In this talk I gave at IIT ITMO TechTalks 2013, I discussed how YSFlight Headquarters is using Amazon Web Services to give more reliable service to its users, while keeping costs down and maintenance time minimal. After discussing what I learned when using AWS for YSFHQ, I delved into how to get started with Amazon Web Services and some of the neat things you can do. -- Eric Tendian (eric@tendian.io) Web Solutions Consultant, Tendian.io Chief Technology Officer, YSFlight Headquarters Bachelor of Info. Tech. and Mgmt., Illinois Institute of Technology (c/o 2017) Website: tendian.io

1. Flying Through the Clouds:
Piloting in the World of AWS
Presented by Eric Tendian

2. Eric Tendian
@EricTendian
/in/erictendian
ERIC@TENDIAN.IO

3. ABOUT ME
Chief Technology Officer for YSFlight Headquarters
Web Solutions Consultant for Tendian.io
Hacker, tinkerer, developer
AVIATION

4. YSFLIGHT HEADQUARTERS

5. YSFLIGHT HEADQUARTERS
Online community for flight
simulator pilots
Discussion forums
Based around the game YSFlight
YSFHQ.com

6. OUR PHILOSOPHY

7. Make the users work to get what they want
Bugs are fun!
Approach the cloud with caution
Windows Server FTW!

8. JUST KIDDING.

9. Our real philosophy:
Give the user the best experience, always
Pilots want fast & free
Fix, test, deploy
Use cloud whenever possible

10. What it really looks like

11. HOW DID WE ACCOMPLISH THIS?

12. AMAZON WEB SERVICES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOhbTAU4OPI

13. OUR SETUP
One EC2 micro instance
One RDS micro instance
Multiple S3 buckets
Cloudflare DNS

14. WHAT WE LEARNED
Start small
Make use of all AWS resources
Cloud is $$$ when managed poorly
Developers love AWS

15. HOW CAN I USE AWS?
Development machine(s)
Testing on the cloud
Side projects
Startups
Static website

16. EXCITED? LET’S GET STARTED.

17. Getting Started with AWS
Eric Tendian
Web Solutions Consultant, Tendian.io

18. Launching an
instance

19. Regions
Region

20. Regions
Region
US-WEST (N.
California)
EU-WEST (Ireland)
ASIA PAC
(Tokyo)
GOV CLOUD
US-EAST (Virginia)
US-WEST (Oregon)
ASIA PAC
(Singapore)
SOUTH AMERICA (Sao
Paulo)
ASIA PAC
(Sydney)

21. Launch Wizard
Wizard

22. Launch Wizard
Choose
operating
system

23. Launch
Launch!

24. Launch Confirmation

25. Public Address
Instance
DNS name

26. SSH
Instance
DNS name

27. SSH

28. EC2

29. Compute
Vertical Scaling
From $0.02/hr
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Basic unit of compute capacity
Range of CPU, memory & local disk options
18 Instance types available, from micro to cluster compute
Feature
Details
Flexible
Run Windows or Linux distributions
Scalable
Wide range of instance types from micro to cluster compute
Machine Images
Full control
Secure
Configurations can be saved as machine images (AMIs) from which new instances can be created
Full root or administrator rights
Full firewall control via Security Groups
Monitoring
Publishes metrics to Cloud Watch
Inexpensive
On-demand, Reserved and Spot instance types
VM Import/Export
Import and export VM images to transfer configurations in and out of EC2

30. EC2 instance types
High I/O 4XL 60.5 GB
35 EC2 Compute Units
16 virtual cores
2*1024 GB SSD-based local instance
storage
256
Memory (GB)
32
Cluster Compute 4XL 23 GB
33.5 EC2 Compute Units
Extra Large 15 GB
8 EC2 Compute
Units
4 virtual cores
16
2
Cluster Compute 8XL 60.5
GB
88 EC2 Compute Units
Hi-Mem 2XL 34.2 GB
13 EC2 Compute
Units
4 virtual cores
Hi-Mem XL 17.1 GB
6.5 EC2 Compute
Units
2 virtual cores
64
4
Hi-Mem Cluster Compute 8XL
244 GB
88 EC2 Compute Units
16 virtual cores
240 GB SSD
Hi-Mem 4XL 68.4 GB
26 EC2 Compute
Units
8 virtual cores
128
8
High Storage 8XL 117 GB
35 EC2 Compute Units,
24 * 2 TB ephemeral
drives
10 GB Ethernet
Medium 3.7 GB,
2 EC2 Compute
Units
1 virtual core
M3 XL 15 GB
13 EC2 Compute
Units 4 virtual
cores
EBS storage only
Large 7.5 GB
4 EC2 Compute
Units
2 virtual cores
Small 1.7 GB,
1 EC2 Compute
Unit
1 virtual core
Micro 613 MB
Up to 2 ECUs (for
short bursts)
1
1
2
4
8
High-CPU Med 1.7
GB
5 EC2 Compute
Units
2 virtual cores
16
32
M3 2XL 30 GB
26 EC2 Compute
Units 8 virtual
cores
EBS storage only
Cluster GPU 4XL 22 GB
33.5 EC2 Compute Units,
2 x NVIDIA Tesla “Fermi”
M2050 GPUs
High-CPU XL 7 GB
20 EC2 Compute
Units
8 virtual cores
64
EC2 Compute Units
128
256

