This first step is to setup your basic environment to start building.

yum -y install e2fsprogs ruby java-1.6.0-openjdk unzip MAKEDEV
 
mkdir -p /root/.ec2
 
cp amikey.pem /root/.ec2
 
cp amicert.pem /root/.ec2
 
mkdir -p /opt/EC2TOOLS /data /opt/EC2YUM
 
curl -o /tmp/ec2-api-tools.zip http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-api-tools.zip
 
cd /tmp
 
unzip /tmp/ec2-api-tools.zip
 
cp -r /tmp/ec2-api-tools-*/* /opt/EC2TOOLS
 
curl -o /tmp/ec2-ami-tools.zip http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-ami-tools.zip
 
cd /tmp
 
unzip ec2-ami-tools.zip
 
cp -r /tmp/ec2-ami-tools-*/* /opt/EC2TOOLS

Save your X509 certificates in the following directories:

/root/.ec2/amikey.pem
/root/.ec2/amicert.pem

cat <<EOT >/root/.bashrc
export PATH=\$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/opt/EC2TOOLS/bin
export EC2_HOME=/opt/EC2TOOLS
export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=~/.ec2/amikey.pem
export EC2_CERT=~/.ec2/amicert.pem
export JAVA_HOME=/usr
EOT
 
source ~/.bashrc

export RELEASE=6
 
export ARCH=`uname -i`

This step is to create your disk image and filesystem and file structure.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/CentOS$RELEASE-$ARCH-base.img bs=1M count=10240
 
mkfs.ext4 -F -j /data/CentOS$RELEASE-$ARCH-base.img
 
mkdir /mnt/ec2-image
 
mount -o loop /data/CentOS$RELEASE-$ARCH-base.img /mnt/ec2-image/

cd /mnt/ec2-image
 
mkdir -p proc etc dev var /var/cache /var/log /var/lock /var/loc/rpm sys

cat <<EOT >/mnt/ec2-image/etc/fstab
/dev/xvde1    /        ext4        defaults,noatime,nodiratime    1    1
EOT

This step is to create your Yum conf that you will use to install the base OS

mkdir -p /opt/EC2YUM
 
cat <<EOT >/opt/EC2YUM/yum-ami.conf
[base]
name=CentOS-$RELEASE - Base
mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$RELEASE&arch=$ARCH&repo=os
#baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/$RELEASE/os/$ARCH/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-$RELEASE
 
[updates]
name=CentOS-$RELEASE - Updates
mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$RELEASE&arch=$ARCH&repo=updates
#baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/$RELEASE/updates/$ARCH/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-$RELEASE
 
[extras]
name=CentOS-$RELEASE - Extras
mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$RELEASE&arch=$ARCH&repo=extras
#baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/$RELEASE/extras/$ARCH/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-$RELEASE
 
[centosplus]
name=CentOS-$RELEASE - Plus
mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$RELEASE&arch=$ARCH&repo=centosplus
#baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/$RELEASE/centosplus/$ARCH/
gpgcheck=1
enabled=0
gpgkey=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-$RELEASE
 
[contrib]
name=CentOS-$RELEASE - Contrib
mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$RELEASE&arch=$ARCH&repo=contrib
#baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/$RELEASE/contrib/$ARCH/
gpgcheck=1
enabled=0
gpgkey=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-$RELEASE
EOT

yum -c /opt/EC2YUM/yum-ami.conf --installroot=/mnt/ec2-image -y groupinstall Base

yum -c /opt/EC2YUM/yum-ami.conf --installroot=/mnt/ec2-image -y install openssh-server yum-plugin-fastestmirror.noarch e2fsprogs dhclient

This step is to allow root login without password, since you will be using your key

cat <<EOT >>/mnt/ec2-image/etc/ssh/sshd_config
UseDNS no
PermitRootLogin without-password
EOT

Create devices so we can use chroot for the image

MAKEDEV -d /mnt/ec2-image/dev -x console
 
MAKEDEV -d /mnt/ec2-image/dev -x null
 
MAKEDEV -d /mnt/ec2-image/dev -x zero
 
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/ec2-image/dev
 
mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/ec2-image/dev/pts
 
mount -o bind /dev/shm /mnt/ec2-image/dev/shm
 
mount -o bind /proc /mnt/ec2-image/proc
 
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/ec2-image/sys

Create network settings

cat <<EOT >/mnt/ec2-image/etc/sysconfig/network
NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain
EOT

cat <<EOT >/mnt/ec2-image/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
ONBOOT=yes
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NM_CONTROLLED=yes
EOT

