Creating an Amazon EC2 Virtual Appliance
InstallAnywhere 2020
InstallAnywhere enables you to create and deploy an Amazon EC2 virtual appliance that you can deploy to a public cloud.
To create an Amazon EC2 virtual appliance, start with your InstallAnywhere installer project.
To create an Amazon EC2 virtual appliance:
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Open an existing InstallAnywhere project in the Advanced Designer. |
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In the Advanced Designer, on the Build page, click Build Appliances. The Build Appliances view opens. |
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Open the Appliance Configuration tab. |
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In the Target Hypervisor list, select Amazon EC2. The options that are displayed on the Appliance Configuration tab are now customized to Amazon EC2. |
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Specify the appliance configuration that you are editing by performing one of the following: |
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To edit an existing appliance configuration, such as the Default_Appliance_Configuration, select it from the Select Appliance Configuration list. |
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When you add a new appliance configuration, an alphanumeric string is automatically entered in the Appliance UUID field to uniquely identify this virtual appliance. The virtual appliances and the VM within the virtual appliances are identified using the UUID and the version. It is important to define them uniquely so that this information can be used for maintaining the virtual appliance properly. Click Generate UUID to generate a new ID. |
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Next to the EULA field, click Choose EULA File and select a EULA text (.txt) file that contains the end user license agreement information for the virtual appliance. The EULA must be a text-only file and will not support markup of any kind. Your customers will be prompted to accept this EULA before they will be permitted to use the virtual appliance. |
Note • Specifying a EULA is mandatory for the creation of a virtual appliance.
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In the Description field, enter text to describe the purpose of this virtual appliance. |
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In the Appliance URL field, enter the start URL by which the appliance can be accessed post deployment. Enter the Appliance URL using the following format: |
<protocol>#hostname#<context_root>
where:
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<protocol> is of type http:// |
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#hostname# will be replaced by the IP of the appliance obtained after deployment of the virtual appliance |
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<context_root> is the context root of the virtual appliance |
For more information, see Specifying the Appliance URL.
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In the Connection Settings area of this tab, click the Add New Credential button. The Add New Connection / Amazon EC2 dialog box opens. |
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Configure the connection settings as needed, and then click the OK button. |
Note • InstallAnywhere creates a credential store file (*.credstore) in the project folder for the project. Using a credential store helps you securely store all of connection settings, and also enables you to define some connection settings globally and reuse them in all of your projects.
For information on Amazon EC2 cloud computing and obtaining an Amazon Web Services account (including Account Number, Serial Key, Access Key, Private Key, and x509 Certificate), see:
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-credentials.html#using-credentials-certificate
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-credentials.html
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To enable automatic deployment of this virtual appliance, select the Deploy this Appliance check box. |
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Under Root Device Type, select one of the following options to specify the type of disk storage that your AMI image will be stored in: |
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EC2 instance store backed—Temporary block level storage (also known as an “instance store” volume). An instance store is dedicated to a particular instance and the data on it persists only during the lifetime of its associated EC2 instance. Data on such instance store volumes are lost when the instances are stopped, fail, or are terminated, and cannot be restored. It is ideal to use such instance-store-backed instances for temporary storage of information or content. |
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Elastic block store backed—Reliable storage volumes that can be attached to a running instance in the same availability zone. EBS volumes attached to an instance persist independently from the life of the instance and are recommended to be used when data changes frequently and requires long term persistence. |
Note • For more information, see Support for Elastic Block Store (EBS) for Amazon.
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If you selected Elastic block store backed option, specify the following additional options: |
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In the EBS Volume size (GiB) field, specify the size in gigabytes of your EBS volume. The limit is up to 1 TiB depending on your AWS account limits. |
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In the Device field, enter the name of the root device that the volumes will be attached to. For example, the recommended connection is: |
/dev/sdf through /dev/sdp
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In the Image Name field enter the name of the EBS backed image created from the EBS snapshot. |
Note • For more information, see Support for Elastic Block Store (EBS) for Amazon.
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In the Select the region for deployment list, select one of the following regions to upload and run your virtual appliance: |
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US East (Northern Virginia) Region |
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US West (Northern California) Region |
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US West (Oregon) Region |
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South America (Sao Paulo) Region |
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Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Region |
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Asia Pacific (Singapore) Region |
Note • It is always beneficial to deploy the AMI to the region closest to your customer base. For example, if your business runs in South America only, then it is better to base your deployed AMI in the Sao Paulo region. This will result in faster response times. Also, both the S3 bucket and AMI instance would be deployed to the corresponding region, which would help customers reduce costs.
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Click the VM Configuration tab. |
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To identify the operating system of the VM that you are including in this virtual appliance, in the Select OS list, select the appropriate option. |
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In the Select InstallAnywhere VM Template list, select a VM template to use to build this virtual appliance. |
Note • For information on obtaining and configuring VM templates, see Obtaining VM Templates for Virtual Appliances.
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Open the Installers subtab of the VM Configuration tab. |
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To add your installer to the Build Time tab list, click the Add Installer button. The Add Installer dialog box opens. |
Note • For information on the purpose of Build Time vs. First Boot Time installers, see Using Custom Boot and Login Scripts for a Virtual Appliance.
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On the Add Installer dialog box, perform the following steps: |
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Select the An Installer out of the current InstallAnywhere project option. |
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In the Choose Installer Build Configuration list, select the Build Configuration of the installer that you are adding. |
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In the Choose Build Target list, select the build target of the installer that you are adding. |
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Click OK. The Edit Installer Properties Table dialog box opens, displaying properties (or response options) that need to be supplied to the installer in order for it to silently install on the virtual appliance. |
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In the Value field for each product property, specify a default value. When you enter values on this dialog box, you are creating the response file. When InstallAnywhere installs this installer in the virtual machine, it will pass on these customized values. |
Important • It is important to enter the default values in the Value column.
Note • If you want to add properties that were not automatically discovered by InstallAnywhere, click Add to add a new property. This is a required step when using third party installers because InstallAnywhere is unable to automatically discover the properties in a third party installer.
Tip • To edit values previously entered on the Edit Installers Properties Table dialog box, select the installer name on the Properties subtab of the VM Configuration tab and click View/Edit.
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Click OK. The specified installer is now listed on the Installers subtab of the VM Configuration tab. |
Note • For more information on adding installers, see Adding Installers to Your Virtual Appliance.
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Click the Build Appliance button. |
Building begins and the Building dialog box shows the progress. The appliance should be ready in a few minutes. The speed depends on your network bandwidth and the configuration of your build system. An AMI image will be produced.
Important • If you cancel an appliance build by clicking the Cancel button on the Building dialog box, InstallAnywhere will wait for the current step to complete, and then clean up the files and exit the build process. However, if you cancel when building via command line using Ctrl+C, no file clean up will take place.
If you selected the Deploy this Appliance check box on the Appliance Configuration tab, your image will be automatically deployed to the Amazon EC2 infrastructure.
For information on manually deploying an Amazon EC2 virtual appliance, see Deploying an Amazon EC2 Virtual Appliance on Demand.
Tip • For a sample project, see Using the IABookstore Sample for Creating Virtual Appliances.
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