Example Product Name on the AWS Cloud

Quick Start Reference Deployment

May, 2020
John Doe and Jane Doe - Example Company Name, Ltd.
Jim Smith - AWS Global Partner SA, AWS & Joe Jones - Technical Product Manager, AWS

The above information is configured within specific/_settings.adoc

Visit our GitHub repository for source files and to post feedback, report bugs, or submit feature ideas for this Quick Start.

This Quick Start was created by Example Company Name, Ltd. in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Quick Starts are automated reference deployments that use AWS CloudFormation templates to deploy key technologies on AWS, following AWS best practices.

Overview

This Quick Start reference deployment guide provides step-by-step instructions for deploying Example Product Name on the AWS Cloud.

This portion of the deployment guide is located at docs/specific/target_and_usage

This Quick Start is for users who <target audience and usage scenario>

Please know that we may share who uses AWS Quick Starts with the AWS Partner Network (APN) Partner that collaborated with AWS on the content of the Quick Start.

Example Product Name on AWS

This portion of the deployment guide is located at docs/specific/product_description.adoc

<Describe how the software works on AWS.>

Cost

You are responsible for the cost of the AWS services used while running this Quick Start reference deployment. There is no additional cost for using the Quick Start.

The AWS CloudFormation template for this Quick Start includes configuration parameters that you can customize. Some of the settings, such as the instance type, affect the cost of deployment. For cost estimates, see the pricing pages for each AWS service you will use. Prices are subject to change. To get an estimate, you can use the

After you deploy the Quick Start, we recommend that you enable the AWS Cost and Usage Report. This report delivers billing metrics to an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket in your account. It provides cost estimates based on usage throughout each month and finalizes the data at the end of the month. For more information about the report, see the AWS documentation.

Software Licenses

This portion of the deployment guide is located at docs/specific/licenses.adoc

These two paragraphs provide an example of the details you can provide. Provide links as appropriate.

Example content below:

<license information>This Quick Start requires a license for Example Product Name. To use the Quick Start in your production environment, sign up for a license at <link>. When you launch the Quick Start, place the license key in an S3 bucket and specify its location.

If you don’t have a license, the Quick Start deploys with a trial license. The trial license gives you <n> days of free usage in a non-production environment. After this time, you can upgrade to a production license by following the instructions at <link>.

<AMI information>The Quick Start requires a subscription to the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for Example Product Name, which is available from AWS Marketplace. Additional pricing, terms, and conditions may apply. For instructions, see step 2 in the deployment section.

Architecture

This portion of the deployment guide is located at docs/specific/architecture.adoc

Deploying this Quick Start for a new virtual private cloud (VPC) with default parameters builds the following Example Product Name environment in the AWS Cloud.

image

Figure 1: Quick Start architecture for Example Product Name on AWS

As shown in Figure 1, the Quick Start sets up the following:

  • A highly available architecture that spans two Availability Zones.*

  • A VPC configured with public and private subnets, according to AWS best practices, to provide you with your own virtual network on AWS.*

In the public subnets:

  • Managed network address translation (NAT) gateways to allow outbound internet access for resources in the private subnets.*

  • A Linux bastion host in an Auto Scaling group to allow inbound Secure Shell (SSH) access to EC2 instances in public and private subnets.*

In the private subnets: * <describe any additional components>.

*The template that deploys the Quick Start into an existing VPC skips the components marked by asterisks and prompts you for your existing VPC configuration.

Planning the deployment

Specialized knowledge

This deployment guide requires a moderate level of familiarity with AWS services. If you’re new to AWS, visit the Getting Started Resource Center and the AWS Training and Certification website. These sites provide materials for learning how to design, deploy, and operate your infrastructure and applications on the AWS Cloud.

This portion of the deployment guide is located at docs/specific/specialized_knowledge.adoc

This Quick Start assumes familiarity with <knowledge expectations>.

AWS account

If you don’t already have an AWS account, create one at https://aws.amazon.com by following the on-screen instructions. Part of the sign-up process involves receiving a phone call and entering a PIN using the phone keypad.