Create grub.conf and boot settings so the Amazon Kernel Image can boot into the new Kernel

cat <<EOL > /mnt/ec2-image/boot/grub/grub.conf
default=0
timeout=0
title CentOS$RELEASE
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/xvde1 rd_NO_PLYMOUTH selinux=0 console=hvc0 loglvl=all sync_console console_to_ring earlyprintk=xen nomodeset 
initrd /boot/initramfs
EOL

ln -s /boot/grub/grub.conf /mnt/ec2-image/boot/grub/menu.lst
 
kern=`ls /mnt/ec2-image/boot/vmlin*|awk -F/ '{print $NF}'`
 
kernver=${kern#vmlinuz-}
 
ird=`ls /mnt/ec2-image/boot/initramfs*.img|awk -F/ '{print $NF}'`
 
sed -ie "s/vmlinuz/$kern/" /mnt/ec2-image/boot/grub/grub.conf
 
sed -ie "s/initramfs/$ird/" /mnt/ec2-image/boot/grub/grub.conf

Create a script that grabs the public key credentials for your root login.

vi /mnt/ec2-image/etc/init.d/getssh
 
#!/bin/bash
# chkconfig: 2345 95 20
# description: getssh
# processname: getssh
#
export PATH=:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin
# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
 
# Source networking configuration.
[ -r /etc/sysconfig/network ] && . /etc/sysconfig/network
 
# Check that networking is up.
[ "${NETWORKING}" = "no" ] && exit 1
 
start() {
  if [ ! -d /root/.ssh ] ; then
          mkdir -p /root/.ssh
          chmod 700 /root/.ssh
  fi
  # Fetch public key using HTTP
/usr/bin/curl -f http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-keys/0/openssh-key > /tmp/my-key
  if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
          cat /tmp/my-key >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
          chmod 600 /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
          rm /tmp/my-key
  fi
  # or fetch public key using the file in the ephemeral store:
  if [ -e /mnt/openssh_id.pub ] ; then
          cat /mnt/openssh_id.pub >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
          chmod 600 /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
  fi
}
 
stop() {
  echo "Nothing to do here"
}
 
restart() {
  stop
  start
}
 
# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
  start)
    start
    ;;
  stop)
    stop
    ;;
  restart)
    restart
    ;;
  *)
    echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
    exit 1
esac
 
exit $?
###END OF SCRIPT

Make your script init ready

 
/bin/chmod +x /mnt/ec2-image/etc/init.d/getssh
 
/usr/sbin/chroot /mnt/ec2-image /sbin/chkconfig --level 34 getssh on

Clean up after yourself

yum -c /opt/EC2YUM/yum-ami.conf --installroot=/mnt/ec2-image -y clean packages
 
rm -rf /mnt/ec2-image/root/.bash_history
 
rm -rf /mnt/ec2-image/var/cache/yum
 
rm -rf /mnt/ec2-image/var/lib/yum

Check for what Amazon AKI’s are available you will need this info when starting your ec2 instance

/opt/EC2TOOLS/bin/ec2-describe-images -H --region us-east-1 -x all|grep "pv-grub-hd0"

Bundle your new image

/opt/EC2TOOLS/bin/ec2-bundle-image --image /data/CentOS$RELEASE-$ARCH-base.img --prefix ami-CentOS$RELEASE-$ARCH-base --cert ~/.ec2/amicert.pem --privatekey ~/.ec2/amikey.pem --user awsaccountnumber --destination /data --arch $ARCH

Upload your new image

/opt/EC2TOOLS/bin/ec2-upload-bundle --manifest /data/ami-CentOS$RELEASE-$ARCH-base.manifest.xml --bucket yourbucket --access-key accesskeyhere --secret-key secretkeyhere

Register your image

I recommend you do this via the Amazon Web Services Management console, under IMAGES->AMIs “Register New AMI” you will just need to enter bucketname/manifest.xml file for your new AMI.

Steps to create a EBS Backed AMI from your S3 Backed Instance. *Only if you want an EBS Backed AMI do these steps

Step 1

Start your newly created EC2 instance

Step 2

Go into the Amazon Web Services Management console and create a Volume at whatever size you choose

Step 3

Attach your Volume to your new running EC2 Instance

Step 4

Login to your new instance

ssh -i yourkey root@yournewinstance

Step 5

Create your filesystem type in this case EXT4 then make a directory and mount it to the newly formated filesystem. After that we rsync the root of your ec2 instance, then unmount.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/xvdj
mkdir /mnt/ebs && mount /dev/xvdj /mnt/target
rsync -avHx / /mnt/ebs
rsync -avHx /dev /mnt/ebs
sync;sync;sync;sync && umount /mnt/ebs

