Ec2_instances

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Launch an EC2 instance with one of the base machine images from Amazon. An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is an encrypted file stored in Amazon S3. It contains all the information necessary to boot an EC2 instance of your software.

NOTE: Servers that are launched directly from images cannot be added to deployments.

• Machine Image - The AMI that will be used to build the machine. RightScale will only support instances launched with one of our RightImages. We recommend using ServerTemplates with RightImages. See ServerTemplates .
• Kernel image - Select a kernel image of your choice. (optional)
• Ramdisk image - Select a RAMdisk image of your choice. (optional)
• Nickname - Provide a nickname to help identify your instance.
• Count - Specify the number of instances to launch. (Default = 1)
• SSH Key - Specify your SSH Key.
• Instance Type - Specify the type of EC2 instance to launch.
• VPC Subnet - If applicable, specify a subnet of your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
• Security Group - Specify your Security Group.
• Availability Zone - Specify the availability zone where the instance should be launched. (Default = any)
• Placement Group - The name of the Placement Group into which the instance should be placed. This value should be set to '-none-' unless you are launching a cluster compute instance type. (e.g. cc1.4xlarge)
• EBS Optimized - Specify your instances as an EBS Optimized instances. Amazon charges an additional fee to use this instance type. Although this instance type is not necessarily required to utilize the functionality of Provisioned IOPS, it can help communication between EC2 and EBS. Performance benefits can be seen if you're using high amounts of network bandwidth and disk bandwidth at the same time. Additionally, Amazon guarantees that when a Provisioned IOPS volume is attached to an Optimized Instance, the volume will perform within 10% of their provisioned performance 99.9% of the time.
• User Data - This information is passed to the instance using the EC2 user launch data mechanism which is limited to 16KB of data. The best way to pass configuration data into instances is with RightScripts, but this user data field is sometimes useful for testing purposes.

Index

Below is a list of all active and inactive (terminated) server instances of Amazon's EC2. It's an exhaustive list of all instances that were launched/terminated within the selected cloud/region. Whereas the Manage -> Servers index page only lists instances that were launched from Deployments using ServerTemplates. The list below includes ServerTemplate-based instances, as well as instances that were launched using Images (e.g. AMIs).

Action Buttons

• Launch - Launch an EC2 Instance using an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and not a ServerTemplate.

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Active tab

Below is a list of all active server instances that are running on Amazon's EC2. Any instance that is listed in this table will be charged Amazon's hourly usage rate regardless of its state: pending, booting, configuring, stranded in booting, or operational. Charges will persist until an instance is successfully terminated. If a server gets stuck in the "decommissioning" phase or you want to force a "hard" terminate (similar to pulling the power chord on a server), simply click the Terminate button twice. When you perform a hard terminate, no decommission scripts will run.

Terminated tab

Below is a list of all terminated EC2 instances. You are not billed by Amazon for successfully terminated instances.

Action Buttons

• Delete - Delete a terminated instance. If you delete a terminated instance, the record will be removed from the list, however the record of that terminated instance can still be retrieved if you remember the instance's ID and can construct a url accordingly (https://my.rightscale.com/clouds/1/e...tances/1234567).

Show

This page shows you detailed information about your Server.

Action Buttons

• SSH Console - Open an SSH terminal into the instance using the configuration set in Settings > User Settings > SSH.
• RDP - (Windows only) You will need to run the Terminal Services ActiveX Client to gain remote access into the instance. Note: You must use Internet Explorer to RDP into an instance.
• Bundle - Bundle-up the instance, i.e. creates a new image from the running instance (not available for free trial accounts). As a best practice, we recommend using ServerTemplate instead bundling.
• Terminate - Terminate the instance.
• Reboot - Reboot the instance. We recommend launching fresh new servers with your ServerTemplate instead trying to reboot a troublesome server. In the cloud, you always want to "roll forward."

Is the instance locked?
Similar to deployments, you can also 'lock' a single instance. When an individual instance is locked, it cannot be moved, terminated, rebooted, or relaunched.

Clouds > AWS Region > EC2 Instances > Show

Console Output tab

The Console Output tab shows generated meta-data, which is useful for troubleshooting. The host of an EC2 instance captures the console output and "posts" it to the EC2 management server from where it can be retrieved and displayed.

There are a few details you should know about the console output:

• The console output is posted a few minutes after a server is booted or shutdown. EC2 does not provide a running console output.
• Only the last 64KB of the console output is posted.
• If you reboot an instance, the console output will be posted twice: shortly after shutting down the OS and shortly after it comes up again.
• Posted console output is only guaranteed to be retained for one hour (so you may not be able to see the boot messages of an instance that was launched a long time ago).

Click the Reload button to observe the last output data, which includes the timestamp and output size. EC2 will be queried each time the button is clicked.

Volumes tab

The Volumes tab lists the Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes that are currently attached to the Server. You can also attach a volume or snapshot.

Audit Entries tab

View a real-time changelog of actions that were performed on your server. For example, running scripts, attaching EBS volumes, launching/terminating the server.

Scripts tab

The Scripts tab shows a consolidated list of all RightScripts that are used by the Server. You can only run scripts on the current operational Server. You cannot add/remove RightScripts at the Server level.

Script Inputs tab

The Script Inputs tab shows the input parameter settings for the running server. Changes to the Script Inputs tab of a server will only affect the running server. If you want the input parameter setting to persist, you will need to make the change at the ServerTemplate level.

Alerts tab

A list of alerts that are attached to the instance. Alerts can be defined at the Server, ServerTemplate, or Server Array levels. You can either add a new alert or copy an alert from one of RightScale's predefined alerts, from a different server in one of your deployments, or from one of the Private/RightScale/Partner ServerTemplates. Once you copy an alert over, you can edit and customize the alert for your own purposes without affecting the original alert. Alerts are not global.

Warning: Changes to an alert's configuration will take effect immediately. If the server is running, you may want to disable the associated server array unless you want the changes to take effect immediately. You also have the ability to change the status of the alerts. For example, if you want to prevent a server from voting for specific alert conditions that would affect autoscaling, you can temporarily disable (quench) some or all of the alerts for one hour or 24 hours.

Info tab

The Info tab shows general information about the server, including all cloud-specific information.

Warning: Be careful when changing a running server's Elastic IP address. You do not want to accidentally steal an Elastic IP from another frontend server or send traffic to the wrong server. Once an Elastic IP is assigned to a new server and has time to settle, all traffic will be routed to that server.

Monitoring tab

View real-time monitoring graphs of the running server. Whereas only a few graphs are visible at the Dashboard and Deployment levels, all of a server's graphs are viewable under its Monitoring tab. A wide variety of metrics are monitored. If there is a particular graph that you would like to monitor on a regular basis, click the graph's "Save" option to add it to the list of favorite graphs below. (You can also use the QuickMonitoring graphs.) Drag and drop any saved graphs to change the order. Any changes to the saved graphs are persistent. Graphical data is only shown if the monitoring daemon has been installed on the instance. To enable monitoring, you will need to Set up collectd.