31. EC2 instance types
Memory (GB)
Special
Storage
Light
Spiky
EC2 Compute Units

32. EC2 terminology
Instanc
e
AMI
EBS
Amazon Machine
Image
Running or
Stopped
machine
EBS
EBS
EBS
EBS
EBS
Availability Zone
AZ
EBS
Snapshots
S3
Region
S3 Buckets

33. More details!

34. Sign up
1
2
3
4
5
Sign up:
aws.amazon.com

35. Sign up
1
2
3
4
5

36. Sign up
1
2
3
4
5

37. Sign up
1
2
3
4
5
You will need
Credit card information – you won’t pay unless you use resources
A telephone – on which to receive an automated security call

38. Sign up
1
2
3
4
5
You will need
Credit card information – you won’t pay unless you use resources
A telephone – on which to receive an automated security call
Best practice
Setup billing alerts so you can be notified when levels of spend are
reached
If you have existing accounts, consider using consolidated billing to bring
them together under one payment

39. Sign up
1
Free tier
2
3
4
http://aws.amazon.com/free/
750 hours of Amazon EC2 Linux/RedHat/Suse Micro Instance usage
750 hours of Amazon EC2 Microsoft Windows Server Micro Instance usage
750 hours of an Elastic Load Balancer
30 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage
5 GB of Amazon S3 standard storage
100 MB of storage, 5 units of write capacity, and 10 units of read capacity for Amazon DynamoDB*
25 Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hours and 1 GB of Storage
1,000 Amazon SWF workflow executions*
1,000,000 Requests of Amazon Simple Queue Service*
1,000,000 Requests, 100,000 HTTP and 1,000 email notifications for Amazon Simple Notification Service*
10 Amazon CloudWatch metrics, 10 alarms, and 1,000,000 API requests*
15 GB of bandwidth out aggregated across all AWS services
750 hours of Amazon RDS for SQL Server Micro DB Instance usage
20 GB of RDS database storage
10 million RDS I/Os
20 GB of backup storage for your automated RDS database backups and any user-initiated DB Snapshots
20 minutes of SD transcoding or 10 minutes of HD transcoding in Amazon Elastic Transcoder*
5

40. Sign up
1
2
3
4
5

41. Sign up
Key pairs
1
2
3
4
5
Logging in to an
instance

42. Sign up
Key pairs
1
2
3
Instance key pairs
Standard SSH RSA Key pair
Public/Private Keys
4
5
Public Key
Inserted by Amazon into
each EC2 instance that
you launch
Public key provided by AWS to EC2
instance for secure, personalized, initial,
non-generic access
Supports NIST and other security standards
for providing non-default user access
EC2
Instance
Comms secured
with private key
Private Key
Downloaded and stored
by you

43. Sign up
Key pairs
1
2
3
Instance key pairs
Standard SSH RSA Key pair
Public/Private Keys
4
5
Public Key
Inserted by Amazon into
each EC2 instance that
you launch
Public key provided by AWS to EC2
instance for secure, personalized, initial,
non-generic access
Supports NIST and other security standards
for providing non-default user access
Private keys are not
stored by AWS
EC2
Instance
Comms secured
with private key
Private Key
Downloaded and stored
by you

44. Sign up
Key pairs
1
2
3
4
5
AWS generated keys
Select your region
Create keys
Give them a name
Private key is generated and downloaded by your browser immediately
Create 1 key pair for all resources or as many as you like (e.g 1 per server type)
Import your own keys
You supply only the public key to AWS

45. Sign up
Key pairs
1
2
3
4
5
1. Linux Launch (First Boot)
1. Instance initialization scripts insert public
key into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
2. User connects with SSH using their Private
Key
ssh –I eu-west.pem
ec2-user@publicdns.amazonaws.com

46. Sign up
Key pairs
1
2
3
4
5
1. Linux Launch (First Boot)
1. Instance initialization scripts insert public
key into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
ssh –I eu-west.pem
ec2-user@publicdns.amazonaws.com
2. User connects with SSH using their Private
Key
You can’t log into a Linux
instance without key

