The process of using OWLIM on the AWS cloud involves the following steps:
Buying the OWLIM product on AWS
Starting an EC2 instance with the OWLIM AMI
Attaching an existing EBS volume to the EC2 instance
Logging into the EC2 instance via SSH
Mounting the EBS volume on the filesystem of the OWLIM instance
If necessary, configuring OWLIM
Starting the OWLIM process
Step No.1 needs to be performed only once and afterwards customers may start/stop OWLIM on AWS whenever needed. After an EC2 instance with OWLIM installed is activated and the OWLIM process is started the customer may access the OWLIM server via the public IP address of the particular EC2 instance as a standard SPARQL endpoint, RESTful service (SPARQL graph store protocol) or the JMX monitoring and control port (if set up).
Prerequisites
In order to use OWLIM on AWS you need the following:
A valid AWS account (including a valid SSH key pair).
OWLIM will store data on the EBS volume (and not on the local/ephemeral storage of the EC2 instance) so that the data is preserved between EC2 instance restarts. EBS volumes can vary between 1GB and 1TB in size.
2. Follow the "Start Using OWLIM" link which will redirect you to the Amazon DevPay site where you can buy the OWLIM product on AWS
3. Review the pricing options for the various AWS regions and EC2 instance types
Figure 2 OWLIM product description on AWS
Figure 3OWLIM product description on AWS (2)
Section Pricing & Billing Details provides details on the various costs for using OWLIM on the AWS Cloud. The charges displayed on the page will include:
The one-time charge
Data transfer charges between and out of the AWS data centers. This charge includes only the price for data transfer as set by Amazon.
The charge per hour for using OWLIM on AWS (called "Box Usage"). This charge includes the price for OWLIM and the EC2 instance running it (as set by Amazon)
4. Click on the "Place your order" button in the upper right corner of the screen.
5. After that you will be redirected back to a confirmation page on the Ontotext website, showing the AMI IDs of the OWLIM images deployed on the various AWS regions.
Figure 4OWLIM Confirmation page
6. You can now launch an AMI running OWLIM on the AWS cloud
4. If necessary, specify additional EC2 instance parameters
For example, CloudWatch https:/aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/ monitoring can be enabled for the EC2 instance.
Figure 7 Additional EC2 instance settings
5. Optionally, add tags to the EC2 instance to locate it faster
Figure 8 EC2 instance tags
6. Specify the key pair for connecting to the instance
The public/private key pair allows you to securely connect to the instance via SSH and manage it after it is launched. You can use an existing key pair, or create a new one.
Figure 9 Secure key pairs
NOTE that you need to either use an existing key pair, or create a new one. DO NOT choose the "Proceed without a Key Pair" option.
7. Specify a Security Group (or create a new one)
Port 22 open to the IPs which will be administering the EC2 instance
Port 8080 open to the IPs which need to access OWLIM (upload data, SPARQL queries, Workbench, etc)
Figure 10 Firewall / Security Group settings
8. Launch the AMI
Review the various AMI settings, in particular:
Availability zone selected
Instance type
EBS optimization settings
The key pair to be used for secure connection to the instance
The security group selected
A confirmation dialog will be displayed after the instance is launched:
You can check the status of the AWS instance from the AWS Management Console. The instance will be in "pending" state initially and in "running" state when ready to use.
Figure 11 Pending EC2 instance
The detail page about the running EC2 instance will provide a summary of important information such as:
The key pair that can be used to securely access and administer the instance
The public DNS and IP of the instance which can be accessed by end users and applications
Figure 12 Running EC2 instance
9. Attach an existing EBS volume to the running EC2 instance
Note that the EBS volume has to be in the same AWS availability zone as the EC2 instance that will run OWLIM. Also note that the EBS volume must be in "available" state, e.g. not already attached to another EC2 instance
After the EBS volume is successfully attached to the instance its state will be changed to "in use":
10. SSH to the running EC2 instance
You can use the AWS Management Console (Instance Management > Connect > Connect from your browser using the Java SSH client). You will need to specify the private key corresponding to the key pair associated with the EC2 instance and ec2-user as the user account.
Figure 13 Connect to an EC2 instance via SSH
11. Mount the EBS volume to the local filesystem of the running EC2 instance
Execute the attach_data_vol.sh script located in your home directory /home/ec2_user. The script will mount the EBS volume onto the EC2 file system at /data_mount/owlim_data .
Figure 14Mounting the EBS volume to the filesystem
12. Start the OWLIM server process.
Execute: sudo service tomcat6 start Figure 15 Starting OWLIM
13. OWLIM is now accessible by the IPs configured in your AWS security group at:
EC2-isnatnce-public-DNS:8080/openrdf-sesame
EC2-isnatnce-public-DNS:8080/openrdf-workbench
Figure 16 Accessing the Sesame Workbench on the EC2 instance running OWLIM
OWLIM Shutdown and EC2 Instance Termination
Follow the steps:
1. Shutdown the OWLIM process.
Figure 17 OWLIM shutdown
2. Terminate the EC2 instance from the AWS Management Console.
Figure 18 EC2 instance termination
After that the EC2 instance should appear with a "terminated" state on the AWS console.