This page provides an index to existing documentation and a To Do list for standard solutions of technical problems we regularly face.
Standard Solutions That Need to be (Better) Documented
(Also, standards solutions that we need to come up with.)
- Provide customer access to files on EFS volumes, without requiring shell access. Access to AWS EFS Volumes
Standard Solutions
Elastic Beanstalk
Detailed control of Elastic Beanstalk environment configuration via .ebextensions
- Lots of various configuration suggestions.
- https://github.com/awslabs/elastic-beanstalk-docs/tree/master/.ebextensions/aws_provided
Set an environment variable with AWS region for instances in Elastic Beanstalk
- There are lots of ways to do this, but this is automagical if you are using Elastic Beanstalk
- https://github.com/awslabs/elastic-beanstalk-docs/blob/master/.ebextensions/aws_provided/instance%20configuration/env-regionname.config
Use an EFS volume for instances in Elastic Beanstalk
- http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/services-efs.html
- Create EFS - https://github.com/awslabs/elastic-beanstalk-docs/blob/master/.ebextensions/aws_provided/instance%20configuration/storage-efs-createfilesystem.config
- Mount EFS - https://github.com/awslabs/elastic-beanstalk-docs/blob/master/.ebextensions/aws_provided/instance%20configuration/storage-efs-mountfilesystem.config
Setup Papertrail on Elastic Beanstalk instances
- http://help.papertrailapp.com/kb/hosting-services/aws-elastic-beanstalk/
- https://github.com/papertrail/remote_syslog2/blob/master/examples/remote_syslog.ebextensions.config
- See also Logging Tool : Papertrail
Elastic Comput Cloud (EC2)
Expanded Notifications for EC2 Instance Retirement
Joining EC2 Instances to Cornell AD
Elastic Block Store (EBS)
Snapshot EBS volumes attached to running EC2 instances
- Use snapshotting instead of a traditional file backup process.
- Locally developed solution
- Configure a Jenkins job to run the auto-snapshot utility.
- https://github.com/CU-CloudCollab/cucloud_utils#auto-snapshot
- Another open source solution
Prune EBS snapshots
- Prune snapshots that are older than a specified age. Useful in conjunction with "Snapshot (backup) EBS volumes attached to running EC2 instances".
- https://github.com/CU-CloudCollab/cucloud_utils#clean-snapshots
- https://github.com/CU-CloudCollab/cucloud_utils/blob/master/bin/delete-ebs-snapshots-older-than.rb
Route53
Tie a cornell.edu hostname to an AWS service
- See How to Setup AWS Route53 to Work with Cornell-Managed DNS blog post.
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Using IAM policy to restrict EC2 actions to specific users or role
Allow a role from one AWS account assume a role in a different AWS account
Relational Database Service (RDS)
- MyISAM Tables in MySQL RDS Instances - Before migrating a MySQL database to AWS Relational Database Service, be sure to understand the impact of that move if any tables in your MySQL database utilize the MyISAM engine.
- Encrypting an AWS RDS Instance - You can encrypt your Amazon RDS instances and snapshots at rest by enabling the encryption option for your Amazon RDS DB instance.