Maximo SAAS on AWS Chapter 105

 

In the earlier section of the series “Maximo on AWS” , we saw how we could start our Maximo instance on our EC 2 with RDS and vertical clustering enabled with node agent and the HTTP Server running.

A quick diagram for reference:

 

Currently our architecture has a single point of failure.

 

So lets federate another horizontal node to our Web Sphere ND and make it highly available.

 

Recipe

• Get a new EC 2 instance
• Install WAS ND with app server profile
• Federate and add members to cluster.
• Generate and propagate web server plugin on node 1 for webserver1
• Restart every thing and test high availability.

 

Maximo SAAS on AWS–Chapter 104

In our last part of the series on Maximo installation on AWS we saw how Maximo was installed on EC2 instance hosting its on SQL server and WAS ND with vertical clustering only.
In This tutorial we will be adding a horizontal clustering using another EC2 to WASND and we will be utilizing the Amazons RDS database service to move our database also to scaling mode.


Lets get started.
First of all lets get the RDS instance up and running.



Create a new RDS instance and make sure you select 2014 version only for SQL Server, 2016 is not compatible with Maximo and you might face an error if you try to use 2016. Error shown below.

Maximo SAAS on AWS–Chapter 103

In last tutorial on Maximo on AWS ,  we have moved our stuff to the EC2 instance and in this tutorial we will install the required Maximo software and other middleware components.

This installation is divided into three parts:

1. Maximo Base Install
2. WebSphere and IHS install
3. Plugin configuration and Horizontal node federation for scaling.

* SQL Server is not mentioned above because it is already installed and Maximo user is configured and has all the rights.

Maximo SAAS on AWS- Chapter 102

So in our last chapter, we saw how we created an EC2 instance on the amazon ec2 service.

Agenda for this tutorial will be to get the instance ready and install IBM Maximo middleware components on it.
Lets get started.

Connect to EC2 Instance

To connect to instance we will navigate to ec2 console and see if our instance is created.






Click on connect.


Download the remote desktop file and use the username and password by clicking the get password.It will take you to key pair screen and you need to specify the mykey pair we used in earlier tutorial.


Now click on decrypt password and you will see RDP password to connect to this instance.
Now you have all three:

• Instance URL
• Username
• Password

Maximo SAAS on AWS–Chapter 101

Maximo being an ERP is known to have tough installation cycle and usually most of the Maximo installations are known to be on perm.Recently client has started shown interest in SAAS based services and they are interested in getting Maximo as a service.
IBM has already started giving Maximo as a service,using their soft layer platform to customers.Now they need not rely on service vendors to manage infrastructure, upgrades or installations.
Continuous integration and continuous deployment has been possible now using the pipelines because all the services are hosted in cloud.
In this series of tutorial, we will look at how Maximo can be configured to run a service for end customers. This tutorial will be divided in to multiple articles:

AWS EC2 Creation and setup

Create a new EC2 instance and select the pre built AMI, which is more like a pre configured virtual machine in cloud.


Next step we need to choose the hardware which is required for our Maximo installation.
I am selecting the m4.large instance with 2 vCPUs and 8 Gb of RAM.

Lets configure the instance.




Lets go to next step and choose storage for our instance, it will host WebSphere and Maximo on same box, so I need at least  100 Gb of database for that.


I don’t need to tag my instance, so lets leave it blank.


Now next step is most important step and need to be configured properly for this server to be reachable from your system.
AWS security group defines, who all can access this instance and on what all ports.

Since I will be hosting my database and app server on same machine I need not open the Maximo database port 1433 for public or other AWS EC2 instance on the VPC.
So my final security group will look like this, I am allowing access to all traffic till my instance is configured.( Later I will put restrictions on this security group to be accessed from my VLAN only
Now try to launch the instance, you might get a warning that this is not covered in free tier as you have selected a larger instance.
In the next step you will be presented with the key pair dialog box.

Download this key file and save it at a safe place, this will be used to connect to this instance via the Amazon CLI.

This instance is created and running in cloud with MSSQL running on Windows Server – 64bit.
Now in next Chapter 102 of Maximo on AWS series we will see how to load the installers on the servers and start the installation.
Keep Reading !

Make sure you set a budget and billing alert to avoid high instances costs, if not in free tier of AWS.

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