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Deploying a BMC Discovery virtual appliance into AWS

This topic describes the steps required to deploy a BMC Discovery virtual appliance (VA) into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. 

For more information on this process, see the  AWS documentation Open link .

You require the following information:

  • AWS Access Key ID
  • AWS Secret Access Key
  • The ID of the region into which you are deploying the VA, for example, us-east-2
  • The S3 storage bucket name and path within it to which to upload the vmdk file

To install and configure the AWS Command Line Interface

To access the AWS command line interface, you must install it on a local computer. The computer must have Python installed. See the AWS documentation for information on getting started Open link  and the  installation Open link  for all supported platforms.

The example procedure provided here is installation on a Linux computer:

  1. Run the following command to install the command line interface:

    $ pip install awscli --upgrade --user
  2. Configure the tools to connect to Amazon AWS.

    $ aws configure

    and enter the information required, the following are examples:

    • AWS Access Key ID: AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
    • AWS Secret Access Key: wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY
    • Default region name: us-west-2
    • Default output format: json

To upload the disk image to AWS S3 (Simple Storage System)

This example uploads the image to AWS using the CLI. See the AWS documentation for using  other methods Open link .

Enter the following to upload the VMDK. In this command you should replace the file locations and names appropriate to the computer you are using and the version of BMC Discovery that you have downloaded. Enter:

$ aws s3 cp ADDM_VA_64_11.2.0.2_722067_ga_Full-disk-0.vmdk s3://<bucketname>/<path>/ADDM_VA_64_11.2.0.2_722067_ga_Full-disk-0.vmdk

To generate an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from the disk image

The following steps create an AMI that can be used to deploy BMC Discovery VM instances. This process is described in more detail in the  AWS documentation Open link .

  1. Create a file called containers.json with the following content:

    [
      {
        "Description": "BMC Discovery VMDK",
        "Format": "vmdk",
        "UserBucket": {
            "S3Bucket": "<bucketname>",
            "S3Key": "<path>/<vmdkfilename>"
        }
      }         
    ]
  2. Import the VMDK disk image that you uploaded converting it to an AMI:

    $ aws ec2 import-image --description "BMC Discovery VMDK" --license-type BYOL --disk-containers file://containers.json

    The response will be JSON formatted. Ensure you make a note of the ImportTaskId attribute:

    ...
       "ImportTaskId": "import-ami-abcdf6fl"
    ...

    The ImportTaskId attribute is used as the AMI Name in the AWS console.

  3. The import will continue to execute. The status can be checked at intervals by executing the following command:

    $ aws ec2 describe-import-image-tasks --region us-east-1 --import-task-ids <ImportTaskId>

    While the task is still executing the response includes, among other details:

    ...
    "Status": "active"
    "StatusMessage": "<message>"
    ...
  4.  When the task is complete the response will include, among other details, the ImageId attribute. Ensure you make a note of it:

    ...
    "Status": "completed"
    "ImageId": "ami-abcd1572"
    ...

    The ImageId is used as the AMI ID in the Amazon AWS console.

  5. In the Amazon AWS console verify you can see the new image:
    • In the Amazon AWS console navigate to the EC2 Dashboard > Images > AMIs
    • Locate the image by either AMI Name or by AMI ID

To launch an instance of the BMC Discovery virtual appliance

The following steps launch a BMC Discovery VM instances. This process is described in more detail in the  AWS documentation Open link .

  1. In the Amazon AWS console navigate to the EC2 Dashboard > Images > AMIs
  2. Locate the image by either AMI Name or by AMI ID.
  3. Select the AMI and click Launch
  4. Configure the Instance details as normal.
  5. When the instance state is "running" the appliance is ready to use.

Warning

We highly recommend setting up time synchronization on the appliance using the AWS Time Sync Service Open link , IP address 169.254.169.123. This is essential if you plan to scan in AWS.

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