Step 6

Go into the Amazon Web Services Management Console section Volumes and detach the Volume

Step 7

Go into the Amazon Web Services Management Console section Volumes and create a Snapshot of your Volume

Step 8

Go into the Amazon Web Services Management Console section Snapshots and select your new Snapshot and choose “create image” Fill in the name and description and the AWS AKI you chose in my case for us-east-1 I chose aki-08ed0761 for x86_64 bit hd0

Step 9

Start your new EBS backed AMI

On May 29th I popped the question on my long time partner in crime Julia Holland and asked her to Marry me, at Pacifica Del Mar and with a small pause due to shock (very cute) she said Yes! This is the biggest thing to happen in my life, and I am looking forward to the future. Julia and I have had a great time experiencing what its like to be engaged. Below are two pictures one of Julia showing off her engagement ring and the other at our engagement party with both our families:

Also on Oct 1 I was honored to be the best man at my brother Eric and his new wife Janine’s wedding in San Francisco. I am very happy to see him enter a new journey in his life of happiness and excitement. I guess my brother and I are finally growing up a bit, and its nice to see the two of us lucky enough to find people to share our lives with. Below are some pictures from the Wedding:

Friends

2011 also has been a year of reconnecting with old life long friends and making new friends. Having a chance to hang out with people you have known since 2nd grade is always an amazing thing. My buddies Jeff and Xan don’t ever seem to change! Also I got to see my good friend Christie, bringing back old days working in Hermosa Beach.

As for new friends I have managed to meet some great new people after joining Carlsbad LA Boxing gym which I will talk about later in this post. As I get older I find trying new things is the perfect way to meet new people and make new friends.

Health

I would have to say 2011 has been the healthiest year I can remember for me. Both in watching what I eat and exercising a lot! The biggest change has been adding both Muay Thai Boxing and Yoga to my already crazy running training.

One of my goals I achieved was to earn the Triple Crown status, basically running 3 San Diego Half Marathons, Carlsbad Half, La Jolla Half, and the AFC Half in one year. In 2011 I had 464 Training Miles of running the most in a single year I believe I have ever run, quite the accomplishment for me, and getting the Triple Crown was pretty awesome.

The biggest change for me was joining Carlsbad LA Boxing, already in fairly good shape from all the running or so I thought. My first Cardio class almost brought me to the brink of puking. But 1 Year later I am happy to say I have graduated from just taking the Cardio classes to taking the Advanced Muay Thai classes as well and sparring a slew of fighters, and making some great friends. I went from weighing 155-160 lbs to now weighing 141-145 lbs and increasing my muscle strength and running speed by a huge amount, while having a blast. Special thanks to the Carlsbad LA Boxing Staff and new friends Samantha Schmitt, Adam Griffis, Alan Roach, Tony Burnett, and Owners Jeff Nason, Richard Montano. Here are some videos of me sparring, and slowly getting better.

Career

Work is always something that is often regarded as a have to, versus a want to do, but I am lucky enough to do something I love to do, which basically makes me a happy camper.

As a Systems Engineering Architect and Entrepreneur 2011 has brought great things such architecting the cloud computing systems infrastructure for a new Private Video Sharing Service GIVIT to re-inventing Systems Watch into a source for cloud computing realtime monitoring and a cross vendor cloud health gauge. Also with Julia leading the development effort we are very close to launching mygraphs a data visualization and graphing resource for anyone to use. As I have experienced in the past loving what you do definitely ends up showing in the product or service you develop.

Community

Every year I help raise money for various organizations to help research and fight disease, support animals, protect state and national parks, and more. But 2011 definitely was a year I am proud of for raising money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. With the generous donations from good hearted people I was able to raise $1605.00 for the Walk MS event in Carlsbad, and make the 100 top donors list joining the 100 club. Here is a video of the event. Giving back to the community I think is very important and I hope I can have the means to continue doing so for years to come.

Also in 2011 Julia and I became SDSU Lifetime Alumni, having both graduated San Diego State University we felt joining the Alumni Association and giving back to the school that helped shape us as individuals was important.

New Things

Possibly the largest purchase of the year was buying a new 2011 SMART Car. So first off yes its safe with 8 air bags a Tritium Roll Cage that can withstand a 65 mile per hour crash protecting you from being crushed, and yes its fast enough for the HWY I have taken it to 90 mph and it has a performance paddle shifter mode. Best of all you can park it anywhere, the turning radius is ridiculous, it gets 44 mpg and is fun as hell to drive. For those that know me and my 65 Mustang it still my baby and I still drive it a lot

In Conclusion

I am happy the way 2011 went but I am even more excited for 2012. I hope to have an even longer blog next year! To conclude my 2011 end of year blog here is where you can see 365 pictures of 2011, a picture everyday. 365 Daily Photos of 2011

Looking forward to 2012…

-

-

-

-

-

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better…stronger…faster.”
- The Six Million Dollar Man

Several years ago about the time I hit 31 I decided, time was moving by at an extremely fast pace and I had been neglecting my health both mentally and physically. Call it a Mid-Life Crisis epiphany, yes I realize now a days Mid-Life is more age 45 but just the same, it was a positive realization.

