! The problem I have is trying to create an AMI to avoid having to redo the steps. Since ec2 does not allow to boot with an attached ESB I am not being able to create an instance from my AMI. I guess the problem is that it cannot mount the ESB at boot time and thus to start Apache, MySql. The error message I get is "Client.InternalError".
So, the doubts I have are:
1) Is there a way to create an AMI that will automatically attach to an ESB or do we have to create a boot script to redo the environment when a new instance is created?
2) Are you planning to create an EBS Root Device (I think that is now the name for an AMI that can boot from ESB)?
Thanks for a great product !!
Comments
I was able to create an
I was able to create an instance from my ebs bootable ami (havnt tested it yet tho) I used the aws management console and when it created the ami it seemed to auto detect the main boot drive and the raid drives where mysql was too, it created snapshots of all of them and bundled them with the ebs boot AFAICT, it shows my private ami as 315 gigs which includes all drives, all relevant Block Devices are listed too. Now im not sure if they launch attached, ill have to test that when I get some time. I dont think there are any limitations that should stop you from attaching drives at startup, your probably right about a boot script being needed though im not sure yet.
Have you tried with the management console?
On the roadmap
We have EBS images on the roadmap, but it was only recently that these became share-able items. This will have to wait until after the 1.0 release goes out.
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
Really excited about this,
Really excited about this, having an EBS version will be great.
awesome!
EBS ami's will make it much easier to start and stop the server which will be ideal for dev servers.
All of this work is very exciting. You guys rock!
How to proceed now?
@joshk
Thanks for the update and the good news. Having EBS images will ease a lot the management of Mercury.
@macrocosm
Did you convert Mercury's AMI to an EBS image or did you create your ami from scratch? If you have any instructions to share I would appreciate it
In the meantime, which would be the best way to proceed?
a) Deploy Pantheon using Rightscale?
b) Convert Pantheon AMI to an EBS bootable image?
c) Create a script that will redo the setup at launch time?
I would prefer c) since I already know all the steps, except that I haven't found a way to automatically attach the EBS before running my script. That is, I have read that you can provide a script that will autorun after the machine has booted. I would need to create my own ami to enable this (I think). Then my script would have to attach the EBS to the running instance before continuing with the rest of the setup, but I have not found a way to do this.
The idea is that I want to allow my users to launch Pantheon from Amazon's Console, so I do not want to deploy the EC2 API in their computers and have them launch Mercury from there and use the Console for everything else.
Thanks for the support.
I created it from scratch
I created it from scratch though Im not using that AMI any longer ... I'm waiting for the 1.0 release then I will convert it to EBS and make my alterations then snapshot it. Creating an AMI is a bit long winded for really just needing a solid snapshot in time (with easy consecutive snapshots) to revert to in the event of instance dead, crufted etc; the ebs bootable will make recovery more efficient IMO.
I found some more conversion instructions that seem good.
http://gnuyoga.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/ec2-instance-store-to-ebs-boot/
and also there is this tutorial as was previously mentioned in another ebs post on here.
http://www.capsunlock.net/2009/12/create-ebs-boot-ami.html
I dont have any time to test more but I wont be able to resist when 1.0 comes out, this is way too cool!
What exactly needs to be
What exactly needs to be moved to a persistent EBS drive in order to be able to start and stop the machine as needed?
Move MySQL and Apache files
You just have to follow the instructions on how to move MySql to EBS on http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=1663. Also, there is a link to a text file on your Pantheon's welcome page that states the changes you have to do to Apache's files. After that, the next time that you start your machine, you'll have to stop Apache and MySQL and redirect them to your EBS drive (either by changing the mounting devices as Hammond's article suggests or my changing the symbolic links in mnt).
The problem, at least to me, is that since you cannot automate the attachment of the EBS with Pantheon's AMI, then you have to manually do several steps - not too complicated - but not something that you will delegate to anybody: start the instance; wait for it to be up and running; manually attach the EBS; run a script that will redo the steps above. Thus, you'll need to bundle your own AMI in order to have your instance boot from EBS - thus, not having to attach the EBS -, do the manual steps above or create a script that you will use to start the machine from your local machine using Amazon's API.
Great! So I guess there is no
Great! So I guess there is no sense in me trying to set this up until Mercury version 1 comes out? Or is it worth trying to create our own bootable EBS? I have no server admin experience so Im just trying to find a solution that will be easy to start and stop. A bootable EBS seems like the way to go