Chapter 3. Deploying a Red Hat Enterprise Linux image as an EC2 instance on Amazon Web Services
Chapter 3. Deploying a Red Hat Enterprise Linux image as an EC2 instance on Amazon Web Services To set up a High Availability (HA) deployment of RHEL on Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can deploy EC2 instances of RHEL to a cluster on AWS. Important While you can create a custom VM from an ISO image, Red Hat recommends that you use the Red Hat Image Builder product to create customized images for use on specific cloud providers. With Image Builder, you can create and upload an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) in the ami format. See Composing a Customized RHEL System Image for more information. Note For a list of Red Hat products that you can use securely on AWS, see Red Hat on Amazon Web Services . Prerequisites Sign up for a Red Hat Customer Portal account. Sign up for AWS and set up your AWS resources. See Setting Up with Amazon EC2 for more information. 3.1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Image options on AWS The following table lists image choices and notes the differences in the image options. Table 3.1. Image options Image option Subscriptions Sample scenario Considerations Deploy a Red Hat Gold Image. Use your existing Red Hat subscriptions. Select a Red Hat Gold Image on AWS. For details on Gold Images and how to access them on Azure, see the Red Hat Cloud Access Reference Guide . The subscription includes the Red Hat product cost; you pay Amazon for all other instance costs. Red Hat provides support directly for Cloud Access images. Deploy a custom image that you move to AWS. Use your existing Red Hat subscriptions. Upload your custom image, and attach your subscriptions. The subscription includes the Red Hat product cost; you pay Amazon for all other instance costs. Red Hat provides support directly for custom RHEL images. Deploy an existing Amazon image that includes RHEL. The AWS EC2 images include a Red Hat product. Select a RHEL image when you launch an instance on the AWS Management Console , or choose an image from the AWS Marketplace . You pay Amazon hourly on a pay-as-you-go model. Such images are called "on-demand" images. Amazon provides support for on-demand images. Red Hat provides updates to the images. AWS makes the updates available through the Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI). Note You can create a custom image for AWS by using Red Hat Image Builder. See Composing a Customized RHEL System Image for more information. Important You cannot convert an on-demand instance to a custom RHEL instance. To change from an on-demand image to a custom RHEL bring-your-own-subscription (BYOS) image: Create a new custom RHEL instance and migrate data from your on-demand instance. Cancel your on-demand instance after you migrate your data to avoid double billing. Additional resources Composing a Customized RHEL System Image AWS Management Console AWS Marketplace 3.2. Understanding base images To create a base VM from an ISO image, you can use preconfigured base images and their configuration settings. 3.2.1. Using a custom base image To manually configure a virtual machine (VM), first create a base (starter) VM image. Then, you can modify configuration settings and add the packages the VM requires to operate on the cloud. You can make additional configuration changes for your specific application after you upload the image. Additional resources Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.2.2. Virtual machine configuration settings Cloud VMs must have the following configuration settings. Table 3.2. VM configuration settings Setting Recommendation ssh ssh must be enabled to provide remote access to your VMs. dhcp The primary virtual adapter should be configured for dhcp. 3.3. Creating a base VM from an ISO image To create a RHEL 9 base image from an ISO image, enable your host machine for virtualization and create a RHEL virtual machine (VM). Prerequisites Virtualization is enabled on your host machine. You have downloaded the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux ISO image from the Red Hat Customer Portal and moved the image to /var/lib/libvirt/images . 