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1.6. Create a Fabric Server on EC2

What is a Fabric Server?

The first step in creating a new fabric in the cloud is to create a Fabric Server instance. A Fabric Server is a container with a Fabric Registry Agent deployed inside it (there must be at least one Fabric Server in a fabric). You can think of it as a seed for the rest of the fabric.

What happens when you create a Fabric Server?

The fabric:container-create-cloud console command, which creates the Fabric Server, is a powerful command that does a lot of things:
  1. Using the JClouds library, it connects to the AWS and creates a new compute instance in the cloud.
  2. It uploads your SSH public key to the compute instance.
  3. It installs all of the basic prerequisites for provisioning and running a Red Hat JBoss Fuse container in the compute instance (for example, by installing JDK 1.6).
  4. It installs JBoss Fuse in the compute instance.
  5. It starts up the JBoss Fuse container and deploys a Fabric Registry Agent into the container, so that it functions as a Fabric Server.
  6. It modifies the EC2 firewall settings for the compute instance (if necessary, creating a new EC2 security group).

Creating a Fabric Server on a micro instance

To create a Fabric Server on a micro instance, t1.micro (in Amazon's free usage tier) using a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.4 image, enter the following console command: 
JBossFuse:karaf@root> fabric:container-create-cloud --name aws-ec2 --ensemble-server
--new-user admin --new-user-password admin --zookeeper-password admin
--hardwareId t1.micro --os-family rhel --os-version 6.4 registry
This command creates a container called registry and the --ensemble-server option makes the new container a Fabric Server. This command can take a minute or two to complete. If it is successfully, you should see output like the following: 
Looking up for compute service.
Creating 1 nodes on aws-ec2. It may take a while ...
Node fabric-dcfaa2fd has been succesfully created.
Installing fabric agent on container registry. It may take a while...
Overriding resolver to publichostname.
[id]                 [container]  [registry password] [public addresses] [status]
us-east-1/i-dcfaa2fd registry     admin               [54.224.255.118]   success
Tip
In a production environment, you would need to allocate a permanent IP address to the Fabric Server. By default, when you restart an instance in EC2, the IP address is automatically re-allocated.

Creating a Fabric Server on a small instance

The amount of memory available in a micro instance is a bit limited for a Red Hat JBoss Fuse container instance. If you want to create a fabric for a production deployment, it is typically better to use at least a small instance, m1.small. You can create a small instance, as follows: 
JBossFuse:karaf@root> fabric:container-create-cloud --name aws-ec2 --ensemble-server
--new-user admin --new-user-password admin --zookeeper-password admin
--hardwareId m1.small --os-family rhel --os-version 6.4 registry
Important
An m1.small instance is not covered by the Amazon free usage tier and incurs an hourly usage charge (until the instance is terminated).

SSH login to the new instance

It should now be possible to log on to the new compute instance using SSH. Open a new command prompt and enter the following command: 
ssh 50.19.18.91
Where you provide the compute instance's public IP address as the argument to the ssh command (you could also use the compute instance's public hostname). The ssh command uses the default RSA private key as credentials.
If you did not put your SSH key pair in the default location, you can specify the private key location explicitly, as follows: 
ssh -i PrivateKeyFile 50.19.18.91

Hardware list

If you want to see all of the hardware options available, use the jclouds:hardware-list console command: 
karaf@root> jclouds:hardware-list 
[id]         [ram] [cpu] [cores]
cc1.4xlarge  23552  32.0     8.0
cg1.4xlarge  22528  32.0     8.0
cc2.8xlarge  61952  88.0    16.0
hi1.4xlarge  61952  35.0    16.0
hs1.8xlarge 119808  35.0    16.0
g2.2xlarge   15360  26.0     8.0
t1.micro       630   1.0     1.0
c1.medium     1740   5.0     2.0
c1.xlarge     7168  20.0     8.0
c3.xlarge     7168  14.0     4.0
c3.2xlarge   15360  28.0     8.0
c3.4xlarge   30720  55.0    16.0
c3.8xlarge   61440 108.0    32.0
i2.xlarge    31232  14.0     4.0
i2.2xlarge   62464  27.0     8.0
i2.4xlarge  124928  53.0    16.0
i2.8xlarge  249856 104.0    32.0
m1.large      7680   4.0     2.0
m1.small      1740   1.0     1.0
m1.medium     3750   2.0     1.0
m1.xlarge    15360   8.0     4.0
m2.xlarge    17510   6.5     2.0
m2.2xlarge   35020  13.0     4.0
m2.4xlarge   70041  26.0     8.0
m3.medium     3840   3.0     1.0
m3.large      7680   6.5     2.0
m3.xlarge    15360  13.0     4.0
m3.2xlarge   30720  26.0     8.0

Image list

If you want to find out what machine images are available on Amazon EC2, enter the following console command: 
JBossFuse:karaf@root> jclouds:image-list

Groups and security

Fabric automatically configures an Amazon EC2 security group for the new containers (default is the jclouds#fabric security group). All of the containers in a fabric should belong to the same security group. By default, Fabric adds all of the cloud containers to the fabric group. If necessary, you can specify the group explicitly by specifying the --group option on the fabric:container-create-cloud command.