Your AWS account is automatically signed up for all AWS services. You are charged only for the services you use.

Technical requirements

Before you launch the Quick Start, your account must be configured as specified below. Otherwise, deployment might fail.

Resource Limits

If necessary, request service quota increases for the following resources. You might need to do this if an existing deployment uses these resources, and you might exceed the default quotas with this deployment. The Service Quotas console displays your usage and quotas for some aspects of some services. For more information, see the AWS documentation.

Resource

This deployment uses

VPCs

<n>

Elastic IP addresses

<n>

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) security groups

<n>

IAM roles

<n>

Auto Scaling groups

<n>

Application Load Balancers

<n>

Network Load Balancers

<n>

<type> instances

<n>

Supported Regions

The following regions are currently supported by this Quick Start Reference Architecture.

This portion of the deployment guide is located at docs/specific/regions.adoc

  • us-east-1 (N. Virginia) (EXAMPLE)

  • us-east-2 (Ohio) (EXAMPLE)

Certain regions are available on an opt-in basis. Please refer to the AWS Documentaiton on Managing Regions for more information.

EC2 Key Pairs

This section is conditional on EC2 instances being used in the Cloudformation Templates

Make sure that at least one Amazon EC2 key pair exists in your AWS account in the Region where you plan to deploy the Quick Start. Make note of the key pair name. You need it during deployment. To create a key pair, follow the instructions in the AWS documentation.

For testing or proof-of-concept purposes, we recommend creating a new key pair instead of using one that’s already being used by a production instance.

IAM Permissions

Before launching the Quick Start, you must log in to the AWS Management Console with IAM permissions for the resources and actions the templates deploy.

The AdministratorAccess managed policy within IAM provides sufficient permissions, although your organization may choose to use a custom policy with more restrictions.

Deployment options

This Quick Start provides two deployment options:

  • Deploy Example Product Name into a new VPC (end-to-end deployment). This option builds a new AWS environment consisting of the VPC, subnets, NAT gateways, security groups, bastion hosts, and other infrastructure components. It then deploys Example Product Name into this new VPC.

  • Deploy Example Product Name into an existing VPC. This option provisions Example Product Name in your existing AWS infrastructure.

The Quick Start provides separate templates for these options. It also lets you configure Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) blocks, instance types, and Example Product Name settings, as discussed later in this guide.

Deployment Steps

Step 1. Sign in to your AWS account

  1. Sign in to your AWS account at https://aws.amazon.com with an IAM user role that has the necessary permissions. For details, see Planning the deployment earlier in this guide.

  2. Make sure that your AWS account is configured correctly, as discussed in the Technical requirements section.

Step 2. Subscribe to the Example Product Name AMI

This Quick Start requires a subscription to the AMI for Example Product Name in AWS Marketplace.

  1. Sign in to your AWS account.

  2. Open the page for the Example Product Name AMI in AWS Marketplace, and then choose Continue to Subscribe.

  3. Review the terms and conditions for software usage, and then choose Accept Terms.
    A confirmation page loads, and an email confirmation is sent to the account owner. For detailed subscription instructions, see the AWS Marketplace documentation.

  4. When the subscription process is complete, exit out of AWS Marketplace without further action. Do not provision the software from AWS Marketplace—the Quick Start deploys the AMI for you.

Step 3. Launch the Quick Start

Note: You are responsible for the cost of the AWS services used while running this Quick Start reference deployment. There is no additional cost for using this Quick Start. For full details, see the pricing pages for each AWS service used by this Quick Start. Prices are subject to change.

  1. Sign in to your AWS account, and choose one of the following options to launch the AWS CloudFormation template. For help with choosing an option, see deployment options earlier in this guide.