3.3.1. Creating a VM from the RHEL ISO image Procedure Ensure that you have enabled your host machine for virtualization. See Enabling virtualization in RHEL 9 for information and procedures. Create and start a basic Red Hat Enterprise Linux VM. For instructions, see Creating virtual machines . If you use the command line to create your VM, ensure that you set the default memory and CPUs to the capacity you want for the VM. Set your virtual network interface to virtio . For example, the following command creates a kvmtest VM by using the /home/username/Downloads/rhel9.iso image: If you use the web console to create your VM, follow the procedure in Creating virtual machines by using the web console , with these caveats: Do not check Immediately Start VM . Change your Memory size to your preferred settings. Before you start the installation, ensure that you have changed Model under Virtual Network Interface Settings to virtio and change your vCPUs to the capacity settings you want for the VM. 3.3.2. Completing the RHEL installation To finish the installation of a RHEL system that you want to deploy on Amazon Web Services (AWS), customize the Installation Summary view, begin the installation, and enable root access once the VM launches. Procedure Choose the language you want to use during the installation process. On the Installation Summary view: Click Software Selection and check Minimal Install . Click Done . Click Installation Destination and check Custom under Storage Configuration . Verify at least 500 MB for /boot . You can use the remaining space for root / . Standard partitions are recommended, but you can use Logical Volume Manager (LVM). You can use xfs, ext4, or ext3 for the file system. Click Done when you are finished with changes. Click Begin Installation . Set a Root Password . Create other users as applicable. Reboot the VM and log in as root once the installation completes. Configure the image. Register the VM and enable the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 repository. Ensure that the cloud-init package is installed and enabled. Important: This step is only for VMs you intend to upload to AWS. For AMD64 or Intel 64 (x86_64)VMs, install the nvme , xen-netfront , and xen-blkfront drivers. For ARM 64 (aarch64) VMs, install the nvme driver. Including these drivers removes the possibility of a dracut time-out. Alternatively, you can add the drivers to /etc/dracut.conf.d/ and then enter dracut -f to overwrite the existing initramfs file. Power down the VM. Additional resources Introduction to cloud-init 3.4. Uploading the Red Hat Enterprise Linux image to AWS To be able to run a RHEL instance on Amazon Web Services (AWS), you must first upload your RHEL image to AWS. 3.4.1. Installing the AWS CLI Many of the procedures required to manage HA clusters in AWS include using the AWS CLI. Prerequisites You have created an AWS Access Key ID and an AWS Secret Access Key, and have access to them. For instructions and details, see Quickly Configuring the AWS CLI . Procedure Install the AWS command line tools by using the dnf command. Use the aws --version command to verify that you installed the AWS CLI. Configure the AWS command line client according to your AWS access details. Additional resources Quickly Configuring the AWS CLI AWS command line tools 3.4.2. Creating an S3 bucket Importing to AWS requires an Amazon S3 bucket. An Amazon S3 bucket is an Amazon resource where you store objects. As part of the process for uploading your image, you need to create an S3 bucket and then move your image to the bucket. Procedure Launch the Amazon S3 Console . Click Create Bucket . The Create Bucket dialog appears. In the Name and region view: Enter a Bucket name . Enter a Region . Click . In the Configure options view, select the desired options and click . In the Set permissions view, change or accept the default options and click . Review your bucket configuration. Click Create bucket . Note Alternatively, you can use the AWS CLI to create a bucket. For example, the aws s3 mb s3://my-new-bucket command creates an S3 bucket named my-new-bucket . See the AWS CLI Command Reference for more information about the mb command. Additional resources Amazon S3 Console AWS CLI Command Reference 3.4.3. Creating the vmimport role To be able to import a RHEL virtual machine (VM) to Amazon Web Services (AWS) by using the VM Import service, you need to create the vmimport role. For more information, see Importing a VM as an image using VM Import/Export in the Amazon documentation. Procedure Create a file named trust-policy.json and include the following policy. Save the file on your system and note its location. Use the create role command to create the vmimport role. Specify the full path to the location of the trust-policy.json file. Prefix file:// to the path. For example: Create a file named role-policy.json and include the following policy. Replace s3-bucket-name with the name of your S3 bucket. Use the put-role-policy command to attach the policy to the role you created. Specify the full path of the role-policy.json file. For example: Additional resources VM Import Service Role Required Service Role 3.4.4. Converting and pushing your image to S3 By using the qemu-img command, you can convert your image, so that you can push it to S3. The samples are representative; they convert an image formatted in the qcow2 file format to raw format. Amazon accepts images in OVA , VHD , VHDX , VMDK , and raw