AWS Automation

This page describes the functionality of a bash script that automates the setup of SAP Sailing Analytics instances.

Importance

  • Avoiding misconfiguration of instances due to human mistakes
  • Allowing fast reaction times to external needs (e.g. horizontal scaling)
  • Saving time

Scenarios

  • SAP instance on a dedicated EC2 instance
  • SAP instance on a shared EC2 instance
  • SAP instance on a dedicated EC2 instance as a master
  • SAP instance on a dedicated EC2 instance as a replica

Basics

1. Example setup: SAP instance on a dedicated EC2 instance

Login to the https://aws.amazon.com/console/. Account number: 017363970217.

Parameters necessary for EC2 instance:

  • Keypair
  • Instance type (e.g. t2.medium)
  • Security group
  • Image
  • User Data

Example of content for parameter User Data:

MONGODB_HOST=123.123.123.123
MONGODB_PORT=27017
MONGODB_NAME=wcsantander2017 
SERVER_NAME=wcsantander2017
USE_ENVIRONMENT=live-server
INSTALL_FROM_RELEASE=build-201803302246
SERVER_STARTUP_NOTIFY=leon.radeck@sap.com

2. SAP instance configuration

Necessary configuration steps:

  • Create event in admin console
  • Create new user account with permissions for that event
  • Change admin password

If instance home page or event page should be reachable by a specific URL:

Add one of the following lines to /etc/httpd/conf.d/001-events.conf:

Use Home-SSL [instance name].sapsailing.com 127.0.0.1 8888" 

Use Event-SSL [instance name].sapsailing.com “[event id]“ 127.0.0.1 8888

Then check and reload apache configuration by entering the commands:

apachectl configtest
sudo service httpd reload

3. Load Balancer configuration

To reach the SAP instance by a specific URL (e.g. wcsantander2017.sapsailing.com), follow these steps:

  • Create target group with name "S-dedicated-wcsantander2017"
  • Create rule within HTTPS listener of load balancer. Enter "wcsantander2017.sapsailing.com" as a host name matching rule. Choose target group created in step one.
  • Configure the health check of the target group
  • Register instance within the target group

Translation: Way of a HTTP/HTTPS request from the load balancer to the sap instance (simplified)

AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI)

Information about installation and configuration of the AWS CLI can be found here https://aws.amazon.com/de/cli/.

Example command and response of the AWS CLI to get information about all existing EC2 instances of a region:

Command: aws –region eu-west-2 ec2 describe-instances

Response:

{
“Reservations”: [
 {
“Instances”: [
 {
“Monitoring”: {
“State”: “disabled”
 },
“PublicDnsName”: “ec2-35-178-117-16.eu-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com”,
“State”: {
“Code”: 16,
“Name”: “running”
 },
“EbsOptimized”: false,
“LaunchTime”: “2018-04-06T04:09:29.000Z”,
“PublicIpAddress”: “35.178.117.16”,
“PrivateIpAddress”: “172.31.38.162”,
“ProductCodes”: [],
“VpcId”: “vpc-e5ba568c”,
“StateTransitionReason”: “”,
“InstanceId”: “i-066952116fe71fa65”,
“ImageId”: “ami-39f3e25d”,
“PrivateDnsName”: “ip-172-31-38-162.eu-west-2.compute.internal”,
“KeyName”: “leonradeck-keypair”,
[...]
Filtering

Limit instances that are returned by passing a parameter:

aws ec2 describe-instances –instance-ids i-066952116fe71fa65

Querying

Get value of specific attribute:

aws ec2 describe-instances –instance-ids i-066952116fe71fa65 –query ‘Reservations[*].Instances[*]. PublicDnsName’

aws ec2 describe-vpcs –query ‘Vpcs[?IsDefault==true].VpcId’

More syntax information can be found here http://jmespath.org/.

