Getting the Machine Image
To use the machine image you will need an Amazon account and be willing to sign up to the Amazon free trial account. This account should be free for a year as long as you don’t exceed your limits. By just using the KWMC Open Data machine you should be safe on your limits. We have specifically chosen the specification of machine which should fit in the free tier of their services.
Once you have signed up for an Amazon AWS account and logged into the AWS management console click on the EC2 button. You should be presented a screen similar to Figure 1. Click on the top right where you are logged into a datacentre region and choose EU (Ireland) — Shown in Figure 2.
Figure 1: EC2 Main Page
Figure 2: Choose Datacentre
We now need to work out our AWS Account ID. To do this click your name in the top right and choose “Security Credentials” (Figure 3). Once there dismiss the dialogue by pressing “Continue to Security Credentials” and select Account identifiers. The number you are looking for is the AWS Account ID (Figure 4). Take a note of this number and remove the hyphens.
Figure 3: Go To Security Credentials
Figure 4: Locate the AWS Account ID
At this point you will need to contact Russell or Barry at the Knowle West Media Centre to be given access to the machine image. Please get in contact with us via email on enquiries@kwmc.org.uk. You will need to quote your AWS Account ID so we can share the machine image with your account.
Once we have granted access to the image, return to the Amazon EC2 panel and click AMI’s on the left hand side. Once in AMI’s (Figure 5) select the dropdown to filter by private instances. You should now see the KWMC image appearing in your account (Figure 6).
Figure 5: Main AMI Page
Figure 6: Private AMI Page with Machine Image
Select the image and click the big blue launch button. You will now be led through the instance launch wiz- ard. For most sections of this you can use the default values. The only section really where you need to enter any information is in the “Configure Security Group” page. To begin with the wizard starts on step 2, “Choose an Instance Type” (Figure 7). Make sure to select Micro Instance as this is the free tier. Click “Next: Configure Instance Details” (Figure 7). Then click “Next: Add Storage” (Figure 8). Then click “Next: Tag Instance” (Figure 9). Then click “Next: Configure Security Group” (Figure 10).
Figure 7: Choose an Instance Type
Figure 8: Configure Instance Details
Figure 9: Add Storage
Figure 10: Tag Instance
This is the section we want to add some information. In this section we want to add some rules. These rules need to be as follow:
- SSH — TCP — 22 — Anywhere — 0.0.0.0/0
- HTTP — TCP — 80 — Anywhere — 0.0.0.0/0
- Custom TCP Rule — TCP — 1880 — Anywhere — 0.0.0.0/0
- Custom TCP Rule — TCP — 1883 — Anywhere — 0.0.0.0/0
- Custom TCP Rule — TCP — 5000 — Anywhere — 0.0.0.0/0
- Custom TCP Rule — TCP — 5001 — Anywhere — 0.0.0.0/0
- Custom TCP Rule — TCP — 8983 — Anywhere — 0.0.0.0/0
We can now click on “Review and Launch” which takes us to step 7 (Figure 11). Click launch and you will be asked about key pairs. Select “Proceed without a key pair” (Figure 12) and click Launch Instance. Finally… your machine should start up!
Figure 11: Review Instance Launch
Figure 12: Proceed without a Key Pair
We now have an instance and it is shown in our EC2 Panel under “Instances” (Figure 13) but what’s this? It has no Name? Click the pencil icon next to the name and give it a name!
Figure 13: The Instance has no name
Figure 14: Better give it one!
The very last step is to Stop and Start the machine. This is a minor annoyance however due to the way packaging has to be done, we have to complete this step to get it to run it’s startup scripts and correctly configure the WordPress database. This step is MANDATORY (Unless you want a broken setup!). Goes back to the good old advice of turn it off and on again!
Done! Our instance is now online on the World Wide Web!
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