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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First Look at AWS Management Portal for vCenter Part 1: Deployment

Cloud has been a hot topic in IT for quite a while, for such valid reasons and benefits it brings as agility and economies of scale. More and more customers start to embark on the cloud journey, whether it’s DR to cloud, using cloud as a Tier 3 storage or even full production migrations for the purpose of shrinking the physical data center footprint.

Even though full data center migrations to cloud are not that uncommon, many customers use cloud for certain use cases and keep other more static workloads on-premises, where it may be more cost-effective. What it means is that they end up having two environments, that they have to manage separately. This introduces complexity into operational models as each environment has its own management tools.

Overview

AWS Management Portal for vCenter helps to bridge this gap by connecting your on-premises vSphere environment to AWS and letting you perform basic management tasks, such as creating VPCs and security groups, deploying EC2 instances from AMI templates and even migrating VMs from vSphere to cloud, all without leaving the familiar vCenter user interface.

Solution consists of two components: AWS Management Portal for vCenter, which is configured in AWS and AWS Connector for vCenter, which is a Linux appliance deployed on-prem. Let’s start with the management portal first.

Configure Management Portal

AWS Management Portal for vCenter or simply AMP, can be accessed by the following link https://amp.aws.amazon.com. Configuration is wizard-based and its main purpose is to set up authentication for vCenter users to be able to access AWS cloud through the portal.

You have an option of either using SAML, which has pre-requisites, or simply choosing the connector to be your authentication provider, which is the easiest option.

If you choose the latter, you will need to pre-configure a trust relationship between AWS Connector and the portal. First step of the process is to create an Identity and Access Management (IAM) user in AWS Management Console and assign “AWSConnector” IAM policy to it (connector will then use this account to authenticate to AWS). This step is explained in detail in Option 1: Federation Authentication Proxy section of the AWS Management Portal for vCenter User Guide.

You will also be asked to specify vCenter accounts that will have access to AWS and to generate an AMP-Connector Key. Save your IAM account Access Key / Secret and AMP-Connector Key. You will need them in AWS Connector registration wizard.

Configure AWS Connector

AWS Connector is distributed as an OVA, which you can download here:

• https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-connector/AWS-Connector.ova

To assign a static IP address to the appliance you will need to open VM console and log in as ec2-user with the password ec2pass. Run the setup script and change network settings as desired. Connector also supports connecting to AWS through a proxy if required.

# sudo setup.rb

Browse to the appliance IP address to link AWS Connector to your vCenter and set up appliance’s password. You will then be presented with the registration wizard.

Wizard will ask you to provide a service account for AWS Connector (create a non-privileged domain account for it) and credentials of the IAM trust account you created previously. You will also need your trust role’s ARN (not user’s ARN) which you can get from the AMP-Connector Federation Proxy section of AWS Management Portal for vCenter setup page.

If everything is done correctly, you will get to the plug-in registration page with the configuration summary, which will look similar to this:

Summary

AWS Connector will register a vCenter plug-in, which you will see both in vSphere client and Web Client.

That completes the deployment part. In the next blog post of the series we will talk in more detail on how AWS Management Portal can be leveraged to manage VPCs and EC2 instances.