Formatting

Use text as output format:

public_dns_name=$(aws ec2 describe-instances –instance-ids i-066952116fe71fa65 –query ‘Reservations[]. Instances[].PublicDnsName’ –output text)

Script

Files

aws-setup.sh:

  • Parameter processing
  • Sourcing of utils.sh, ~/aws-automation/confi g, ~/aws-automation/confi g-[region].sh
  • Start of scenarios
  • Helper methods

lib/build-config.sh:

  • GitHub script to write and read user configuration variables

lib/functions_app.sh:

  • Functions that relate to SAP instance configuration

lib/functions_ec2.sh:

  • Functions that relate to EC2 instance configuration

lib/functions_elb.sh:

  • Functions that relate to Elastic Load Balancing

lib/functions_io.sh:

  • Input processing (optional input, passwords, value proposals, default initialization)
  • Creation of user configuration files

lib/functions_wrapper.sh:

  • Wrapper functions with error handling logic

lib/require_variables.sh:

  • Declare input variable attributes (optional, required, password, default value, user question)

lib/scenario_associate_alb.sh:

  • Associate instance with load balancer (target group, health check, rule, apache configuration)

lib/scenario_instance.sh:

  • Create event
  • Change admin password
  • Associate with load balancer (target group, health check, rule, apache configuration)

lib/scenario_master_instance.sh:

  • Create instance with correct user data to be used as master
  • Create launch template for replica with matching user data to master

lib/scenario_replica_instance.sh:

  • Starting of a launch template

lib/scenario_shared_instance.sh:

  • Creation of a SAP instance on an existing EC2 instance
  • Check preconditions
  • Associate SAP instance with load balancer

lib/util_functions.sh:

  • Helper functions

lib/utils.sh:

  • Sourcing logic

lib/validation.sh:

  • Validation functions

lib/variables.sh:

  • Variables

Preconditions

  • AWS CLI (configured)
  • Cygwin with following packages: jq, openssh, wget, curl

User input

Every scenario requires user input for specific variables. For example the setup of a dedicated SAP instance on an EC2 instance requires the following variables:

  • region
  • load balancer
  • instance type (e.g. t2.medium)
  • security group
  • image
  • instance name
  • instanz short name (e.g. for subdomains)
  • mongodb host and port
  • alternative SSH user (default: root)
  • build version
  • keypair name
  • keypair path
  • event name (optional)
  • new admin password (optional)

The script is built for the processing of parameters but the functionality is currently not used.

User input flow example:

Translation comment (1):

If the parameter for the region was not passed ($region_param is empty) then the user has to do the input by himself after being prompted. The default value equals to $default_region. The value is found inside the file ~/aws-automation/config and was sourced at the start of the script. The input is required because the variable NOT_OPTIONAL was passed. The input is shown ($SHOW_INPUT).

Translation comment (2):

The user input is assigned to the global variable region.

If the input variable is not a text but a type of resource from AWS (e.g. load balancer) the following mechanism will take effect:

Translation comment (1):

Fills the variable RESOURCE_MAP with all available resources of type of the parameter. Keys are the ids and values are the names of the resources. The name of a resources equals to the value of a tag with key "name".

Translation comment (2):

Likewise.

Translation comment (3):

Displays all resources to the user. Assigns the selected resource id to the variable load balancer.

Error handling

To inform the user about problems during script execution, return values of some commands (e.g. aws, curl or ssh) will be tested for validity. The logic is encapsulated in the wrapper functions (e.g. aws_wrapper, curl_wrapper or ssh_wrapper) inside the file functions_wrapper.sh.

Configuration management

At the first start of the script, the following files are created:

  • ~/aws-automation/config
  • ~/aws-automation/config-[region]

The file ~/aws-automation/config contains all user variables that are region independent.

default_region=
default_server_startup_notify=
default_build_complete_notify=

The file ~/aws-automation/config-[region] contains all user variables for that specific region.

default_instance_type=
default_ssh_user=
default_key_name=
default_key_fi le=
default_mongodb_host=
default_mongodb_port=
default_new_admin_password=

The user can assign values to that variable that are then used as default proposals.

Scenarios