Tim Collins's picture

OK so in the past I've done backups/restores between different Hub accounts and used TKLBAM-INIT etc but, can I do this and how...

I created an AMI (original Turnkey Debian 13 LAMP) along with all it's ebs volumes on one AWS account and shared it with my another (customer) account but can I re-connect it to the hub account as it doesn't show up even though it's running in AWS?

 

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Jeremy Davis's picture

So you have a server running on AWS which you want to attach to a Hub account? But currently it doesn't even show up in AWS? I don't understand how you can do anything with it if it doesn't even show up in AWS...?!

I know Hub based instances can be managed via the AWS console, but not sure if it works the other way around... But I could be wrong...

Tim Collins's picture

It's originally a hub instance on one customer account but I've shared it as an Amazon AMI with all it's ebs volumes, so like the whole packaged up. Then I've imported it to another AWS account which is also a hub account. Doesn't show up in the hub like I said and wondered if there's a way to make it show up? It runs ok and I can access the machine with no trouble just can't manage it in the hub.

You might ask why I would want to do this, it's because when you've got a couple of hundred Gb of attached volumes it's just too slow and and too inefficient a method to create massive TKL backups then recreate and restore volumes.

Jeremy Davis's picture

TBH I haven't played with AWS in the way you are describing and as I said before you can definitely control Hub instance via AWS console, but I don't think it works the other way (but Alon may correct me if I'm wrong).

I know that it's probably not ideal, but I guess one workaround would be to do a TKLBAM backup excluding the masses of data. Then restore that backup to a Hub instance. Then create EBS volume(s) matching the server you wish to migrate and rsync the data directly between the 2 instances. It's probably still not ideal, but I think that if you do it that way it would still be more efficient than via TKLBAM (basically copying to S3 via network, then back to EBS vol). Now I think about it, how about creating the EBS volumes in the Hub then attaching them to your existing (non-hub) server and doing a local file copy, then reattach the Hub EBS volumes to the Hub instance?

Ideal there'd be a better way but that might be an adequate workaround...?

Tim Collins's picture

Thank for the reply Jeremy, I'm revisiting this problem again as I have to get this server running now.

Maybe the issue is something else, why can I not launch EC2 c3.xxxxxx appliances from the HUB? The appliance I can't see is a c3.large and maybe that's why I can't get it to show up?

Note that if I'm going to relanch this as a HUB appliance I need to create a c3 type so is there some reason they're not in the list and can this be resolved?

Jeremy Davis's picture

And it seems that you are right in that c3 sizes do not appear to be available.

I will double check with Alon & Liraz and hopefully one of them will post back here ASAP.

Jeremy Davis's picture

I have spoken to Alon about this and he noted that adding c3 instances to the Hub has been on his (extensive) todo list for some time. But following this nudge he will reprioritise it up the list. No promises but hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

Tim Collins's picture

Many thanks for looking into this one, I look forward to seeing them appear sometime soon. Hopefully!

For me some C3s represent better CPU vs RAM combinations than the older versions and for not a lot of cost difference.

Thank you guys for all the hard work shortening that to-do list.

Tim Collins's picture

Any chance of a timescale for getting C3/M3 Amazon EC2 instances into the Hub launch list? The lack of is rather holding up my customer's project as there simply isn't a C1/M1 appliance with the right ECU/Memory combination I need at a suitable price point.

Thank you.

Alon Swartz's picture

Sorry for long turn around. I just updated the Hub to support 7 new instance sizes (below), as well as updating the ec2pricing to be insync with AWS, instance sizes help popup and reserved instances with the new sizes and pricing.

New instances:

  • Pay-per-use/Bronze: m3.medium
  • Pay-per-use/Silver: m3.large, c3.large
  • Pay-per-use/Gold+: c3.xlarge, c3.2xlarge, c3.4xlarge, c3.8xlarge

 

Tim Collins's picture

Thank you very much Alon for getting these in the list. Seems to be a little problem though as I've tried to launch a c3.Large which should be supported by my Silver plan but it says it isn't and directs me to the Plans page.

Can you take a look at that please.

Regards

Tim

Alon Swartz's picture

Sorry about that, I deployed a fix which should solve the issue. If you still have issues please let me know.

 

Tim Collins's picture

All working now, appliance launched and running.

Very many thanks, keep up the great work.

Tim

Tim Collins's picture

Going back to my original post title...if anyone ever gets the time to look into it I would still like to know if it's possible to reconnect an Amazon AMI (containing a hub appliance) to another hub account. As I tried to explain you can't currently transfer EBS volumes between hub accounts and if you have a lot of them in a say in a raid array it's very difficult to boot a TKL-RESTOREd appliance without all those volumes and very time consuming to recreate them all.

The method I found involves creating an AMI of my hub appliance (with all the ebs volumes included) and sharing it with another customer's AWS account (which is linked to a hub account), this sort of works and the appliance runs but there's no mechanism reconnect it to the customers hub account and have it show up and be managed there. It's kind of orphaned.

I think an id has something to do with it as tklbam complains the appliance id is not recognised from the command line.

Just one for the back-burner but it would be nice to be able to transfer an appliance between accounts lock stock and barrel and not just the bootable volume.

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