AWS Instance Preparation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

This article provides recommendations on preparing an AWS Instance for installing Alation.

Recommended OS

OS	Note
AWS Linux	AWS Linux is the optimal choice as it is a Red Hat derivative optimized to run workloads on AWS
RHEL/CentOS	Supported
Ubuntu	Supported

EC2 Instance Sizing

• For staging and development, an r4.xlarge instance can be used or any 4 core, 32 GB RAM system except Graviton Processor instance type

• For Proof of Concept (POC) and production workloads, start with m4.xlarge instance

• Use only EBS backed storage regardless of instance type

• Use Termination Protection on production instances

Note

Depending on their workload, AWS instances can be sized up and down. The Instance Sizing table below is a recommendation. You can increase or decrease instance size as required. Also note that intense level of Query Log Ingestion (QLI) or Compose usage may require the instance be upgraded to the next tier.

Instance Sizing

Number of Users	Workload	Instance Type	Instance Termination Protection
0-25	production	m4.xlarge	Enabled
25-50	production	m4.2xlarge	Enabled
50-100	production	m4.4xlarge	Enabled
100+	production	m4.10xlarge	Enabled
0-10	staging / development	r4.xlarge	not applicable

Disk Layout

• Deselect Delete on Termination for all drives

• Avoid using standard volumes because such storage profiles cannot not be resized

• Alation recommends /data volume to be at least 500GB due to GP2 storage performance profiles

• /backup partition should be at least 1.5 times larger than /data partition

• Throughput Optimized (ST1) volume type can be used for /backup

• Note that additional storage can be added later, as necessary

Disk Sizing

Partition	Size (GiB)	Type	Device	Notes
root	80	gp2	/dev/xvda	Deselect Delete on Termination
backup	750+	st1	/dev/xvdb
data	500+	gp2 or io1	/dev/xvdd

Sample Storage Setup

Formatting Drives

• Use ext4 as file system format without partitions.

• Do NOT use LVM for data volume

• Do NOT create partition table. Format the whole block device (as this allows for adding more storage as needed, without downtime)

• Add your partitions to /etc/fstab first

• Format your drives with labels. Use labels or bulk id’s to mount.

Sample Setup

Expanding Existing Storage

As your data continues to grow, you may need to expand your storage. If recommendations in this article were used to provision the host, storage can be easily expanded without the need to restart the server.

To expand the storage, locate your volume in the AWS console, right-click it and select Modify to open the Modify Volume dialog.

We recommend taking a snapshot of the volume prior to making any modifications.

Modify Volume

You can use the lsblk command to verify that the storage has been extended.

Extending Storage

Security Group Recommendations (Inbound)

We recommend using the inbound firewall (AWS Security group).

• Source addresses can be adjusted to be as strict as required by corporate policy

• Use AWS method of referencing the security group within the security group for HA Pair. A security group can refer to itself which is an example below.

Security Group Recommendations

Type	Protocol	Port	Source	Description	Required	Notes
HTTP	TCP	80	0.0.0.0/0	Allows HTTP Access	Yes	Main web services port
HTTPS	TCP	443	0.0.0.0/0	Allows HTTPS Access	Yes	Secure web services port
SSH	TCP	22	0.0.0.0/0	Allows SSH Access	Optional	Required for management of Alation by authorized users
KVSTORE	TCP	8088	sg-XXX	Allows kvstore replication	Optional	Only required for HA setup
Replication Service	TCP	2022	sg-XXX	Allows replication of files and configs	Optional	Only required for HA setup

AWS Security Group