47. Sign up
Key pairs
1
2
3
4
5
1. Linux Launch (First Boot)
1. Instance initialization scripts insert public
key into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
ssh –I eu-west.pem
ec2-user@publicdns.amazonaws.com
2. User connects with SSH using their Private
Key
Don’t lose it

48. Sign up
Key pairs
1
2
3
4
5
1. Windows Launch (First Boot Sequence)
2. Instance initialization scripts:
a) Creates a random Administrator password
b) Encrypts random password with Public Key
c) Reports encrypted password to Windows System Log
3. User retrieves the encrypted password and decrypts it with their Private Key (using
AWS Console or API Call)

49. Sign up
1
Choose key
pair when
launching
instance
Key pairs
2
3
4
5

50. Sign up
Key pairs
1
2
3
4
5
Keep
secure
Do not
share
Rotate
Need to
know

51. Sign up
Key pairs
1
2
3
4
5

52. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
1
2
3
4
5
Allowing access
to the instance

53. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
1
2
3
4
5
Let’s install something
sudo yum -y install httpd
Install apache web server
sudo chkconfig httpd on
Set it to run as a service
sudo /etc/init.d/httpd start
Start the web server

54. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
1
2
3
4
5
Security groups
Port 22
(SSH)
Port 80
(HTTP)
Security
Group
Name
Description
Protocol
Port range
IP Address, range, or another security group
EC2 Classic
Inbound only
instance
EC2 VPC (virtual private cloud)
Inbound and outbound
TCP UDP ICMP only
,
,
Assigned at launch
Modify anytime
Any protocol
Assigned at launch or when running
Modify anytime

55. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
1
2
3
4
5
Open our security group
Security
groups
Added port 80
to group

56. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
1
2
3
4
5
T it by hitting the public DNS name of
est
the instance

57. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
1
2
3
4
5

58. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
1
2
3
4
Reuse your
instance!
5

59. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
1
2
3
4
Makes a snapshot of the instance
Creates an image that is private to you
Saves time in deployments and system setup
5

60. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
1
2
3
4
Create
image
5

61. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
1
2
3
4
Name it
and
create
5

62. Sign up
Access
Image
1
Your
AMI
Key pairs
2
3
4
5

63. Sign up
Access
Image
1
…and
launch a
new
instance
from the
AMI
Key pairs
2
3
4
5

64. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
1
2
3
4
5

65. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
IAM users
1
2
3
4
5
Who can start
an instance?

66. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
IAM users
1
2
3
4
5
Identity and Access Management:
Securely control access to AWS
services and resources for your
users

67. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
IAM users
1
2
3
4
5
Account owner
Access to all subscribed services
Access to billing reports
Access to console, REST and SOAP APIs
IAM users/groups
Access to specific services
Access to console and/or REST APIs and/or SOAP APIs

68. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
IAM users
1
2
3
4
5
Account owner
Access to all subscribed services
Access to billing reports
Access to console, REST and SOAP APIs
Master user
account – owns
payment method
Regular users
IAM users/groups
Access to specific services
Access to console and/or REST APIs and/or SOAP APIs

69. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
IAM users
1
2
3
4
5
Account
Administrators
Developers
Applications
Jim
Brad
Reporting
Bob
Mark
Console
Susan
Tomcat
Kevin

70. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
IAM users
1
2
3
4
5
Groups
Account
Administrators
Developers
Applications
Jim
Brad
Reporting
Bob
Mark
Console
Susan
Tomcat
Kevin
Multi-factor authentication

71. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
IAM users
1
2
3
4
5
Roles
Account
Administrators
Developers
Applications
Jim
Brad
Reporting
Bob
Mark
Console
Susan
Tomcat
Kevin
AWS system entitlements

72. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
IAM users
1
2
3
4
5
{
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"elasticbeanstalk:*",
"ec2:*",
"elasticloadbalancing:*",
"autoscaling:*",
"cloudwatch:*",
"s3:*",
"sns:*"
],
"Resource": "*"
}
]
Policy driven
Declarative definition of
rights for groups
Policies control access to
AWS APIs
}

73. Sign up
Key pairs
Access
Image
IAM users
1
2
3
4
5

74. Next Steps
Auto Scaling
Automatic re-sizing of compute clusters
based upon demand
Elastic Load Balancing
Create highly scalable applications
Distribute load across EC2 instances in multiple
availability zones
Relational Database Service
Database-as-a-Service
No need to install or manage database instances
Scalable and fault tolerant configurations

75. Next Steps

76. aws.amazon.com
get started with the free tier

77. Thanks!
Q & A?
For more info, please visit:
http://engineering.ysfhq.com
http://aws.amazon.com/