Creating a CloudFormation Stack Using the AWS Console

This section describes how to use the AWS Console to create a CloudFormation Stack from a template. This section describes each step in the procedure, but does not discuss all of the options for each step. For more details, see Create a stack from the CloudFormation console.

Before you can create a CloudFormation Stack, you will need the following:

• Purchase an AMI from Amazon MarketPlace or create your own AMI (if you have an active maintenance contract, you can contact MarkLogic Technical Support for help). The sample CloudFormation templates have the latest MarketPlace AMIs embedded in them, you will need to edit these with the appropriate AMI IDs.

• A CloudFormation template. You can either obtain a template from MarkLogic or create your own, as described in CloudFormation Template Overview. The MarkLogic CloudFormation templates are available from Access an AWS service using an interface VPC endpoint

• An IAM Role, as described in Creating an IAM Role

• A Key Pair, as described in Creating a Key Pair

• An SNS Topic, as described in Creating a Simple Notification Service (SNS) Topic

The following procedure describes how to create a CloudFormation Stack from a template:

1. Click on Services in the upper left-hand portion of Console Home.

2. Search for and open CloudFormation.

3. Click Create stack.

4. Under the Specify template heading, select Upload a template file and select the CloudFormation template you downloaded from Deploying in the Cloud . When done, click Next.

The screens and descriptions below are for a AWS CloudFormation template that creates a new VPC.

1. In the Specify Details window, enter the name of the stack and information shown in the table below. Your Stack Name is used to identify all of the resources for your stack, including the names of your EBS volumes. It is a best practice to name your stack with an easily identifiable name, such as your user name. The EBS volumes for all but the first node in each zone are not removed when you delete the stack, so you will want to be able to easily identify those volumes should you want to remove them after deleting your stack.

   The Resource Configuration parameters are described in the following table. CloudFormation does not have real time validation of parameter values. The following assumptions are made when using CloudFormation templates to deploy clusters:

   Parameter Name	Default	Description
   IAMRole	Requires Input	The name of the IAM Role you created in Creating an IAM Role.
   Volume Size	10	The initial EBS volume size (GB). The range of valid values are 10 - 1000.
   Volume Type	gp2	The EBS Data volume Type. Allowed Values: standard or gp2
   Volume Encryption	enable	Whether to enable volume encryption. Select either enable or disable.
   Volume Encryption Key ARN		The optional key ID of AWS KMS key to encrypt volumes.
   InstanceType	r5.4xlarge	The type of EC2 instance to launch. These vary by release, product type, zone, region, and availability. There is no one single instance type that works for all MarkLogic deployments. Do note, however, that MarkLogic deployments generally have higher memory and storage I/O bandwidth requirements than legacy RDBMS deployments - so you'll likely want to start with Memory Optimized, Storage Optimized, or General Purpose instance types. The best instance type for your deployment will depend on your application code, workload, networking/system/cluster configurations, storage options, cloud architecture, etc. We recommend doing extensive testing in lower environments before using a specific instance type in production. Refer to http://developer.marklogic.com/products/cloud/aws or the current supported values for these fields. For details on each instance type, see http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/instance-types.html Note: Only HVM instance types are now supported for Marketplace AMIs; PVM types may be used with custom AMIs. MarkLogic AMIs will not run on micro instances.
   SpotPrice	0	Spot price for instances in USD/Hour. Allowed values are: 0 - 2. If not 0, then the amount given is a spot request for the instances is used instead of on-demand.
   SSH Key Name	Requires Input	The name of the Key Pair you created in Creating a Key Pair.
   Number of Zones	3	Total number of Availability Zones in a region. Allowed values are: 1 or 3.
   Nodes Per Zone	1	The number of nodes (hosts) to create for each zone. Allowed values are: 0 to 20. For example, a value of 1 will create one node for each zone, a total of three nodes for the cluster. A value of 0 will shutdown/hibernate all nodes.
   Availability Zone	Requires Input	The Availability Zones for subnets. Accept either 1 zone or 3 zones. In the order of Subnet 1, Subnet 2 and Subnet 3 (if applicable). Each zone in your cluster should be in the same region, such as us-east or us-west. The values of the Availability Zone and Number of Zones parameters must match.
   Logging SNS ARN	none	The Simple Notification Service (SNS) needed for logging. Enter the entire Topic ARN as it appears in the SNS Dashboard (for example, arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:1234567890123456:mytopic). For details on how to obtain an SNS Topic, see Creating a Simple Notification Service (SNS) Topic.

2. In the Network Configuration portion of the window are the parameters for the new VPC.

   The Network Configuration parameters for the new VPC are described in the following table.

