Creating an AMI on EC2

Notes About Creating a New EC2 AMI

Back to parent: GotCloud

Note: Right now, at least, we do not provide an AMI for GotCloud, rather you must either install the software or create a volume from the snapshot we provide.

The following are notes taken when creating the Amazon Machine Instance used for the CSG pipeline process. These notes assume you have already created an EC2 account and have the certificates and keys set up properly.

Launch an instance

 Login to https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2       # EC2 Management Console

Pay attention to the region you are using, at least for now it seems any StarCluster activity must be in us-east-1. Launch a new instance which we will use to set up the software and ultimately save it as an AMI.

 EC2 DashBoard -> Launch Instance
 Class Wizard
 Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 LTS   64 bit
 Instance type -> Micro,  EC2, no preference        # Memory size does not matter
 Advanced Instance Options  (take defaults)
 Storage Device Configuration -> Edit
 Change volume to 30G -> Save -> Continue           # Storage size does not matter
 Key Name = CSG 8G biopipe; ubuntu 12.04
 Create Key/Pair if you need to, Name the PEM and save the pem file for access by ssh
 Choose a Security Group  (take default)
 Launch
   No need to Create Status Check Alarms
   No need to Create EBS Volumes

Install the pipeline software

Follow the instructions to install a Debian package debian package Run the tests to be sure everything is OK.

Create the AMI

In your browser at the EC2 Management Console do the following:

 Create Image
   Image Name   csg-biopipe_instance
   Image Description:  Image for CSG Biopipe instance
   Volume Size:  30GB
   Take defaults otherwise

This will take several minutes to complete. In the EC2 Dashboard, you can monitor the progress. When it is done, you'll see a new AMI under the list of AMIs.

Your new AMI should look pretty much like this:

 AMI: 	Ubuntu Cloud Guest AMI ID ami-3d4ff254 (x86_64)
 Name: 	Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 LTS 	 
 Description: 	Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 LTS with support available from Canonical (http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud/services).
 Number of Instances: 	1 	 
 Availability Zone: 	No Preference 	 
 Instance Type: 	Micro (t1.micro) 	 
 Instance Class: 	On Demand 	Edit Instance Details
 EBS-Optimized: 	No
 Monitoring: 	Disabled 	Termination Protection: 	Disabled 	 
 Tenancy: 	Default 	 
 Kernel ID: 	Use Default 	Shutdown Behavior: 	Stop 	 
 RAM Disk ID: 	Use Default 	 
 Network Interfaces: 		 
 Secondary IP Addresses: 		 
 User Data: 		 
 IAM Role: 		Edit Advanced Details
 Key Pair Name: 	CSG 	Edit Key Pair
 Security Group(s): 	sg-a098e9c8 	Edit Firewall

Test the new AMI

Launch a new AMI instance and check that files are in the correct places. In the EC2 Management Console do:

 EC2 DashBoard -> AMIs -> Select CSG instance -> Launch Instance
 Launch Instances  (take defaults)
 Advanced Instance Options  (take defaults)
 Storage Device Configuration -> Edit
 Change volume to 30G or whatever -> Continue       # Defaults are OK
 Instance Details
   Key Name = test of instance
 Create Key/Pair if you need to, most likely you can use one you have created
 Choose a Security Group -> sg-a098e9c8 - quick-start-1
 Review -> Launch