First Look at AWS Management Portal for vCenter Part 2: Administration

In part 1 of the series we looked at the Management Portal deployment. Let’s move on to an overview of the portal functionality.

Portal Dashboard

Once you open the portal you are asked to pick your region (region preferences can later be changed only from Web Client). You then proceed to the dashboard where you can see all instances you already have running in AWS. If you don’t see your VPCs, make sure the user you’re using to log in is on the list of administrators in AMP (user and domain names are case sensitive).

Here you can find detailed configuration information of each instance (Summary page), performance metrics (pulled from CloudWatch) and do some simple tasks, such as stopping/rebooting/terminating an instance, creating an AMI (Amazon Machine Image). You can also generate a Windows password from a key pair if you need to connect to VM via RDP or SSH.

Virtual Private Cloud Configuration

If the dashboard tab is more operational-focused, VPC tab is configuration-centric. Here you can create new VPCs, subnets and security groups. This can be handy if you want to add a rule to a security group to for instance allow RDP access to AWS instances from a certain IP.

If you spend most of the time in vCenter this can be helpful as you don’t need to go to AWS console every time to perform such simple day to day tasks.

Virtual Machine Provisioning

Portal supports simple instance provisioning from Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). You start with creating an environment (Default Environment can’t be used to deploy new instances). Then you create a template, where you can pick an AMI and specify configuration options, such as instance type, subnets and security groups.

Note: when creating a template, make sure to search for AMIs by AMI ID. AMI IDs in quick start list are not up-to-date and will cause instance deployment to fail with the following error:

Failed to launch instance due to EC2 error: The specified AMI is no longer available or you are not authorized to use it.

You can then go ahead and deploy an instance from a template.

Virtual Machine Migration

Saving the best for the last. VM migration – this is probably one of the coolest portal features. Right-click on a VM in vCenter inventory and select Migrate to EC2. You will be asked where you want to place the VM and how AWS instance should be configured.

When you hit the button AMP will first export VM as an OVF image and then upload the image to AWS. As a result, you get a copy of your VM in AWS VPC with minimal effort.

When it comes to VM migration to AWS, there is, of course, much more to it than just copying the data. Machine gets a new SID, which not all applications and services like. There are compatibility considerations, data gravity, network connectivity and others. But all the heavy lifting AMP does for you.

Conclusion

I can’t say that I was overly impressed with the tool, it’s very basic and somewhat limited. Security Groups can be created, but cannot be applied to running instances. Similarly, templates can be created, but not edited.

But I would still recommend to give it a go. Maybe you will find it useful in your day to day operations. It gives you visibility into your AWS environment, saving time jumping between two management consoles. And don’t underestimate the migration feature. Where other vendors ask for a premium, AWS Management Portal for vCenter gives it to you for free.

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Tags: Amazon Machine Image, Amazon Web Services, AMI, AMP, AWS, Cloud, connector, EC2, Management Portal, migration, plug-in, template, vCenter, Virtual Private Cloud, vmware, VPC