This portion of the deployment guide is located at docs/specific/_qs_deploy_links.adoc

Deploy Example Product Name into a new VPC on AWS

Deploy Example Product Name into an existing VPC on AWS

Important: If you’re deploying Example Product Name into an existing VPC, make sure that your VPC has two private subnets in different Availability Zones for the workload instances, and that the subnets aren’t shared. This Quick Start doesn’t support shared subnets. These subnets require NAT gateways in their route tables, to allow the instances to download packages and software without exposing them to the internet.

Also, make sure that the domain name option in the DHCP options is configured as explained in the Amazon VPC documentation. You provide your VPC settings when you launch the Quick Start.

Each deployment takes about 30 minutes / 1 hour to complete.

  1. Check the AWS Region that’s displayed in the upper-right corner of the navigation bar, and change it if necessary. This is where the network infrastructure for Example Product Name will be built. The template is launched in the us-east-1 Region by default.

  1. On the Create stack page, keep the default setting for the template URL, and then choose Next.

  2. On the Specify stack details page, change the stack name if needed. Review the parameters for the template. Provide values for the parameters that require input. For all other parameters, review the default settings and customize them as necessary.

In the following tables, parameters are listed by category and described separately for the deployment options. When you finish reviewing and customizing the parameters, choose Next.

We recommend keeping the default settings for the three parameters labled 'Quick Start S3 bucket name', 'Quick Start S3 bucket Region', and 'Quick Start S3 key prefix', unless you are customizing the Quick Start templates for your own deployment projects. Changing these parameter settings automatically updates code references to point to a new Quick Start location. For additional details, see the AWS Quick Start Contributor’s Guide.

This is a placeholder to represent generated parameters. This will be automatically generated and overwritten when documentation is built.

  1. On the options page, you can specify tags (key-value pairs) for resources in your stack and set advanced options. When you’re done, choose Next.

  2. On the Review page, review and confirm the template settings. Under Capabilities, select the two check boxes to acknowledge that the template creates IAM resources and might require the ability to automatically expand macros.

  3. Choose Create stack to deploy the stack.

  4. Monitor the status of the stack. When the status is CREATE_COMPLETE, the Example Product Name cluster is ready.

  5. Use the URLs displayed in the Outputs tab for the stack, as shown in Figure 2, to view the resources that were created.

image

Figure 2: Example Product Name outputs after successful deployment

Step 4. Test the deployment

<Add instructions for testing the deployment.>

This portion of the deployment guide is located at docs/specific/additional_info.adoc

== Best practices for using Example Product Name on AWS

Add any best practices for using the software.

== Security

Add any security-related information.

== Other useful information

Add any other details that will help the customer use the software on AWS.

This portion of the deployment guide is located at docs/specific/faq.adoc

== FAQ

Q. I encountered a CREATE_FAILED error when I launched the Quick Start.

A. If AWS CloudFormation fails to create the stack, we recommend that you relaunch the template with Rollback on failure set to No. (This setting is under Advanced in the AWS CloudFormation console, Options page.) With this setting, the stack’s state is retained and the instance is left running, so you can troubleshoot the issue. (For Windows, look at the log files in %ProgramFiles%\Amazon\EC2ConfigService and C:\cfn\log.)

Important: When you set Rollback on failure to No, you continue to incur AWS charges for this stack. Please make sure to delete the stack when you finish troubleshooting.

For additional information, see Troubleshooting AWS CloudFormation on the AWS website.

Q. I encountered a size limitation error when I deployed the AWS CloudFormation templates.

A. We recommend that you launch the Quick Start templates from the links in this guide or from another S3 bucket. If you deploy the templates from a local copy on your computer or from a location other than an S3 bucket, you might encounter template size limitations. For more information about AWS CloudFormation quotas, see the AWS documentation.

== Troubleshooting

<Steps for troubleshooting the deployment go here.>

Send us feedback

To post feedback, submit feature ideas, or report bugs, use the Issues section of the GitHub repository for this Quick Start. If you’d like to submit code, please review the Quick Start Contributor’s Guide.

Quick Start reference deployments

GitHub Repository

You can visit our GitHub repository to download the templates and scripts for this Quick Start, to post your comments, and to share your customizations with others.