Management Tools | AWS OpsWorks Stacks

Question 1

What is AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 1

AWS OpsWorks Stacks lets you manage applications and servers on AWS and on-premises. With OpsWorks Stacks, you can model your application as a stack containing different layers, such as load balancing, database, and application server. You can deploy and configure Amazon EC2 instances in each layer or connect other resources such as Amazon RDS databases. OpsWorks Stacks lets you set automatic scaling for your servers based on preset schedules or in response to changing traffic levels, and it uses lifecycle hooks to orchestrate changes as your environment scales. You run Chef recipes using Chef Solo, allowing you to automate tasks such as installing packages and programming languages or frameworks, configuring software, and more.

Question 2

How is AWS OpsWorks Stacks different from AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 2

OpsWorks for Chef Automate is a configuration management service that helps you instantly provision a Chef server and lets the service operate it, including performing backups and software upgrades. The service offers full compatibility with Chef’s Supermarket cookbooks and recipes. It supports native Chef tools such as TestKitchen and Knife. The OpsWorks Stacks service helps you model, provision, and manage your applications on AWS using the embedded Chef solo client that is installed on Amazon EC2 instances on your behalf.

Question 3

Who should use AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 3

System administrators and ops-minded developers who are looking for a powerful end-to-end configuration management solution should consider AWS OpsWorks Stacks. AWS OpsWorks Stacks is targeted at DevOps users who want better management and automation tools to help them customize and control their environments. An AWS OpsWorks Stacks user typically values:

Control. AWS OpsWorks Stacks makes it easy to model all the components of your application and then configure any aspect of your application and its supporting infrastructure. With support for scripted changes using Chef recipes (learn more here) at defined stages in the application lifecycle, you have fine-grained control of your application and its interaction with related components. Your recipes can be stored with your source code, making it easy to track changes. From one-time deployments to auto scaled growth, your application will reflect your settings through its complete lifecycle.

Automation. Instead of manual steps, you specify how to scale, maintain, and deploy your applications and AWS OpsWorks Stacks performs the tasks for you. For example, AWS OpsWorks Stacks can set up instances to host your apps based on the exact configurations that you specify (code to deploy, etc.), scale your apps using load-based or time-based auto scaling, and maintain the health of your apps by detecting and replacing failed instances. AWS OpsWorks Stacks uses Chef recipes to start new app server instances, configure app server software, and deploy apps. You can also apply your own Chef recipes to make changes to your database and monitoring infrastructure.

Question 4

What can users do with AWS OpsWorks Stacks that they could not do before?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 4

AWS OpsWorks Stacks delivers a solution that lets you:

Model and support any application. You can deploy your application in the configuration you choose on Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, RHEL, and Windows. AWS OpsWorks Stacks lets you model your application with layers. Layers define how to configure a set of resources that are managed together. For example, you might define a web layer for your application that consists of Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon EBS volumes, and Elastic IP addresses. You can also define the software configuration for each layer, including installation scripts and initialization tasks. When an instance is added to a layer, AWS OpsWorks Stacks automatically applies the specified configuration. Because AWS OpsWorks Stacks supports Chef recipes (visit here for details), you can leverage hundreds of community-built configurations such as PostgreSQL, Nginx, and Solr. For example, you can create an application that consists of multiple Python apps installed on Django connected to a CouchDB database.

Automate tasks. AWS OpsWorks Stacks enables you to automate management actions so that they are performed automatically and reliably. You can benefit from automatic failover, package management, Elastic Load Balancing configuration, and automatic rule-based or time-based instance scaling. Common tasks automatically handled for you, and you can also extend and customize that automation. AWS OpsWorks Stacks supports continuous configuration through lifecycle events that automatically update your instances’ configuration to adapt to environment changes, such as auto scaling events. With AWS OpsWorks Stacks there is no need to log in to several machines and manually update your configuration. Whenever your environment changes, AWS OpsWorks Stacks updates your configuration.

