Overview
The second part of this three-part weblog series about installing your Composition Environment in the cloud describes the configuration of your system at operating system level. Come along and prepare your system for the installation of your CE trial.
- Composition in the Cloud: Run your own SAP NetWeaver CE 7.1 EHP 1 in the cloud (Part 1 of 3) introduces you to Amazon Web Services and guides you through setting up your first server in the cloud.
- Part 2 (this part) guides you through the configuration of the server at operating system level.
- Composition in the Cloud: Run your own SAP NetWeaver CE 7.1 EHP 1 in the cloud (Part 3 of 3) is about installing SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment and about adding the final touches to get a usable system.
The Composition in the Cloud: Run your own SAP NetWeaver CE 7.1 EHP 1 in the cloud (Part 1 of 3) ended when we had launched our first instance of a Windows server and connected to it for the first time. In this part we will configure the Windows server and prepare everything for the installation of SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment.
Configure the system
1. Start menu
You should now make a few adjustments to the instance. The first thing I do (and I hope you agree) is set the Start menu to “Classic Style”.
2. Administrator password
The next is to set the Administrator password to something you can remember – in my case “cloudpassword”. Select Start > Settings > Windows Security > Change Password to change the password.
3. Compromise browser security
The default installation comes with extremely tight browser security. The easiest way to get the browser to work normally is to deinstall the Windows component that is responsible for the paranoid behaviour.
Select Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Add/Remove Windows Programs and deselect “Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration” to remove the culprit.
4. Download Firefox
The main purpose of Internet Explorer is to download Firefox. Go to http://www.firefox.com/ and download and install the latest version (in my case 3.5.2). I don’t recommend you to make it your default browser, though, because it doesn’t work smoothly with Web Dynpro.
5. Download and configure S3Fox
Using Firefox, go to http://www.s3fox.net/, and download and install the S3Fox add-on to Firefox. It allows you to create folders in which you can store AMIs, Volumes and Snapshots.
Select Tools > S3 Organizer in Firefox to start the application.
Click on “Manage Accounts”, enter an account name (in my case “thorstenster”) and paste the access key and secret access key you received when you signed up to AWS.
6. Create a Bucket
Click on “Create Bucket/Directory” to create a storage location for your Bundles, Volumes, and Snapshots.
In the following dialog, give a name to your folder (in my case “thorstensterbucket”). Do not tick the “Place this bucket in Europe” box as we’re working in the region “US-East”.
Folder names must be unique. If you choose a name that is already taken by you or another user, you will receive an error message.
7. Reserve a DynDNS hostname
In order to access the server through a stable URL, we need a hostname that remains the same even though the IP address changes with each launch. We can achieve this with a free dynamic DNS service such as DynDNS.
Follow this link (https://www.dyndns.com/account/services/hosts/add.html) to sign up to DynDNS and reserve a hostname such as “cloudce.dyndns.org”. (Please change that to something different as I have taken the liberty to reserve this hostname.)
8. Change server hostname
By default, the hostname of a new instance is automatically generated upon launch. We will change the hostname, then override the hostname generation setting so that our hostname remains stable throughout instance launches.
On the Desktop, right-click on “My Computer” and select “Properties”. Select Computer Name > Change and set the computer name to “cloudce” (or the hostname you have chosen on DynDNS). Click on “More” and enter a “dyndns.org” (or the domain you have chosen on DynDNS) as the DNS suffix for your computer.
9. Override hostname generation setting
Start program C:Program FilesAmazonEc2ConfigSetupEc2ConfigServiceSettings.exe (you might as well create a shortcut on the desktop as you will use this program frequently) and uncheck the “Set Computer Name” box.
On the “Bundle” tab, uncheck the “Sysprep” box.
10. Download and install DynDNS Updater
Download and run http://cdn.dyndns.com/windows/DynUpSetup.exe to install DynDNS Updater on your instance. During the installation procedure, check the “Install the DynDNS Updater as a Windows Service” box.
Enter your DynDNS username and password, then select the DynDNS hostname you want to associate with this instance.
11. Create and attach a new volume
We’re getting ready to download and install CE 7.1 EHP 1, so we must prepare some persistent storage.
- Drive C: is the boot drive. Anything written to it is persisted when we bundle the instance. But we don’t want to bundle the instance after each use, so using C: to store the download is not the optimal solution.
- Drive 😧 is an ephemeral drive. No matter what we store on it, it will be lost the next time an instance is launched from the AMI. This is clearly out of the question.
Go to the AWS Management Console, click on “Volumes” select “Create Volume”.
Enter the size of the virtual drive (30 GiB) and select the availability zone (us-east-1a). The availability zone must match the availability zone in which your instance is running.
After a few seconds, the volume is available. Right-click on it, select your running instance (there is only one) and click on “Attach”. The drive is now attached to your instance.
On your instance’s desktop, start Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management.
The “Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard” launches. Cancel it.
Convert Disk 2 to “Dynamic”, then choose “New Volume” to start the New Volume Wizard. Select “Simple”, assign drive letter E:, format the volume with NTFS, perform a quick format, and set the volume label to “cedrive”.
The drives should now look as follows:
To make the association between this drive and the drive letter E: persistent, we use the configuration tool again – start the shortcut you have created earlier or run program C:Program FilesAmazonEc2ConfigSetupEc2ConfigServiceSettings.exe.
After launching an instance from the (not yet bundled) AMI we’re just creating, the volume will not be automatically attached – we still have to attach it manually. But the above setting will cause the volume to be consistently mapped to drive letter E:.
Outlook
In the next part we will install and configure Composition Environment and wrap things up by creating a resuable AMI.
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