How to use the Amazon EC2 AMI for GroundWork Monitor 6.5

GroundWork Monitor 6.5 in the Amazon Cloud (EC2)

Last updated: September 27th 2011
GroundWork Monitor 6.5 Enterprise is available as a ready-to-run 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI) running on CentOS

Quick-start information

If you're an experienced EC2 users this the information you'll need:
AMI name: ami-7bb17c12 in the US-East region.
Minimum instance size: Large
Recommended instance size: Large
Administer your instance using the web interface:e.g. http://ec2-xx-xx-xx-xx.z-2.compute-1.amazonws.com/
The instance uses EBS for persistent storage. Amazon EBS I/O and storage charges apply in addition to CPU time.
Application login user name/password: admin/admin
Operator login user name/password: operator/operator
MySQL Root password: groundwork

The ami called ami-7bb17c12 has had all the relevant technical bulletins for 6.5 up to the date of release applied.

Getting Started With GroundWork Monitor 6.x and Amazon EC2 Cloud


This guide walks through getting started with GroundWork Monitor 6 in the Amazon EC2 cloud. This enables you to evaluate Groundwork Monitor 6 in a completely hosted, private copy.
If you have not already created an account on Amazon's EC2 service please do so now. Amazon will charge your account for the resources you consume on their service; GWOS does not receive any of this money.
You can sign up for a new account at:
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

The GroundWork Monitor 6.5 and above EC@ ami images are public AMIs. There is no need for you to be granted access. You can, of course, launch it, modify it, and bundle it into your own copy.

  • The instance has been left essentially as a clean, patched install of GWMEE 6.5. The Network Notification service is ON, and will submit anonymous usage data back to GroundWork when launched. A valid license is required for use, and will be needed on first login.
  • The GroundWork instance has not been logged into, or set up with a license, however a small amount of default logs have been generated. The database has been purged of these entries, but a few RRD files and log entries remain from the initial install. These files will not cause any operational issues.
  • As will all EC2 instances, this one should be launched with your keys, which will give you root access to the console. See Amazon documentation for key setup.

Locating the GroundWork Monitor Enterprise 6.5 AMI

  1. Go toaws.amazon.com and login to the AWS management console and select the EC2 tab
  2. Search for "GroundWork Monitor Enterprise 6.5" in the AMI section
  3. Right click on the Image and Launch an instance.
  4. Configure the instance to be created:
    In particular the following choices are recommended:
  • Create a single instance
  • Select an availability zone
  • Instance type is Large (m1.large 7.5GB)


Follow the on screen instructions.Default values are fine.

Create Key Pair:

  • A user can use an existing, previously created key pair, create a new pair, or proceed without a key pair.
  • To configure the EC2 instance a user must have access to the console and therefore at this point the user has to create the  SSH keys if they don't exist already. Please follow the onscreen instructions on how to create keys.
  • User can create Security Groups defining access to the EC2 instance. Access should be configured so that SSH (port 22) and HTTP (port 80) are open.

4. Press the "Launch" button

5. Click on "Instances" in the left side Navigation panel to check the instance creation process:

After a few minutes the status will change from "starting" to "running" The GroundWork application will then launch for the first time, this process takes approximately 4-5 minutes after the instance begins running.

Configuring the public access point for the GroundWork portal

The AMI instance has a private IP Address and a Public DNS. The Public DNS is used to access the GroundWork Monitor portal. The AMI instance needs to be configured with the Public DNS name. To configure the AMI instance a user needs console access to the instance which is done by using an ssh client (Linux native, Putty for Windows). Prior to connecting to the instance you need:

  • Create a key pair for the instance and download it to the system that will be used to configure the GroundWork system
  • Make sure that the security group includes an entry for ssh connection to the Source IP (public IP address of workstation) otherwise the Amazon AWS will refuse the connection.
  • make sure that the security group includes an entry for http access

Public DNS configuration steps:

  • ssh or putty to GroundWork Monitor instance using the SSH keys
  • \-bash-3.2# vi /usr/local/groundwork/config/resources/josso-agent-config.xml

    and modify these parametersset to the Private DNS to the Public DNS:

  •  <gatewayLoginUrl>http://PUBLIC DNS NAME/josso/signon/login.do<gatewayLoginUrl>
 <gatewayLogoutUrl>http://PUBLIC DNS NAME/josso/signon/logout.do<gatewayLogoutUrl>
  • so that it looks something like:
  • <!-- Gateway LOGIN and LOGOUT URLs -->
   <gatewayLoginUrl>http://ec2-204-236-250-1.compute-1.amazonaws.com/josso/signon/login.do</gatewayLoginUrl>
   <gatewayLogoutUrl>http://ec2-204-236-250-1.compute-1.amazonaws.com/josso/signon/logout.do</gatewayLogoutUrl>
  •  After changing the config file the GroundWork services (gwservices) need to be restarted:
  • -bash-3.2# /etc/init.d/groundwork restart gwservices
Stopping GroundWork Services:                               [ OK ]
Checking for GroundWork Services:
    JBoss is not running
    svscan is not running
    dumblogs are not running
    supervise is not running
    Feeders are not running
    Spoolers are not running
    nagios2collage_socket is not running
    nagios2collage_eventlog is not running
    fping_process is not running
    gdma_spool_processor is not running
Starting GroundWork Services:
Connecting to Foundation listener (Host:localhost Port:4913):
    Listener is not ready to accept data feeds ...
    Listener is not ready to accept data feeds ...
    Listener is not ready to accept data feeds ...
    Listener is not ready to accept data feeds ...
    Listener is not ready to accept data feeds ...
    Listener is not ready to accept data feeds ...
    Listener is ready to accept data feeds ...
    Listener services are available.
GroundWork Services start                                   [ OK ]

6. Access the GroundWork Monitor application by opening a new browser tab at the "public DNS" address of the newly created instance.

If you receive a "Service Temporarily Unavailable" message please wait 2-3 minutes for the system to complete initialization and try again.

7. Login using the default administrator credentials: Username: admin
Password: admin
Note: changing the default passwords is highly recommended (Administration -> User Management)
At this point copy and paste the license key for your GroundWork installation. Your license key was emailed shortly after your purchase.

8. Once the license key has been entered navigation to any tabs is enabled.

9. You're now ready to explore GroundWork Monitor. You will see a messages about missing the localhost device in the Views screen until the database is populated, but this is normal. This is due to the fact that the database was purged of all messages after installation. As soon as you perform a Configuration > Control > Commit, these messages will clear.

Be sure to change the password for the admin user, and to either disable or change the other default web accounts (User and Operator).
You can now proceed to configure monitoring of your cloud and web resources, or any hosts or applications reachable from your EC2 instance.
The ami we produced is set for the most popular zone, on the Eastern seaboard of the United States. We applied the timezone adjustment to PHP referred to in technical bulletin 6.3-3 Timezone for php must be set in 6.3 so that the ami will work when launched in the Eastern US availability zones, but you will need to adjust this parameter for whatever time zone you launch the AMI in. Follow the instructions in the technical bulletin if you need to launch the ami in another time zone.



Learning about GroundWork Monitor

Check out the "Getting Started with GroundWork Monitior" training course on our web site .
Need to justify a monitoring investment?  Try our whitepapers http://www.groundworkopensource.com/resources/white-papers/

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