Question 5

What kinds of applications are supported by AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 5

AWS OpsWorks Stacks supports a wide variety of application architectures, from simple web applications to highly complex custom applications.

Question 6

How can I access AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 6

AWS OpsWorks Stacks is available through the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, and the AWS Command Line Interface.

Question 7

What regions does AWS OpsWorks support Stacks?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 7

Please refer to Regional Products and Services for details of OpsWorks Stacks availability by region.

Question 8

How is AWS OpsWorks Stacks different than AWS CloudFormation?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 8

AWS OpsWorks Stacks and AWS CloudFormation both support application modeling, deployment, configuration, management, and related activities. Both support a wide variety of architectural patterns, from simple web applications to highly complex applications. AWS OpsWorks Stacks and AWS CloudFormation differ in abstraction level and areas of focus.

AWS CloudFormation is a building block service that enables customers to provision and manage almost any AWS resource via a JSON-based domain specific language. AWS CloudFormation focuses on providing foundational capabilities for the full breadth of AWS, without prescribing a particular model for development and operations. Customers define templates and use them to provision and manage AWS resources, operating systems and application code.

In contrast, AWS OpsWorks Stacks is a higher level service that focuses on providing highly productive and reliable DevOps experiences for IT administrators and ops-minded developers. To do this, AWS OpsWorks Stacks employs a configuration management model based on concepts such as stacks and layers, and provides integrated experiences for key activities like deployment, monitoring, auto-scaling, and automation. Compared to AWS CloudFormation, AWS OpsWorks Stacks supports a narrower range of application-oriented AWS resource types including Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon EBS volumes, Elastic IPs, and Amazon CloudWatch metrics.

Question 9

How is AWS OpsWorks Stacks different than AWS Elastic Beanstalk?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 9

AWS OpsWorks Stacks is a configuration management platform while AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an application management platform.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an easy-to-use service for deploying and scaling web applications and services developed with Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker. Customers upload their code and Elastic Beanstalk automatically does the rest.

AWS OpsWorks Stacks and AWS Elastic Beanstalk both automate operations but serve different needs and purposes. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is designed for developers who want to deploy web applications without worrying about operations. Developers simply upload their code and Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment, from capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling to application health monitoring. The application will be ready to use without any infrastructure or resource configuration work on the developer’s part.

In contrast, AWS OpsWorks Stacks is an integrated configuration management platform for IT administrators and DevOps engineers who want a high degree of customization and control over operations. AWS OpsWorks Stacks users leverage Chef recipes to automate operations like software configurations, package installations, database setups, server scaling, and code deployment.

Question 10

Can I manage resources created by AWS OpsWorks Stacks using other service consoles or CLIs?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 10

While all the resources used by OpsWorks Stacks to build your environment are visible in their respective services, in general you should manage the resources exclusively through OpsWorks Stacks to avoid side effects with OpsWorks Stacks automation. There are a few exceptions, however:

AWS OpsWorks Stacks will create and delete volumes for instances based on the configuration specified in your layer. If you want to snapshot the volumes, or manage volumes you have chosen to retain when an instance is terminated, you can do this directly with the Amazon EC2 service.

AWS OpsWorks Stacks provides security groups for your layers with defaults that match the ports required for that layer. If you want to customize the security group or create new security groups, you can do this directly with the EC2 service.

AWS OpsWorks Stacks uses key pairs that enable you to ssh into your instances. If you want to create or manage key pairs, you can do this directly with the Amazon EC2 service.

AWS OpsWorks Stacks creates default AWS IAM policies for the users you add to your stack. If you want finer grained permissions, you will need to add those permissions to the user in IAM.

AWS OpsWorks Stacks sends metrics from all your resources to Amazon CloudWatch. If you want to view these metrics or set alarms, you can do this directly with Amazon CloudWatch.

