Quick Start Guide

Quick Start Guide

Run Sun/Oracle Java 6 on Linux or Mac

• Avoid Java 7
• Avoid OpenJDK
• Avoid Windows
• Yes, Asgard runs on Grails, and Grails runs on Java, and Java is supposed to be "run anywhere", except for the fact that Asgard users have reported incompatibility problems with Java 7, OpenJDK, and Windows. A future version of Asgard will be Java 7 compatible, and perhaps it will work with OpenJDK eventually. The Windows issue is less likely to get debugged by Netflix engineers, but if you figure it out feel free to send a pull request.

Create an AWS key pair

• Ensure there is at least one EC2 SSH key pair in your AWS account.
• Create a key pair using the AWS Management Console.
• See Amazon's documentation for help using the key pair to gain SSH access to your EC2 instances.

Sign up for SQS and SimpleDB (it's free)

• Asgard assumes your AWS account is signed up for multiple cloud services, and may hang when loading caches on startup if one of those services stays unavailable to you. Some users have reported hung startup routines until their account had SQS and SimpleDB.

Download and run Asgard

1. Download the latest war from http://netflix.box.com/asgard/
2. Download and expand the latest stable Apache Tomcat from http://tomcat.apache.org/
3. Delete the contents of apache-tomcat-x/webapps/
4. Copy asgard.war into apache-tomcat-x/webapps/
5. Set the context root and port. See Tomcat Configuration.
6. Run apache-tomcat-x/bin/startup.sh
7. See Troubleshooting if there is a problem

Provide your AWS account credentials

1. Open a browser and go to http://localhost:8080 (or the port you chose)
2. If the server has never run Asgard before you should see a form requesting your AWS credentials.
   • This is a shortcut for creating a minimal Asgard configuration in a default location on your server. You can modify the configuration file later.
   • If your AWS account already owns Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that you launch, then uncheck "Use public Amazon images" in order to remove clutter from your image lists.
3. Enter your credentials and wait for the server to load and cache data from the AWS. The screen should refresh automatically when loading is complete after a few minutes.

Create an application and security group

1. Click "App"
2. Click "Create New Application"
   • Name: "helloworld"
   • Description: "Example application"
   • Owner: <your name>
   • Email: <your email address>
   • Leave the drop-downs unchanged
3. Submit the form by clicking "Create New Application" at the bottom
4. On the Application Details screen, click "Edit Application Security"
5. Leave the checkboxes empty
6. Submit the form by clicking "Update Security Groups" at the bottom

Create a cluster

1. Click "Cluster"
2. Click "Create New Auto Scaling Group"
3. Select the "helloworld" application
   • Notice the name preview changes
4. Scroll down to the "Launch Configuration" section
5. Change the AMI Image ID to the AMI that you want to deploy as your helloworld example.
6. Select the helloworld security group
7. Submit the form by clicking "Create New Auto Scaling Group" at the bottom