Anatomy of a CloudFormation Template

CloudFormation does not have real time validation of parameter values. The following are some of the behaviors to be aware of when using CloudFormation templates to deploy clusters.

• All of the template parameters must have values.

• The parameter values of Availability Zone and Number of Zones must match.

• When deploying to an existing VPC, the parameter values of the Availability Zone must be consistent with the parameter values of Subnets. For example, if the Availability Zone values are us-west-2a, us-west-2b, and us-west-2c, then Subnets must provide IDs of subnets located in the zones in above order.

• When deploying to an existing VPC, the Subnets must be in the specified VPC.

The main sections of the CloudFormation Template are described in this section.

These sample templates create a load balancer as well as enable a public IP for each MarkLogic 1 Server. The Load Balancer type depends on the number of zones selected. Select three zones for an Application Load Balancer (ALB), or select one zone for Classic Load Balancer (CLB). The output of the stack lists the URL of the Load Balancer.

When the Instance Public IP address is enabled, you are able to directly access each host (port 8000 for example) and SSH (when a public DNS is configured as described in Accessing a MarkLogic Server Instance). Otherwise, you cannot directly access the hosts. It is a best practice to not enable the public IP address.

Most applications need to use the load balancer as their endpoint. XCC applications, such as mlcp, need to set the xcc.httpcompliant=true mode to connect through the ELB regardless of session affinity issues. For details, see Using a Load Balancer or Proxy Server with an XCC Application in Develop with XCC.