AWS Tools for PowerShell 6

Ramesh Waghmare

• Editore: Packt Publishing
• Anno: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781785880438
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Informatique
• Categoria: Réseaux informatiques

Leverage the power of PowerShell to bring the best out of your AWS infrastructureAbout This Book• A collection of real-world-tested Powershell scripts that can be used to manage your Windows server efficiently• Follow step-by-step processes to solve your problems with Windows servers using AWS tools• Design examples that work in the Amazon free usage tier, which lets you run the Windows platform on cloudWho This Book Is ForThis book will be useful for (but not limited to) Windows System administrators, cloud engineers, architects, DevOps engineers, and all those who want to accomplish tasks on the AWS Public Cloud using PowerShell.What You Will Learn• Install the AWS Tools for PowerShell 6• Understand key services provided by Amazon Web services (AWS)• Understand the Virtual Private Cloud• Use PowerShell 6 for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)• Use PowerShell 6 for AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)• Use PowerShell 6 for AWS Simple Storage Service (S3)• Use PowerShell 6 for AWS Relational Database Service (RDS)• Build fault-tolerant and highly-available applications using PowerShell 6In DetailAWS Tools for PowerShell 6 shows you exactly how to automate all the aspects of AWS. You can take advantage of the amazing power of the cloud, yet add powerful scripts and mechanisms to perform common tasks faster than ever before.This book expands on the Amazon documentation with real-world, useful examples and production-ready scripts to automate all the aspects of your new cloud platform. It will cover topics such as managing Windows with PowerShell, setting up security services, administering database services, and deploying and managing networking. You will also explore advanced topics such as PowerShell authoring techniques, and configuring and managing storage and content delivery.By the end of this book, you will be able to use Amazon Web Services to automate and manage Windows servers. You will also have gained a good understanding of automating the AWS infrastructure using simple coding.Style and approachThis step-by-step guide starts with simple examples then expands to full-blown administrative tasks leading to the efficient management of Windows servers. Each topic covers a section related to Amazon Web Services products, and the examples are built on one another to deliver a comprehensive library of scripts for administrators.

Auto Scaling

When we talk about elasticity in AWS, Auto Scaling is one of the services that will be used the most. Auto Scaling is such a beautiful service that every application has a reason to use it, even if there is no need to scale. This is one of the best-in-class features in the cloud, making the cloud even more popular, and is one of the most considered features in cloud migration. In the on-premise world, when there is a need to satisfy the demands of a spiky load, there is nothing you can do to satisfy it unless you have already provisioned the required capacity, irrespective of the demand load. This means we have to always overprovision the capacity to ensure that spiky load is addressed. This results in a big cost problem if your application is gaining popularity exponentially. In a traditional on-premise environment, there is no secret formula for matching demand and capacity when needed. Either you end up provisioning too much compute capacity, or underprovisioning resources. The following diagram indicates the nature of demand capacity provisioning in the traditional world.

This is where the elastic nature of the cloud has an advantage. Because of this elastic nature, we can increase the capacity exactly when the load demands, and decrease it when the load lightens. To address the issue of the overprovisioning of compute resources, AWS provides Auto Scaling as a solution to handle the demand for the application, thus allowing you to match the need of the spiky load. The following diagram shows the on-demand provisioning of the capacity in the cloud when actually required.

Auto Scaling is a component of the AWS EC2 service. Hence, you can find Auto Scaling under the EC2 Compute service. Note that Scale-Out or Scale-Up, and Scale-In or Scale-Down are used interchangeably. Scale-Out means you are adding capacity to the fleet based on-demand, and Scale-In means you are taking out capacity or shrinking your fleet. Auto Scaling is free to use, however you are charged for the resources that Auto Scaling provisions. There are several benefits of using Auto Scaling for your application architecture.

• Better availability: Auto Scaling ensures that the right amount of capacity is available to handle the load at all times to meet traffic demands.
• Better cost management: Auto Scaling adds capacity only when you need it, and shrinks it when not needed, thus allowing you to pay only for the time you used the capacity.
• Better fault tolerance: Auto Scaling can detect when an EC2 instance is unhealthy, terminate it, and replace it with the new EC2 instance. You can configure Auto Scaling to use multiple availability zones. If a particular availability zone becomes unavailable, it launches instances in another availability zone to compensate.

