Amazon EC2 Module

• About
• Installation
• Configuration
• Default EC2 Cluster
• Default EC2 Machine
• EC2 Hypervisor
• Importing EC2 Machines

About

The Amazon EC2 module allows you to manage Amazon EC2 instances from the Enomalism interface. The EC2 instances blend in with other machines as if they were running on a local virtual machine.

Installation

The EC2 module is now available on pypi. So you can install it like any other Python package:

root@machine:/$ python easy_install -Z e2_ec2

The -Z option is important here because Enomalism currently cannot read zipped egg files.

The Windows version of Enomalism has e2_ec2 built-in. So there are no installation steps required on Windows. However, the e2_ec2 module must still be configured.

Configuration

Once the Enomalism EC2 module is installed, we need to configure it. The first step toward configuring the EC2 module is enabling it:

1. Shut-down Enomalism if it is running (Ctrl-C).

2. Edit the Enomalism configuration file (default.cfg is the default).

3. Add e2_ec2 to the enomalism2.modules list.

4. Start Enomalism.

On Windows, the default configuration should already have e2_ec2 in the module list.

The next step in configuring the Enomalism EC2 module is creating the required database tables and records. To do this, ensure that Enomalism is running and point your browser to /install. This will run the Enomalism installer that creates the core database tables and records. Even if you have already done this when installing Enomalism, this step must be repeated. Otherwise, the EC2 module will be in an unusable state.

Finally, you will need to set up your EC2 access credentials. To do this, log into Enomalism. If you click the Admin tab, you will an Enomalism Config button. This will open the Enomalism configuration editor. If the EC2 module was successfully installed and configured up to this point, you will see a section in the Enomalism configuration editor labeled Enomalism2 EC2 Configuration. This is where you can enter your EC2 access credentials. Click save when you are finished and Enomalism will now be ready to use EC2 machines.

Default EC2 Cluster

By default, the Enomalsm EC2 module will create a default EC2 cluster. A cluster acts as a container that holds related virtual machines. When EC2 machines are imported from EC2, this is the cluster in which they will become a part of. The reason for there being a default EC2 cluster is so that there is some level of differentiation from a high level viewpoint. For example, when looking at you list of clusters, it is pretty safe to assume that the ec2 cluster will contain nothing but EC2 machines.

Default EC2 Machine

By default, the Enomalism EC2 module will create a default EC2 machine. This machine can be thought of as a pseudo machine. The reason I chose the word pseudo is because this machine isn't like any other machines in Enomalism. It doesn't exist physically, or virtually. That is, there is a machine record in the database just like any other machine in Enomalism except there is no machine for it to point to.

Why all the confusion? Well, in order to have seamless integration of your EC2 instances into Enomalism, they need to be treated as normal machines. To accomplish this, we need an EC2 Hypervisor. The default EC2 machine is where this hypervisor lives.

In short, when you expand your default EC2 cluster, don't be alarmed by the ec2 machine you see. Think of it as the dom0 on EC2.

EC2 Hypervisor

All EC2 machines are controlled with the EC2 Hypervisor. The Enomalism EC2 module will make this hypervisor available to Enomalism. As mentioned above, the EC2 Hypervisor is housed in the default EC2 machine. You can verify that this hypervisor is in fact part of the default EC2 machine by expanding the machine in the Virtual Infrastrcture tab.

Importing EC2 Machines

Once the Enomalism EC2 module is installed, it will automatically query EC2 for any EC2 instances that don't already exist in the database. If it finds any new instances, it will insert them into the Enomalism database. Any new machines imported from EC2 will belong to the EC2 cluster. Also, a new package is created for each imported machine as Enomalism requires that all machines have a package. In the Virtual Infrastructure tab, if you expand the ec2 cluster, you should see a list of your running EC2 instances. By default, the machine name given to imported EC2 instances is the public DNS name of the instance if it exists. If the public DNS name does not yet exist for a given instance, the default machine name will be the UUID of the machine.