Modeling environments for Amazon Web Services

To model an Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment, log in with an AWS cloud project and specify the AWS-specific information in a blueprint.

Before you begin

Connect the blueprint design server to a cloud system. See Connecting to clouds through OpenStack Heat.
Make sure that your user account is authenticated to a cloud system. See Setting up authentication to OpenStack Heat clouds for the blueprint designer.
Connect the blueprint design server to the server. See Connecting the blueprint design server to the server.
Log in to the blueprint designer.
At the top of the page, select the cloud project and region to use.

Procedure

Create the blueprint:
1. Click Blueprints.
2. Click New.
3. In the Add a New File window, specify a name for the blueprint.
4. To set the repository in which the blueprint is saved, select a project from the Project list. The project list contains the default project and a project for each team. Each project except the default project corresponds to both a team and a Git repository of the same name. The default project is not associated with a team, and blueprints that are associated with the default project cannot be shared with other users.
5. In the Type list, select Blueprint, and then click Save.
Add resources from the palette to the blueprint, such as virtual images. The palette shows resources from the currently connected cloud, which is shown at the upper right of the page. For more information on working with the blueprint designer, see Editing blueprint diagrams and Editing blueprint source code.
In the blueprint source code, in the metadata section, specify your AWS login information. For example, if your AWS access ID is ABC12345 and your secret key is 67890DEF, the code looks like the following example:
```
metadata:
  ec2_properties:
    access_id: ABC12345
    secret_key: 67890DEF
```

Customize the blueprint source code for your configuration of AWS. For example, you might have to change the mount points of volumes from defaults like /dev/vdc to specific locations like /dev/xvdc, as in the following example:

linux_image_1_volume_1_attachment:
  type: OS::Cinder::VolumeAttachment
  properties:
    volume_id: vol-4d4aaa04
    instance_uuid: { get_resource: linux_image_1_volume_1_attachment }
    mountpoint: /dev/xvdc

In another example, to ensure that nodes and volumes are created in the same zone, you might need to update the availability_zone property to resources in the blueprint, as in the following example:

parameters:
  availability_zone:
    type: string
    default: us-east-1d
    description: Name of availability zone in which to create the instance

resources:
linux_image_A:
  type: OS::Nova::Server
  properties:
    flavor: { get_param: flavor }
    image: "LinuxImageA"
    key_name: { get_param: key_name }
    name: "images/linux_image_A"
    availability_zone: { get_param: availability_zone }
  metadata:
    ec2_properties:
      access_id: ABC12345
      secret_key: 67890DEF
linux_image_A_volumeA_attachment:
  type: OS::Cinder::VolumeAttachment
  properties:
    volume_id: volumeA
    instance_uuid: { get_resource: linux_image_A }
    mountpoint: /dev/xvdc
  metadata:
    ec2_properties:
      access_id: ABC12345
      secret_key: 67890DEF

volumeA:
  type: OS::Cinder::Volume
  properties:
    name: volumeA
    availability_zone: { get_param: availability_zone }
    size: 1
  metadata:
    ec2_properties:
      access_id: ABC12345
      secret_key: 67890DEF

For more information, see the Amazon Web Services documentation.

Optional: In the blueprint source code, in the metadata property for the resource, specify any virtual image tags. You provide the tags as a series of name/value pairs. For example, to specify the named value pairs cluster: blue and database_type: mysql, the code looks like the following example:
```
metadata:
  cluster: blue
  database_type: mysql
```
Create a configuration file and externalize properties to the file. See Editing configuration files.

In the configuration file, ensure that the core OpenStack types are mapped to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) types. The configuration file must have mapping similar to the following code:

resource_registry:
  OS::Nova::Server : IBM::EC2::Server
  OS::Cinder::Volume : IBM::EC2::Volume
  OS::Cinder::VolumeAttachment : IBM::EC2::VolumeAttachment
  OS::Neutron::Port : IBM::EC2::Port
  OS::Neutron::Net : IBM::EC2::VPC
  OS::Neutron::Subnet : IBM::EC2::Subnet
  OS::Neutron::Router : IBM::EC2::RouteTable
  OS::Neutron::RouterGateway : IBM::EC2::InternetGateway
  OS::Neutron::RouterInterface : IBM::EC2::RouteTableAssociation

What to do next

Add the components of your application to the blueprint. See Deploying components with blueprints.

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