In this chapter, we will discuss Auto Scaling components, Auto Scaling lifecycle, fleet management, and dynamic scaling. In addition, we will learn how to create launch configuration, Auto Scaling Group, maintaining fleets manually and dynamically, lifecycle hooks and cooldown, termination policies, termination protection, suspending the Auto Scaling process, and standby mode.

Auto Scaling components

There are three major components that you need to be aware of while working with Auto Scaling. They are:

• Launch configuration: This defines what to scale. This is a collection of attribute values to be used for launching an EC2 instance in the Auto Scaling Group. This is a kind of template to be used while launching EC2 instances. Attributes are AMI, instance type, Security Groups, block device mapping, and key pairs. Launch configuration is pretty much the same as all the configuration settings that need to be defined when launching a new EC2 instance. This configuration instructs Auto Scaling Group what kind of EC2 instances need to be added to the fleet. You can also add userdata to bootstrap the instances to keep the configuration of your application as dynamic as you can.
• Auto Scaling Groups: This is a logical collection of EC2 instances and defines where to launch instances. It also defines the limits on the number of EC2 instances to launch, should a certain event occurs. It also allows you to set the desired capacity to start with. As soon as you create the Auto Scaling Group, it starts by launching EC2 instances to meet the desired capacity. Maintaining the number of EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling Group and automatic scaling is the core functionality of the Auto Scaling service. For effective Auto Scaling architecture ensure that you understand your application well enough.
• Scaling policies: This is an optional component, but helps you to implement real-time elasticity in the cloud. You can define when and under what conditions Scaling-Out and Scaling-In should happen. There are several ways for you to scale Auto Scaling Groups. You can either scale based on-demand, or based on a schedule. You can also do manual scaling by just simply changing the minimum, maximum, and desired capacity in the Auto Scaling Group. It is always best practice to have at least two scaling policies being used simultaneously. You should define a minimum of at least one Scale-Out and one Scale-In policy. Your Auto Scaling Group can have more than one scaling policy attached to it at any given time.

Auto Scaling lifecycle

Under the hood, EC2 instances are in the Auto Scaling Group. It's essential for you to understand the lifecycle of those EC2 instances when they are in the Auto Scaling Group. The lifecycle of the EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling Group is different from those that are not part of the Auto Scaling Group. Understanding lifecycle events will help you to properly architect a deployment strategy for your application. The following diagram helps you to understand lifecycle events.

When a Scale-Out event occurs, the Auto Scaling Group launches new EC2 instances using the associated launch configuration. All newly launched EC2 instances start in the Pending state. This is the state in which you can add a lifecycle hook and perform a custom action. Lifecycle hooks give you the ability to perform actions before an EC2 instance is InService state, or before an instance is in Terminated state. This is very useful when deployment of an application takes time due to the bootstrapping process, or you want to perform a specific action before your instance is terminated. Once you add the lifecycle hook, the EC2 instance will not move to the InService state unless you complete the lifecycle hook. This capability of the Auto Scaling Group provides you with the ability to fully install and configure an application before the load balancer starts serving traffic to it.

An instance will stay in InService state unless a Scale-In event occurs or you put the instance in Standby state manually. Standby state enables you to take the instance out of service and then troubleshoot the issues associated with t...

Indice dei contenuti

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Credits
• About the Author
• About the Reviewer
• www.PacktPub.com
• Customer Feedback
• Preface
• PowerShell Essentials
• The AWS Overview
• Installing PowerShell Core and AWS Tools
• AWS Identity and Access Management
• AWS Virtual Private Cloud
• AWS Elastic Compute Cloud
• AWS Simple Storage Service
• Elastic Load Balancer
• Auto Scaling
• Laying Foundation for RDS Databases
• DB Instance Administration and Management
• Working with RDS Read Replicas
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• AWS CloudFormation
• AWS CloudWatch
• AWS Resource Auditing