formats. See How VM Import/Export Works for more information about image formats that Amazon accepts. Procedure Run the qemu-img command to convert your image. For example: Push the image to S3. Note This procedure could take a few minutes. After completion, you can check that your image uploaded successfully to your S3 bucket by using the AWS S3 Console . Additional resources How VM Import/Export Works AWS S3 Console 3.4.5. Importing your image as a snapshot To launch a RHEL instance in the Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) service, you require an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). To create an AMI of your system, you must first upload a snapshot of your RHEL system image to EC2. Procedure Create a file to specify a bucket and path for your image. Name the file containers.json . In the sample that follows, replace s3-bucket-name with your bucket name and s3-key with your key. You can get the key for the image by using the Amazon S3 Console. Import the image as a snapshot. This example uses a public Amazon S3 file; you can use the Amazon S3 Console to change permissions settings on your bucket. The terminal displays a message such as the following. Note the ImportTaskID within the message. Track the progress of the import by using the describe-import-snapshot-tasks command. Include the ImportTaskID . The returned message shows the current status of the task. When complete, Status shows completed . Within the status, note the snapshot ID. Additional resources Amazon S3 Console Importing a Disk as a Snapshot Using VM Import/Export 3.4.6. Creating an AMI from the uploaded snapshot To launch a RHEL instance in Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) service, you require an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). To create an AMI of your system, you can use a RHEL system snapshot that you previously uploaded. Procedure Go to the AWS EC2 Dashboard. Under Elastic Block Store , select Snapshots . Search for your snapshot ID (for example, snap-0e718930bd72bcda0 ). Right-click on the snapshot and select Create image . Name your image. Under Virtualization type , choose Hardware-assisted virtualization . Click Create . In the note regarding image creation, there is a link to your image. Click on the image link. Your image shows up under Images>AMIs . Note Alternatively, you can use the AWS CLI register-image command to create an AMI from a snapshot. See register-image for more information. An example follows. You must specify the root device volume /dev/sda1 as your root-device-name . For conceptual information about device mapping for AWS, see Example block device mapping . 3.4.7. Launching an instance from the AMI To launch and configure an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance, use an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). Procedure From the AWS EC2 Dashboard, select Images and then AMIs . Right-click on your image and select Launch . Choose an Instance Type that meets or exceeds the requirements of your workload. See Amazon EC2 Instance Types for information about instance types. Click : Configure Instance Details . Enter the Number of instances you want to create. For Network , select the VPC you created when setting up your AWS environment . Select a subnet for the instance or create a new subnet. Select Enable for Auto-assign Public IP. Note These are the minimum configuration options necessary to create a basic instance. Review additional options based on your application requirements. Click : Add Storage . Verify that the default storage is sufficient. Click : Add Tags . Note Tags can help you manage your AWS resources. See Tagging Your Amazon EC2 Resources for information about tagging. Click : Configure Security Group . Select the security group you created when setting up your AWS environment . Click Review and Launch . Verify your selections. Click Launch . You are prompted to select an existing key pair or create a new key pair. Select the key pair you created when setting up your AWS environment . Note Verify that the permissions for your private key are correct. Use the command options chmod 400 <keyname>.pem to change the permissions, if necessary. Click Launch Instances . Click View Instances . You can name the instance(s). You can now launch an SSH session to your instance(s) by selecting an instance and clicking Connect . Use the example provided for A standalone SSH client . Note Alternatively, you can launch an instance by using the AWS CLI. See Launching, Listing, and Terminating Amazon EC2 Instances in the Amazon documentation for more information. Additional resources AWS Management Console Setting Up with Amazon EC2 Amazon EC2 Instances Amazon EC2 Instance Types 3.4.8. Attaching Red Hat subscriptions Using the subscription-manager command, you can register and attach