Below is the ongoing data showing my fitness and life hacking journey…

Total running miles by Month each Year.

Total hours training Muay Thai by Month

Total hours doing Yoga by Month

Mile splits for the Carlsbad Half Marathon each Year.

Mile splits for the La Jolla Half Marathon each Year.

Mile splits for the AFC Half Marathon each Year.

Mile splits for the Carlsbad 5000 each Year.

Books read each Year by Month.

Graphs Powered by: mygraphs.com

Total Terabytes of Storage in S3 by Month

Total Number of Objects in S3 by Month in Millions

In conclusion investing in creating a hybrid global cloud architecture was worth the engineering time invested. Given the amount of storage we handle monthly using cloud resources was a natural progression to meet the demand.

By architecting EC2 processing clusters and leveraging S3 storage we have been able to focus our energy on our products and services versus provisioning infrastructure hardware to meet scale. We now programmatically approach provisioning infrastructure in a more automated fashion allowing our services to perform more efficiently and elastically.

Graphs Powered by: mygraphs.com

#!/bin/bash
/sbin/iptables -F
 
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -i eth0 -d 10.40.30.123 --dport 80 -j DNAT --to 10.40.30.123:123
 
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -i eth0 -d 10.40.30.123 --dport 443 -j DNAT --to 10.40.30.123:123
 
/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -i eth0 -d 10.40.30.123 --dport 123 -j ACCEPT

*Make sure the iptables service is started, then run the script

*Beware /sbin/iptables -F will flush your existing rules if you have any so make sure you run
/sbin/iptables -L -v -n –line-numbers and see. If you have any rules add them to the script.

*If you are using a different src and dst IP you will want to enable ip forwarding:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–VMIX (www.vmix.com), a leading carrier-class online video platform provider, today announced that it has completed rolling out localized video storage and processing for clients in Europe and Asia using Amazon Web Services.

The deployment of services supporting VMIX’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) online-video solutions is designed to provide clients in North America, the European Union, and Asia with the highest quality and performance video processing and storage.

“We’re pleased that VMIX has chosen to leverage Amazon Web Services to build out a rapidly scalable online video platform that meets the needs of our joint customers across the globe,” said Terry Wise, Director of Business Development, Amazon Web Services LLC. “AWS enables organizations of all sizes to instantly acquire compute power, storage and other on-demand services in the cloud, enabling businesses to move quickly and innovate faster while paying only for the resources consumed.”

VMIX has been using Amazon Web Services for its US-based storage since early 2008. Since then, VMIX has scaled to utilize over 100 Terabytes of storage and manage more than 22 million objects in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

“The scalability that AWS provides made us confident that we could extend global services in the cloud, and that AWS would be there to assist us,” said Phil Chen, Director of Systems Engineering at VMIX. “As we planned this new deployment, the AWS team offered technical guidance, along with design and operational best practices, every step of the way.”

Chen noted that in just 60 days, VMIX was able to scale out and build a globally distributed architecture utilizing Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Load Balancing and Amazon Relational Database Services. “Now that the origin of video delivery is available in Europe and Asia, our global clients can benefit from faster upload and encode services,” said Chen. He affirmed that the extension to Amazon Web Services has multiplied the capacity and performance of the VMIX platform, with projections of a 4x increase in processing speed. He added that the company anticipates a significant savings in capital expenditures, along with reduced engineering and maintenance expenses.

“Our aim is to provide the best, most personalized online video services wherever our clients are located,” said Chen. “AWS makes it easy for us to do that—allowing us to roll out new services quickly and reliably, so that we can focus more on the business of video and less on infrastructure build out.”

About VMIX
VMIX Media Inc., (www.vmix.com) is a leading provider of carrier-class online video and media management solutions. The company’s cloud-based Platform as a Service is designed with high-volume video producers in mind, powering top online publishers’ websites and mobile applications for media, entertainment and enterprise markets. Managing over 20 million videos and processing one million plus new videos a month, VMIX integrates seamlessly into its clients’ products and services.

###

For more information, contact:

Paula Brici
Media/Analyst Relations for VMIX
paula@vmix.com
+1 949-677-6527