Question 11

Are AWS OpsWorks Stacks instances the same as Amazon EC2 instances?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 11

An AWS OpsWorks Stacks instance defines an Amazon EC2 instance and its relationship with related resources, such as its availability zone, type, and associated volumes. An AWS OpsWorks Stacks instance may be represented by many Amazon EC2 instances over its lifetime, but only one at a time. This lets AWS OpsWorks Stacks consistently bind resources such as volumes and Elastic IPs with the Amazon EC2 instance when it is started.

Question 12

Are there any limits to AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 12

By default, you can create up to 40 Stacks, and each stack can hold up to 40 layers, 40 instances, and 40 apps. You should also be aware of other AWS limits. For example, the default AWS account limits allow you to launch up to 20 Amazon EC2 instances. If you need more resources, complete a request form and your request will be evaluated promptly. You can also install a limited number of packages through each OpsWorks Stacks layer. If you want to install a larger number of packages, use a custom cookbook to install packages.

Question 13

Does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support Windows Server?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 13

Yes. AWS OpsWorks Stacks supports Windows Server 2012 R2

Question 14

Does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support on-premises servers?

General

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 14

Yes. AWS OpsWorks Stacks supports all Linux machines that can install the OpsWorks Stacks agent and have connection to AWS public endpoints.

Question 15

What network requirements do my servers have to have to work with AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

Getting Started

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 15

Your servers will just need to be able to connect to AWS public endpoints.

Question 16

How do I sign up for AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

Getting Started

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 16

To sign up for AWS OpsWorks Stacks, click the Sign Up Now button on the OpsWorks Stacks detail page. You must have an Amazon Web Services account to access this service; if you do not already have one, you will be prompted to create one when you begin the AWS OpsWorks Stacks process.

Question 17

How do I get started with AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 17

The best way to get started with AWS OpsWorks Stacks is to work through the AWS OpsWorks Stacks Getting Started Guide (Linux | Windows), part of our technical documentation. Within a few minutes, you will be able to deploy and use your application.

Question 18

What elements of my application can I control when using AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 18

An AWS OpsWorks Stack defines the configuration of your entire application: the load balancers, server software, database, etc. You control every part of the stack by building layers that define the software packages deployed to your instances and other configuration details such as Elastic IPs and security groups. You can also deploy your software onto layers by identifying the repository and optionally using Chef recipes to automate everything Chef can do, such as creating directories and users, configuring databases, etc. You can use OpsWorks Stacks’ built-in automation to scale your application and automatically recover from instance failures. You can control who can view and manage the resources that are used by your application, including ssh access to the instances that your application uses.

Question 19

What software versioning and revision control systems does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 19

AWS OpsWorks Stacks can retrieve the code you want to deploy from common version control systems like Git and Subversion as well as HTTP and private or public S3 bundles. For example, you can deploy a specific version of your application by adding the version or branch from your Git repository into your OpsWorks Stacks app definition. You can also use Chef recipes to deploy your apps from anywhere you like using rsync or scp.

Question 20

What operating systems does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 20

AWS OpsWorks Stacks currently supports Amazon Linux, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Windows Server 2012 R2.

Question 21

Does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support Microsoft Windows?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 21

Yes. AWS OpsWorks Stacks supports Windows Server 2012 R2.

Question 22

Can I use AWS OpsWorks Stacks to deploy applications that are highly available?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 22

Yes. If your application supports horizontal scaling, you can create instances in multiple availability zones, and your load balancer will route traffic among your instances. If any instance fails, OpsWorks Stacks’ auto healing can replace it. If your application uses other techniques to achieve availability goals, such as a database with an active and a passive node, you can use Chef recipes to configure it.

Question 23

How do I model my application in AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 23

AWS OpsWorks Stacks provides three concepts to model your application:

A Stack is the highest-level management unit. A stack contains the set of Amazon EC2 instances and instance blueprints, called layers, used to launch and manage these instances. Applications, user permissions, and other resources are scoped and controlled in the context of the Stack. For example, you might create a stack for your development web application that includes a front-end load balancer, the PHP servers, your PHP apps, and the MySQL database. You can also create a stack for your production web application with a similar configuration by cloning the development stack.