your Red Hat subscription to a RHEL instance. Prerequisites You must have enabled your subscriptions. Procedure Register your system. Attach your subscriptions. You can use an activation key to attach subscriptions. See Creating Red Hat Customer Portal Activation Keys for more information. Alternatively, you can manually attach a subscription by using the ID of the subscription pool (Pool ID). See Attaching a host-based subscription to hypervisors . Optional: To collect various system metrics about the instance in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console , you can register the instance with Red Hat Insights . For information on further configuration of Red Hat Insights, see Client Configuration Guide for Red Hat Insights . Additional resources Creating Red Hat Customer Portal Activation Keys Attaching a host-based subscription to hypervisors Client Configuration Guide for Red Hat Insights 3.4.9. Setting up automatic registration on AWS Gold Images To make deploying RHEL 9 virtual machines on Amazon Web Services (AWS) faster and more comfortable, you can set up Gold Images of RHEL 9 to be automatically registered to the Red Hat Subscription Manager (RHSM). Prerequisites You have downloaded the latest RHEL 9 Gold Image for AWS. For instructions, see Using Gold Images on AWS . Note An AWS account can only be attached to a single Red Hat account at a time. Therefore, ensure no other users require access to the AWS account before attaching it to your Red Hat one. Procedure Upload the Gold Image to AWS. For instructions, see Uploading the Red Hat Enterprise Linux image to AWS . Create VMs by using the uploaded image. They will be automatically subscribed to RHSM. Verification In a RHEL 9 VM created using the above instructions, verify the system is registered to RHSM by executing the subscription-manager identity command. On a successfully registered system, this displays the UUID of the system. For example: Additional resources AWS Management Console Adding cloud integrations to the Hybrid Cloud Console 3.5. Additional resources Red Hat Cloud Access Reference Guide Red Hat in the Public Cloud Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Amazon EC2 - FAQs Setting Up with Amazon EC2 Red Hat on Amazon Web Services
virt-install --name kvmtest --memory 2048 --vcpus 2 --cdrom /home/username/Downloads/rhel9.iso,bus=virtio --os-variant=rhel9.0 subscription-manager register --auto-attach dnf install cloud-init systemctl enable --now cloud-init.service dracut -f --add-drivers "nvme xen-netfront xen-blkfront" dracut -f --add-drivers "nvme" dnf install awscli aws --version aws-cli/1.19.77 Python/3.6.15 Linux/5.14.16-201.fc34.x86_64 botocore/1.20.77 aws configure AWS Access Key ID [None]: AWS Secret Access Key [None]: Default region name [None]: Default output format [None]: { "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Principal": { "Service": "vmie.amazonaws.com" }, "Action": "sts:AssumeRole", "Condition": { "StringEquals":{ "sts:Externalid": "vmimport" } } } ] } aws iam create-role --role-name vmimport --assume-role-policy-document file:///home/sample/ImportService/trust-policy.json { "Version":"2012-10-17", "Statement":[ { "Effect":"Allow", "Action":[ "s3:GetBucketLocation", "s3:GetObject", "s3:ListBucket" ], "Resource":[ "arn:aws:s3:::s3-bucket-name", "arn:aws:s3:::s3-bucket-name/*" ] }, { "Effect":"Allow", "Action":[ "ec2:ModifySnapshotAttribute", "ec2:CopySnapshot", "ec2:RegisterImage", "ec2:Describe*" ], "Resource":"*" } ] } aws iam put-role-policy --role-name vmimport --policy-name vmimport --policy-document file:///home/sample/ImportService/role-policy.json qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O raw rhel-9.0-sample.qcow2 rhel-9.0-sample.raw aws s3 cp rhel-9.0-sample.raw s3://s3-bucket-name { "Description": "rhel-9.0-sample.raw", "Format": "raw", "UserBucket": { "S3Bucket": "s3-bucket-name", "S3Key": "s3-key" } } aws ec2 import-snapshot --disk-container file://containers.json { "SnapshotTaskDetail": { "Status": "active", "Format": "RAW", "DiskImageSize": 0.0, "UserBucket": { "S3Bucket": "s3-bucket-name", "S3Key": "rhel-9.0-sample.raw" }, "Progress": "3", "StatusMessage": "pending" }, "ImportTaskId": "import-snap-06cea01fa0f1166a8" } aws ec2 describe-import-snapshot-tasks --import-task-ids import-snap-06cea01fa0f1166a8 aws ec2 register-image --name "myimagename" --description "myimagedescription" --architecture x86_64 --virtualization-type hvm --root-device-name "/dev/sda1" --ena-support --block-device-mappings "{\"DeviceName\": \"/dev/sda1\",\"Ebs\": {\"SnapshotId\": \"snap-0ce7f009b69ab274d\"}}" subscription-manager register --auto-attach insights-client register --display-name <display-name-value> subscription-manager identity system identity: fdc46662-c536-43fb-a18a-bbcb283102b7 name: 192.168.122.222 org name: 6340056 org ID: 6340056