EC2 Start Instance

Objective

The goal of the tutorial is to start AWS (Elastic Compute Cloud) EC2 instance(s) from FlexDeploy. This automation includes:

• Start a virtual machine using one or more instance ids using the AWS CLI

We will walk through each of the FlexDeploy features that will be created/configured to accomplish this goal and start the instance in a very short amount of time.

Checklist

Configure cloud account

First, an AWS account needs to be configured under Integrations. FlexDeploy will connect to the AWS account with provided details and starts the instance(s).

1. Select Integrations from the Menu.

2. Navigate to the Cloud tab from the left-hand pane.

3. Create a new Cloud account of the provider type “AWS” with the “+ Create” button.

Open

It should have a AWS Access Key, AWS Secret Key, and AWS Default Region to be configured in it. The AWS Access Key must have relevant access to Start/Stop the instance(s).

Open

1. Secret Key is a password field and hence needs to be kept hidden. To update the same click on the pencil icon as shown below

2. Update the Secret Key value under Secret Text. This is to make sure no one else can retrieve the password

After saving the credential, click on Save on the cloud instance. Test connection will not work for the AWS cloud.

Utility Workflow

Navigate to Workflows and create a workflow using the button as highlighted below.

Workflow Properties

From the Properties tab, create a workflow property with Project scope as shown below:

1. Click + Create

2. Properties must each have a unique code, give a meaningful code for the new property.

3. A property display name does not have to be unique and can contain spaces. This is the name that will be displayed on the Project Properties screen

4. Select the property scope, this defines where the property will be configured. We're using Project scope.

5. Enter a good description for the property, this will make configuration easier in the future

6. Save the new property

Workflow Definition

Going back to the Definition tab, here is a sample utility workflow.

The startInstance operation returns three output variables. To capture them and use them for further processing/evaluation, one can create three variables and map them against the output parameters. Return As Output option should be checked in case we want to return them as Workflow output.

1. First, click the X² button to open the Variables popup

2. Next, click the Create button and add three output variables.

Map the variables against the outputs of the Startinstance operation to capture the responses, and also update the plugin input values.

We are mapping the Project Property (AWS_EC2_INSTANCE_ID) against the instance IDs input to dynamically pass the instance ID from the Project property.

Note: You can also hard code the instance IDs directly as a plugin input, or use Target/Environment level property to pass the instance IDs.

Plugin Inputs

Topology

For detailed steps on how to configure the topology and map the workflows manually, please refer to Configure the Topology

Target Properties

Selecting the DEV environment mapped to the Target Group will display the configurable properties/Endpoint and allows to the configure the Target properties.

Provide the value for AWSEndpoint(optional), AWSCloudAccount, AWSRegion (optional but can be used to override the region defined in the AWS cloud instance), AWSCLIPath(optional,not needed if set in classPath), Number of Iterations (optional, default value is 6), and Interval Duration (optional default value is 30sec) and map the localhost as Endpoint as shown below.

Target Properties Info

Create the AWS EC2 Start instance Project

For details steps on how to configure the project and execution, please refer to Create the AWS EC2 Start/Stop Instance Project

Reports

With the successful execution of the Utility workflow, a text (.txt) file is created, stored in the reports tab. Every execution will generate a new report with execution Id appended to the text file in the Reports tab.

Click on the text file generated to see the details. This file captures the details of each instance i.e., instance Id, instance State, instance Status, and System Status. In the workflow, there were two EC2 instance Id’s provided as input. Hence, the report contains the details of both the EC2 instances. Also, user can download the report file generated.

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the EC2 Start instance tutorial.

Now that you have configured FlexDeploy for one EC2 Start instance, it is extremely easy to replicate the same for other EC2 Start instance. Simply use the Copy Project feature and a new project will be created with all of the configuration completed already. You just need to make the necessary configuration changes.