A Layer is a blueprint for how to setup and configure an instance and related resources such as volumes, Elastic IPs, and can automatically take care of infrastructure configuration like SSL settings. You can also define the software configuration for each layer, including installation scripts, initialization tasks, and packages. For example, if you use a Ruby layer, OpsWorks Stacks can install not only Rails, but also all the Gems your application requires. Layers also include lifecycle events that let you automate configuration actions in response to changes in an instance’s status (see “What are Lifecycle Events” for details) using Chef recipes (see “What is Chef and how does AWS OpsWorks Stacks use it” for details). Layers can include time- or load-based auto scaling to handle demand peaks without manual interaction.

An App is software downloaded from a repository (e.g., Git, S3) and deployed to a layer. You can use the deploy lifecycle event to automate configuration steps such as connecting your application to a database. OpsWorks Stacks supports the ability to deploy multiple apps per stack and per layer.

Question 24

What is Chef and how does AWS OpsWorks Stacks use it?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 24

Chef is an open source framework sponsored by Chef Software, Inc. that automates how applications are configured, deployed, and managed through the use of code. AWS OpsWorks Stacks uses Chef recipes to deploy and configure software components on Amazon EC2 instances. Chef has a rich ecosystem with hundreds of Cookbooks that can be used with AWS OpsWorks Stacks such as PostgreSQL, Nginx, and Solr.

Question 25

What are lifecycle events?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 25

AWS OpsWorks Stacks creates events that correspond to lifecycle stages. These events can be used to trigger Chef recipes on each instance to perform specific configuration tasks. OpsWorks Stacks leverages Chef recipes to perform basic management for each event based on the type of layer. You can also create custom recipes to script any configuration change that your application needs for a specific lifecycle event. The following lifecycle events are supported:

Setup is sent to the instance when it is instantiated or successfully booted. For example, you could trigger a Chef recipe for a Rails application server that installs dependencies like Apache, Ruby, Passenger, and Ruby on Rails.

Configure notifies all instances whenever the state of the stack changes. For example, when a new instance is successfully added to an application server layer, the configure event triggers a Chef recipe that updates the OpsWorks Stacks Load Balancer layer configuration to reflect the added application server instance.

Deploy is triggered whenever an application is deployed. For example, you could trigger a Chef recipe for a Rails application server that executes the tasks needed to check out and download your application and tells Passenger to reload it.

Undeploy is sent when you delete an application. For example, the undeploy event can trigger a custom Chef recipe that specifies any cleanup steps that need to be run, such as deleting database tables.

Shutdown is sent to an instance 45 seconds before actually stopping the instance. For example, the shutdown event can trigger a custom Chef recipe that shuts down services.

Question 26

Does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support existing Chef cookbooks?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 26

Yes. You can use existing Chef recipes. For more information, see the documentation.

Question 27

How do I create Chef cookbooks and recipes?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 27

Probably the easiest way to get started is to use existing Chef recipes. There is a rich ecosystem of public repositories containing Chef cookbooks with recipes that can run with little to no modification. The OpsWorks Stacks Getting Started Guide also includes an example Chef recipe and describes how it works.

Question 28

Can I use my own AMIs?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 28

Yes. You can use your own AMIs or customize the AMIs OpsWorks Stacks supports using Chef scripts to install agents and other software that you require. Using your own Windows AMIs is not currently supported.

Question 29

Can I use Amazon EC2 user data to customize instance setup?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 29

No. Instance setup is done exclusively through Chef recipes.

Question 30

What load balancing options does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 30

OpsWorks Stacks supports Elastic Load Balancing, HAProxy using community Chef recipes, or any load balancer you choose to install on your EC2 instances using a custom layer and Chef recipes. This gives you rich customization options and fine-grained control of your application’s load balancer.

