Cloud Config - FAQ

1. Access windows EC2 machine which has windows firewall on from Local machine

2. Amazon EC2 Instance has no public DNS assigned to it

3. Best Practices: Running Appvance IQ testing using EC2 cloud file

4. Creating EC2 instances via Scenario Builder and running the tests, the first run's response times are on a higher side compared to consecutive runs by using the instances that are already running.

1. Access windows EC2 machine which has windows firewall on from Local machine

   1. Please find below the article which explains in detail what steps need to be followed.

      To Access a windows EC2 machine which has a windows Firewall "ON"

      Please follow the steps mentioned below to access an EC2 machine with Firewall "ON"

      Step1:

      Login to the EC2 machine with the username and password. Once logged in successfully navigate to Control Panel\System and Security and click "Windows Firewall".

      Step 2:

      Once the user has navigated inside "Windows Firewall", on the left-hand side user will have an option named "Advanced Settings" click that.

      Step 3:

      Once the user has navigated to Advanced settings, the user should click "Inbound Rule" and on the right-hand side user should get an option to create a "New Rule" and clicks on it

      Step 4:

      The user clicks on "Custom rule" and clicks on Next

      Step 5:

      The user selects on " All Programs" and clicks on Next

      Step 6:

      The user chooses the "Protocol Type" from the dropdown. In our case, we will be opting for "TCP" since we need to access the application over the internet. Also, the user can also select ports for which this rule can be applied(For Ex: if we select 80, the user can only access port 80 and so on). After making the changes the user clicks on next

      Step 7:

      The user clicks on the "Add" under "which remote IP address needs to be added. Users should also need to know what public IP address is. The user obtains the Public IP address and enters it and clicks on Next.

      Note: After the IP address, you doUser Verifies whether the rule has been added under Firewalln't specify "/0". If you do, every computer in the world would have access to that port. To restrict access to a single address specify "/32" after the IP. (If you want to know why read the following article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIDR.)

      Step 8:

      The user clicks on allowing the connection and clicks on next

      Step 9:

      The user does not make any changes in this step and clicks on "Next".

      Step 10:

      The user enters a name for this rule and clicks on Finish.

      The user tries to access the below

      URL: http://EC2 URL:8080/Appvance/login.html

      The user should be able to navigate to the URL successfully

2. Amazon EC2 Instance has no public DNS assigned to it

   1. Please follow the below steps to add DNS hostnames to your EC2 Instances.

      Add Column VPC Id and check the VPC Id that your instance is assigned to.

      Go to console.aws.amazon.com

      Go To Services -> VPC

      Open Your VPCs

      select your VPC connected to your EC2 and

      Edit Summary ---> Change DNS hostnames: to YES

      Hope this helps.

3. Best Practices: Running Appvance IQ testing using EC2 cloud file

   1. The Best Practices that need to be followed are below:

      Please make sure that Appvance IQ installed on the machine is using the License file that you have been provided with so that the new machines do not run into license issues while executing tests.

      Add Appvance IQ under startup services so that once the machine starts, IQ is started automatically.

      Please follow the below link on how to run APC at a startup

      Run Appvance IQ as a Service on Windows

      Make sure the browsers are installed and are configured to have the correct paths.

      Once all the above changes are done create a new image and use this image to create machines while running tests.

      Do not run the test on a local machine instead EC2 machines run this kind of test which involves a cloud file.

      Always click "Test Configuration" under cloud management to verify if the credentials entered are valid

      The Database URL should be changed from the localhost URL to the name of the EC2 machine or use an RDS instance in Scenario Builder.

      Make sure to set "Terminate" as All and "Reboot" as Never under Locations in Scenario Builder or use these options depending on the needs.

4. Creating EC2 instances via Scenario Builder and running the tests, the first run's response times are on a higher side compared to consecutive runs by using the instances that are already running.

   1. Creating EC2 instances via Scenario Builder and running the tests, the first run's (where Appvance IQ creates requested instances from the Scenario builder using an AMI) response times are on a higher side compared to consecutive runs by using the instances that are already running.

      AWS has a lazy start-up, only the required part of the hard disk is copied from the AMI to the run time hard disk.

      Because of this, the machine starts up very fast, but accessing some parts of the hard disk could be very slow.

      This affects Appvance IQ during the first scenario execution. The response times reported could be on the higher side.

      Amazon provides a workaround which is reading the hard disk, in order to avoid this slowness during production.

      Nevertheless, the proposed solution is for the Linux platform only.

      Amazon documentation is located here: Initialize Amazon EBS volumes

      Appvance IQ now has the capability to read the hard disk the first time the machine is created. (This is for windows platforms)

      This will be done just the first time the AMI is created.

      Note: Still there could be little difference in the response times when the test is started for the first time to create an instance.

      and run the scenario compared to the subsequent scenario runs using the same started instance.