How do I launch a new Zeus instance using Amazon's command line tools?Zeus Traffic Manager and Zeus Load Balancer are now available on EC2 as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). An AMI is a template from which EC2 virtual machines, called instances, can be created. An instance is essentially a Zeus virtual appliance packaged for use on EC2. There are three main steps to getting a traffic manager up and running in EC2:
This article assumes that you have already signed up to use a Zeus AMI. If you have not, please sign up by following the instructions in the EC2 sign up article before continuing. There are several tools that you can use to manage your EC2 virtual machines. This article explains how to use Amazon's command-line tools, but if you prefer a graphical interface you might like to try Amazon's web-based AWS Management Console. Install the EC2 API toolsThe EC2 API Tools require Java, so first make sure that you have the latest version of Java installed. Next, download the ZIP file containing the latest version of the EC2 API Tools from Amazon's web site. Unzip the file - this will create a directory called ec2-api-tools-VERSION. The tools themselves are in the bin subdirectory. For convenience you may want to add the bin subdirectory to your PATH. You must also set the following environment variables:
Configure security groupsBy default, a new EC2 instance is protected by a restrictive firewall that blocks all inbound connections but does not affect outbound connections. To connect to Zeus AMI instances, you must open certain ports in the firewall and specify host addresses that you want to allow to connect to them. EC2 firewall rules are managed by "Security Groups", and you will need to create two of them:
When you launch an instance, you can choose which Security Groups to assign to it.
You only need to create Security Groups once, but if you want to run instances in both the US and EU EC2 regions you will need to create the groups manually in each region. Create the administration server security group first, by running the following command:
This creates a new group called "zeus-admin-server", with the description "SSH and Admin Server access". If the command is successful it returns a line describing the new group. 815181475850 is the EC2 account which was used to create this group. A newly-created security group does not allow any incoming connections, which we can verify using the ec2-describe-group command.
Add TCP ports 22 (Secure Shell login) and 9090 (Zeus admin server) to the group. Since these are administration ports, we would also like to limit who can connect to them. To do this, you can specify a netmask that allows connections from addresses in the range 212.44.21.0-212.44.21.127 - substitute your own address or netmask here.
Repeat this process to create a Security Group that allows access to HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443). As these are public services, there is no need to specify a netmask - the rule will permit connections from any host.
Launch a Zeus instanceHaving created appropriate security groups, you can now launch a Zeus instance. To do this, you will need the AMI ID of the Zeus product to which you subscribed earlier, which is given in the last stage of the sign up process. In addition, all Zeus AMI IDs are listed in this FAQ.
The -d password=<secret> option pre-configures your traffic manager's admin user. Make a note of this password - you will need it to through the Zeus Initial Setup Wizard, and later to log into the administration server. You can configure several aspects of your traffic manager using options passed with the -d flag - see the Zeus on EC2 Getting Started Guide for a complete list. This command will launch an 'm1.small' 32-bit instance, which is the default instance type on EC2.
Different instance types have varying levels of memory, CPU power and I/O performance.
An 'm1.small' instance is sufficient for demonstration, but a busy web site will probably need a more powerful one.
To start a different type of instance, add the -t <instance> type option to the Note: if you want to launch a 64-bit Zeus image you must specify -t m1.large in your
Connect to the traffic manager administration interfaceThe new instance will be listed in the 'pending' state until it finishes starting up. It can take several minutes to start up. When the instance finishes booting its status will change from "starting" to "running", and its public and private IP and DNS addresses will be available. You can see the current status of all your instances using the
This shows that the Note: The instance's public DNS and IP addresses might change later on if you create a Traffic IP Group. For more information, see the Fault Tolerance section of the Zeus on EC2 Getting Started Guide. What next?You now have an instance of your Zeus traffic management software running on EC2. The next step is to configure the software and log into the administration interface, where you can set up your services. You can learn how to do that in the next article in this series. |
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