AWS EC2 Instance Bootstrapping Hands-On Lab for Cloud and DevOps Engineers
AWS Learning Path for Cloud and DevOps Engineers
📝Introduction
This post will cover the creation and configuration of EC2 Bootstrap script helping to understand what it is and how to use one to automate a server building.
📝Log in to the AWS Management Console
Using your credentials, make sure you're using the right Region. In my case, I chose us-east-1.
📝GitHub repository
Go to the GitHub repo to copy the codes that were used in this Lab on this link.
📝Build an EC2 instance using a Bootstrap Script and Debug Issues
1- Go to the AWS Management Console and navigate to EC2.
2- On the EC2 dashboard, click Launch Instances.
3- In the Launch an Instance section, under Name and Tags type srv-web01.
4- Scroll down to the Application and OS Images (Amazon Machine Image) to select the Ubuntu logo, and click the dropdown menu to select Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS (HVM), SSD Volume Type.
5- Scroll down to the Instance type, and click the dropdown menu to select t3.micro.
6- Under Key pair (login), click the dropdown and select Proceed without a key pair (Not recommended) Default value.
7- Under Network settings, click Edit and enter the following information:
Auto-assign public IP: Select Enable from the dropdown menu.
Firewall (security groups): Select an existing Security Group or create a new one.
Under Advanced details, click the dropdown arrow to expand.
Scroll down to User data, paste the following Bootstrap script and click Launch Instance.
#!/bin/bash sudo apt-get update -y sudo apt-get install apache1 unzip -y sudo systemctl enable apache1 curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip" unzip awscliv2.zip sudo ./aws/install echo '<html><h1>Bootstrap Demo</h1><h3>Availability Zone: ' > /var/www/html/index.html curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/placement/availability-zone >> /var/www/html/index.html echo '</h3> <h3>Instance Id: ' >> /var/www/html/index.html curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id >> /var/www/html/index.html echo '</h3> <h3>Public IP: ' >> /var/www/html/index.html curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-ipv4 >> /var/www/html/index.html echo '</h3> <h3>Local IP: ' >> /var/www/html/index.html curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/local-ipv4 >> /var/www/html/index.html echo '</h3></html> ' >> /var/www/html/index.html sudo apt-get install mysql-server sudo systemctl enable mysql
Note: The link used on the script is the default link to view all categories of Instance Metadata from within a running instance, so for that, you use the following IPv4 or IPv6 URLs.
IPV4 - 169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data
IPV6 - http://[fd00:ec2::254]/latest/meta-data/
8- Once the instance launch has been successfully initiated, click View All Instances.
9- Once the srv-web01 instance has passed status checks, select this instance, and click Connect.
10- Select EC2 Instance Connect and click Connect.
11- In the terminal, check if Apache1 was installed correctly. The output should display Active: active (running):
sudo systemctl status apache2
12- Verify apache is running. The output should display a few apache processes:
ps aux | grep apache
13- Verify mysql is running:
sudo systemctl status mysql
Note: If the above command does not work, try to use the below command:
sudo systemctl status mysqld
14- Check for any running mysql processes:
ps aux | grep mysql
15- Try to start the mysql service:
sudo systemctl start mysql
Note: These commands should all return an error that the mysql service was not found.
16- Use curl to retrieve the user-data:
curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/user-data
17- At the bottom of the script, notice the following code:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
Note: The code is missing the -y flag needed for mysql to automatically install without a user prompt.
18- Install mysql-server manually:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server -y
19- Enable the mysql service:
sudo systemctl enable mysql
20- Paste the Public IPV4 address in a new browser tab to access the Apache1 web page. Observe the information that's returned.
📝Use a Fixed Bootstrap Script to Build
1- Repeat Steps 1-6 from the section "Build an EC2 instance using a Bootstrap Script and Debug Issues" changing only the name of the instance for srv-web02 and using the below user-data script:
#!/bin/bash
sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install apache2 unzip -y
sudo systemctl enable apache2
curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install
echo '<html><h1>Bootstrap Demo</h1><h3>Availability Zone: ' > /var/www/html/index.html
curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/placement/availability-zone >> /var/www/html/index.html
echo '</h3> <h3>Instance Id: ' >> /var/www/html/index.html
curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id >> /var/www/html/index.html
echo '</h3> <h3>Public IP: ' >> /var/www/html/index.html
curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-ipv4 >> /var/www/html/index.html
echo '</h3> <h3>Local IP: ' >> /var/www/html/index.html
curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/local-ipv4 >> /var/www/html/index.html
echo '</h3></html> ' >> /var/www/html/index.html
sudo apt-get install mysql-server -y
sudo systemctl enable mysql
Note: This time, the -y flag for mysql has been added.
2- Click Launch Instance.
3- Once the instance launch is initiated, click View all instances.
4- Once the srv-web02 instance has passed status checks, select this instance, and click Connect.
5- Select srv-web02 from the Instances list, and copy the Public IPv4 address.
6- Paste the IP address in a new browser tab to access the Apache2 web page.
7- Select EC2 Instance Connect and click Connect to connect to the srv-web02 instance in a new terminal window.
8- In the terminal, check if Apache2 was installed correctly. The output should display Active: active (running):
sudo systemctl status apache2
9- Verify apache2 is running. The output should display a few apache2 processes:
ps aux | grep apache
10- Verify mysql was installed:
systemctl status mysql
Note: This time it is running.
11- Confirm mysql processes:
ps aux | grep mysql
12- Verify AWS CLI tool was installed:
aws --version
Congratulations — you have completed this hands-on lab covering the basics of creating and configuring AWS EC2 Instance Bootstrapping.
Thank you for reading. I hope you were able to understand and learn something helpful from my blog.
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