Question 31

What automatic instance scaling options does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 31

OpsWorks Stacks supports automatic time and load-based instance scaling to adapt the number of running instances to match your load. With load-based auto scaling, you can set thresholds for CPU, memory, or load to define when additional instances will be started. Once the load spike is gone and your down-scaling thresholds are met, OpsWorks Stacks will shut down the additional instances. With time-based auto scaling, you can define at what time of the day instances will be started and stopped. The instances in your auto scaling pool can vary in size, letting you scale gradually or quickly, and can be configured for multiple availability zones to improve reliability. OpsWorks Stacks does not support EC2 Auto Scaling at this time.

Question 32

What monitoring and alarming options does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 32

OpsWorks Stacks sends all of your instance and volume metrics to CloudWatch, making it easy to view graphs and set alarms to help you troubleshoot and take automated action based on the state of your resources. You can also see the thirteen 1-minute metrics OpsWorks Stacks collects (including CPU, memory, and load) from your instances in the OpsWorks Stacks Monitoring view.

Question 33

What databases does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support?

Application Configuration and Management

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 33

You can use AWS services such as Amazon RDS or use Chef recipes to install databases such as MySQL, Cassandra, or MongoDB. This gives you rich customization options and fine-grained control of your application’s database.

Question 34

Does AWS OpsWorks Stacks support tags?

Security

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 34

OpsWorks Stacks automatically tags all resources with the name of the stack and layer that they are associated with. You can use these tags with Cost Allocation Reports to organize and track your AWS costs using tagging. To learn more about Cost Allocation and tagging, please visit AWS Account Billing.

Question 35

Can I run my application inside an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)?

Security

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 35

Yes. See the OpsWorks Stacks documentation for more information.

Question 36

Is it possible to use AWS Identity & Access Management (IAM) with AWS OpsWorks Stacks?

Security

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 36

Yes, OpsWorks Stacks supports IAM users, permissions, and roles. You can designate permissions by user, including view, deploy, and manage. You can also specify which users can ssh directly into instances. OpsWorks Stacks support for IAM roles lets you give a user access to OpsWorks Stacks without having to give access to dependent services like EC2. For example, you can explicitly deny a user the ability to perform EC2 actions, but the user can still control EC2 instances through OpsWorks Stacks if they have OpsWorks Stacks permissions to deploy or manage stack resources. This lets you prevent an OpsWorks Stacks user from inadvertently stopping an instance from the EC2 console.

Question 37

Can I manage what ports are open on my instances?

Security

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 37

AWS OpsWorks Stacks provides a standard set of built-in security groups — one for each layer — which are associated with layers by default. The stack’s Use OpsWorks Stacks security groups setting allows you to instead provide your own custom security groups. With this option, you must create appropriate EC2 security groups and associate a security group with each layer that you create. However, you can still manually associate a built-in security group with a layer on creation; custom security groups are required only for those layers that need custom settings. For more information on security groups, see Amazon EC2 Security Groups. Note that OpsWorks Stacks requires connectivity outbound from the EC2 instance on port 443 to configure your instance.

Question 38

What does AWS OpsWorks Stacks run on the instance?

Security

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 38

OpsWorks Stacks uses an agent on the instance to perform configuration tasks and provide heartbeat health status. The agent runs as an unprivileged user on the operating system. Every instance also has a user that is used for deployments. This user doesn’t have any login rights or access rights apart from deployment.

Question 39

Where can I find more information about security and running applications on AWS?

Billing

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 39

For more information about AWS security please refer to our Amazon Web Services: Overview of Security Processes document and visit our Security Center.

Question 40

How much does AWS OpsWorks Stacks cost?

Billing

AWS OpsWorks Stacks | Management Tools

Answer 40

You pay for on-premises servers supported by AWS OpsWorks Stacks by the hour; there are no minimum fees and no upfront commitments. The pricing for each on-premises server on which you install the OpsWorks Stacks agent is $0.02 per hour.

There is no additional charge for Amazon EC2 instances supported by AWS OpsWorks Stacks. You pay for AWS resources (e.g. EC2 instances, EBS volumes, Elastic IP addresses) created using OpsWorks Stacks in the same manner as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no upfront commitments.