aws.md

AWS configuration

The aws user configuration has the following schema:

{
  "credentials": {

    "aws": {
      "apiKey": "my_api_key_value",
      "secretKey": "my_secret_key",
      "sessionToken": "my optional session token",
      "secretKeyPath": "my_secret_key_path",
      "region": "my_region",
      "availability_zone": "a"
    }

  }
}

To set each of the value referenced above, follow the steps below.

apiKey and secretKey

• If you need a new AWS (free) account, follow the steps at the bottom of this page first.
• Login onto AWS console, with either your aws username/password, or through SSO (okta for example), https://aws.amazon.com/console/
• Under Services, go to IAM (manage access to AWS resources)
• Click the Add user button
• Enter a user name, this can be your username, for example jsmith
• Select Programmatic access. Do NOT select AWS Management Console access as this is not needed for the deployer.
• Click Next
• Select Attach existing policies directly
• Search and Select AdministratorAccess
• Click Next: Tags
• Add any key/value tag you may want (not needed by the deployer)
• Click Next: Review
• Click Create User
• Copy both the Access key ID which will be your apiKey value, and the Secret access key which will be your secretKey value.
• Put both values in your user config credentials for aws apiKey and secretKey

sessionToken

In case you use STS to get temporary credential, you can use this field to input your token.

secretKeyPath and region

In order to create and access EC2 resources, a .pem key file is required. Those .pem key file are bound to a specific AWS region. To create a .pem key file, and use it with the deployer, follow the steps below:

• Login onto AWS console, with either your aws username/password, or through SSO (okta for example), https://aws.amazon.com/console/
• Under Services, go to EC2 (Virtual Servers in the Cloud)
• On the top right, select a specific region, for example Oregon which is us-west-2.
• In your browser URL, notice the region query string parameter. The value will be the region value to use in your user config credential for region.
• On the left, under Network & Security, select Key Pairs
• Click the Create key pair button
• Enter a name for your .pem key file. Typically, it's a good idea to user a region suffix, to remind you what region that file is associated to, although this is not required. You can name the file as you wish. For example jsmithUsWest2
• Select pem file format
• Optional, add any tag by clicking on the Add new tag button
• Click the Create key pair button. This will starts a file download on your browser. The file downloaded will be named for example jsmithUsWest2.pem.
• Move the downloaded file to a secure folder on your machine, we recommend the same folder as the user configuration file $HOME/demo-deployer/configs
• IMPORTANT, in order for the .pem key file to be used, the file permissions need to be restricted to User read-only. You can do so with this command sudo chmod 0400 *.pem
• Get the relative path of your .pem key file, this will be the value for the secretKeyPath field. For example configs/jsmithUsWest2.pem

availability_zone (optional)

Some resources can be pin onto a specific availability zone. To do so provide the appropriate letter value to this parameter. Typically a or b or c. In the absence of this parameter, the first default availability zone is typically picked up, usually the a availability zone.

Create a new AWS account

You can create a new AWS account, with some limited free access to some resources. To do so, follow the steps on https://aws.amazon.com