Reactivating Geode Workspaces on AWS EC2

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Reactivating Geode/GemFire Workspaces on AWS EC2

This article describes how to reactivate VM workspaces that have been detached from AWS EC2 VMs.

Scenario

You have created a VM workspace with EC2 instances. After you were done running Geode/GemFire cluster(s) on the EC2 instances from the VM workspace, you terminated the EC2 instances without removing the workspace.

A few days later, you return to your work and are in need of reinstating the same workspace environment with new EC2 instances.

VM Workspace Activation Steps

VM workspace activation steps involve updating two (2) workspace and cluster configuration files with the public IP addresses of new EC2 instances.

• Workspace: vmenv.sh
• Cluster: cluster.properties

Let's walk through the workspace reactivation steps using the same example workspace described in the following article:

Geode on AWS EC2

1. Launch EC2 Instances

First, launch the desired number of EC2 instances from the EC2 Dashboard. For our example, we launched six (6) instances as shown below.

Name	IP Address	Availability Zone
locator1	3.15.231.153	us-east-2a
member1	3.136.19.139	us-east-2a
member2	3.137.41.211	us-east-2a
locator2	3.16.188.49	us-east-2b
member3	18.225.36.155	us-east-2b
member4	3.17.142.94	us-east-2b

2. Update Workspace vmenv.sh

Gather the public IP addresses of the EC2 instances and list them in the workspace vmenv.sh file.

switch_workspace ws-aws-gemfire
vi vmenv.sh

Set the VM_HOSTS property with the public IP addresses and make sure VM_USER is set to the correct user name.

VM_HOSTS="3.15.231.153,3.136.19.139,3.137.41.211,3.16.188.49,18.225.36.155,3.17.142.94"
VM_USER="ec2-user"

3. Update etc/cluster.properties

Update the etc/cluster.properties file with the new EC2 IP addresses. For our example, the VM cluster name is mygemfire.

switch_cluster mygemfire
vi etc/cluster.properties

Set the following VM properties.

# Set locator and member host lists
vm.locator.hosts=3.15.231.153,3.16.188.49
vm.hosts=3.136.19.139,3.137.41.211,18.225.36.155,3.17.142.94
vm.user=ec2-user

# Set hostnameForClients and redundancyZone for each IP address
# us-east-2a
vm.3.15.231.153.hostnameForClients=3.15.231.153
vm.3.15.231.153.redundancyZone=us-east-2a
vm.3.136.19.139.hostnameForClients=3.136.19.139

vm.3.136.19.139.redundancyZone=us-east-2a
vm.3.137.41.211.hostnameForClients=3.137.41.211
vm.3.137.41.211.redundancyZone=us-east-2a

# us-east-2b
vm.3.16.188.49.hostnameForClients=3.16.188.49
vm.3.16.188.49.redundancyZone=us-east-2b
vm.18.225.36.155.hostnameForClients=18.225.36.155

vm.18.225.36.155.redundancyZone=us-east-2b
vm.3.17.142.94.hostnameForClients=3.17.142.94
vm.3.17.142.94.redundancyZone=us-east-2b

It is important to set hostnameForClients for each host if you want to connect to the cluster from outside the EC2 environment. This is because the Geode/GemFire members are bound to the EC2 internal IP addresses. Make sure to follow the vm.<host>.* pattern for the property names.

❗ If you have reinstated the workspace with an EC2 instance type that is different from the previous instance type then you may also need to change resource properties such as heap.min and heap.max.

4. Sync VMs

Run vm_sync to synchronize the workspace.

vm_sync

The above command reports the following:

Deploying padogrid_0.9.7 to 3.15.231.153...
Deploying padogrid_0.9.7 to 3.136.19.139...
Deploying padogrid_0.9.7 to 3.137.41.211...
Deploying padogrid_0.9.7 to 3.16.188.49...
Deploying padogrid_0.9.7 to 18.225.36.155...
Deploying padogrid_0.9.7 to 3.17.142.94...

Workspace sync: ws-aws-gemfire
   Synchronizing 3.15.231.153...
   Synchronizing 3.136.19.139...
   Synchronizing 3.137.41.211...
   Synchronizing 3.16.188.49...
   Synchronizing 18.225.36.155...
   Synchronizing 3.17.142.94...

Updating remote (VM) '.bashrc' if needed...
...
Workspace sync complete.

5. Install Software

vm_sync will display warning messages similar to the output shown above since the new EC2 instances do not have the required software installed. Download the required software and install them by running the vm_install command as shown below.

vm_install -product ~/Downloads/jdk-8u333-linux-x64.tar.gz
vm_isntall -product ~/Downloads/vmware-gemfire-9.15.1.tgz

6. Start Cluster

Start the cluster.

start_cluster

7. Run Apps

For our example, we have the perf_test app already created. Edit the client-cache.xml file as before.

create_app
cd_app perf_test
vi etc/client-cache.xml

Replace the old locator IP addresses with the new locator IP addresses.

<pool name="serverPool">
   <locator host="3.15.231.153" port="10334" />
   <locator host="3.16.188.49" port="10334" />
</pool>

Ingest data into the cluster.

cd bin_sh
./test_ingestion -run

Summary

Reactivating a VM workspace with new EC2 instances requires a simple step of updating the workspace and cluster configuration files with the new instance IP addresses.

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