The following are Mike's rough notes from a first attempt to port the PEcAn VM to the AWS. This was done on a Mac

These notes are based on following the instructions here

Convert PEcAn VM

AWS allows upload of files as VMDK but the default PEcAn VM is in OVA format

If you haven't done so already, download the PEcAn VM
Split the OVA file into OVF and VMDK files

tar xf <ovafile>

Set up an account on AWS

After you have an account you need to set up a user and save your access key and secret key

In my case I created a user named 'carya'

Note: the key that ended up working had to be made at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home#security_credential, not the link above.

Install EC2 command line tools

wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-api-tools.zip

sudo mkdir /usr/local/ec2

sudo unzip ec2-api-tools.zip -d /usr/local/ec2

If need be, download and install JDK

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)

export EC2_HOME=/usr/local/ec2/ec2-api-tools-<version>

export PATH=$PATH:$EC2_HOME/bin

Then set your user credentials as environment variables:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY=xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

export AWS_SECRET_KEY=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Note: you may want to add all the variables set in the above EXPORT commands above into your .bashrc or equivalent.

Create an AWS S3 'bucket' to upload VM to

Go to https://console.aws.amazon.com/s3 and click "Create Bucket"

In my case I named the bucket 'pecan'

Upload

In the code below, make sure to change the PEcAn version, the name of the bucket, and the name of the region. Make sure that the architecture matches the version of PEcAn you downloaded (i386 for 32 bit, x86_64 for 64 bit).

Also, you may want to choose a considerably larger instance type. The one chosen below is that corresponding to the AWS Free Tier

ec2-import-instance PEcAn32bit_1.2.6-disk1.vmdk --instance-type t2.micro --format VMDK --architecture i386 --platform Linux --bucket pecan --region us-east-1 --owner-akid $AWS_ACCESS_KEY --owner-sak $AWS_SECRET_KEY

Make sure to note the ID of the image since you'll need it to check the VM status. Once the image is uploaded it will take a while (typically about an hour) for Amazon to convert the image to one it can run. You can check on this progress by running

ec2-describe-conversion-tasks <image.ID>

Configuring the VM

On the EC2 management webpage, https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2, if you select Instances on the left hand side (LHS) you should be able to see your new PEcAn image as an option under Launch Instance.

Before launching, you will want to update the firewall to open up additional ports that PEcAn needs -- specifically port 80 for the webpage. Port 22 (ssh/sftp) should be open by default. Under "Security Groups" select "Inbound" then "Edit" and then add "HTTP".

Select "Elastic IPs" on the LHS, and "Allocate New Address" in order to create a public IP for your VM.

Next, select "Network Interfaces" on the LHS and then under Actions select "Associate Addresses" then choose the Elastic IP you just created.

Set up multiple instances (optional)

For info on setting up multiple instances with load balancing see: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/DeveloperGuide/gs-ec2VPC.html

Select "Load Balancers" on the LHS, click on "Create Load Balancer", follow Wizard keeping defaults.

To be able to launch multiple VMs: Under "Instances" convert VM to an Image. When done, select Launch, enable multiple instances, and associate with the previous security group. Once running, go back to "Load Balancers" and add the instances to the load balancer. Each instance can be accessed individually by it's own public IP, but external users should access the system more generally via the Load Balancers DNS.

Booting the VM

Return to "Instances" using the menu on the LHS.

To boot the VM select "Actions" then "Instance State" then "Start". In the future, once you have the VM loaded and configured this last step is the only one you will need to repeat to turn your VM on and off.

The menu provided should specify the Public IP where the VM has launched

PEcAn in the Cloud