   Parameter Name	Default
   VPC CIDR*	10.0.0.0/16	CIDR Block for the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).
   Private Subnet 1 CIDR*	10.0.0.0/23	CIDR Block for the private subnet 1.
   Private Subnet 2 CIDR*	10.0.32.0/23	CIDR Block for the private subnet 2. Only applicable to multi-zone cluster.
   Private Subnet 3 CIDR*	10.0.64.0/23	CIDR Block for the private subnet 3. Only applicable to multi-zone cluster.
   Public Subnet 1 CIDR*	10.0.96.0/23	CIDR Block for the public subnet 1.
   Public Subnet 2 CIDR*	10.0.128.0/23	CIDR Block for the public subnet 2. Only applicable to multi-zone cluster.
   Public Subnet 3 CIDR*	10.0.160.0/23	CIDR Block for the public subnet 3. Only applicable to multi-zone cluster.

   Note:

   If you want to use the BYOL (bring your own license) option, you must enter the License information in the Licensee and License Key fields. If you don’t provide any values for those fields, or leave the defaultnone, the template automatically chooses the “pay as you go instances” option without any notification.

   If you are using the MarkLogic AWS template that uses an existing VPC, you will see the following parameters:

   Parameter Label	Default	Description
   VPC	Requires Input	ID of existing Virtual Private Cloud. When deploying to an existing VPC, the Subnets must be in the specified VPC.
   Public Subnet 1	Requires Input	The public subnet 1 in the VPC. This subnet must reside within the first selected Availability Zone (AZ). You must provide values for all three public subnets. If you only select one AZ, the second and third subnets will be ignored.
   Public Subnet 2	Requires Input	The public subnet 2 in the VPC. This subnet must reside within the second selected Availability Zone (AZ). You must provide values for all three public subnets. If you only select one AZ, the second and third subnets will be ignored.
   Public Subnet 3	Requires Input	The public subnet 3 in the VPC. This subnet must reside within the third selected Availability Zone (AZ). You must provide values for all three public subnets. If you only select one AZ, the second and third subnets will be ignored.
   Private Subnet 1	Requires Input	The private subnet 1 in the VPC. This subnet must reside within the first selected Availability Zone (AZ). You must provide values for all three private subnets. If you only select one AZ, the second and third subnets will be ignored.
   Private Subnet 2	Requires Input	The private subnet 2 in the VPC. This subnet must reside within the second selected Availability Zone (AZ). You must provide values for all three private subnets. If you only select one AZ, the second and third subnets will be ignored.
   Private Subnet 3	Requires Input	The private subnet 3 in the VPC. This subnet must reside within the third selected Availability Zone (AZ). You must provide values for all three private subnets. If you only select one AZ, the second and third subnets will be ignored.

3. In the MarkLogic Configuration portion of the window are the parameters for the accessing MarkLogic Server. Enter the parameters and click Next at the bottom when done.

   Parameter Name	Default	Description
   Admin User	Requires Input	The username you want to use to log in as the MarkLogic Administrator.
   Admin Password	Requires Input	The password you want to use to log in as the MarkLogic Administrator.
   Licensee	none	The name of the licensee obtained from your MarkLogic representative. Enter none if you plan to enter the license information later.
   Licens eKey	none	The license key obtained from your MarkLogic representative. Enter none if you plan to enter the license information later.

4. In the options section, enter any tags for your stack. The tag(s) you provide identify your EC2 resources in the EC2 dashboard. For example, if you identify the Key as Name, the given Value (Test Stack, for example) will appear in the Name column of the Instance list in the EC2 dashboard. Enter the role-back triggers, as described in Rollback Configuration. When done, click Next.

   Note:

   Do not select an IAM Role under Permissions.

5. In the Review window, review the settings. Click Previous to make any changes. When done, click Submit.

6. You will be notified that the stack is being created. The name, create date, and status of your stack will appear at the top of the page.

7. It takes a few minutes depending on the speed of AWS and the number of resources you are creating in the stack. You can Use the Events tab in the bottom portion of the page to view the progress of your stack creation. Click Refresh to see the latest status.

8. A status of CREATE_COMPLETE indicates that your AutoScaling groups have been created. Wait approximately 5-10 minutes for your EC2 instances to boot up before opening your Stack Detail page, navigating to the Outputs section, and clicking the Load Balancer URL in the Value column. This will open the MarkLogic Admin Interface on an available instance.

   Note:

   If the URL in the Outputs tab does not work, wait another 5-10 minutes and try again.

9. Log in using the administrator username and password you specified in Step 5.

   Note:

   Do not make any changes in the Admin Interface until all of the hosts have been created and joined the cluster. If in doubt about the status of your stack, check the logs from the SNS topic described in Creating a Simple Notification Service (SNS) Topic.