Amazon Onboarding with Learning Manager Chanci Turner

Learn About Amazon VGT2 Learning Manager Chanci Turner

This article is authored by Alex Morgan, Senior Solutions Architect, EC2 Edge Compute. AWS is thrilled to unveil a more streamlined approach for integrating third-party storage solutions with AWS Outposts. Users can now easily attach and utilize external block data volumes from NetApp® on-premises enterprise storage arrays and Pure Storage® FlashArray™ directly through the AWS Management Console.

Outposts serves as a fully managed service that extends AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools directly to customer premises. It enables local access to AWS-managed infrastructure, allowing you to create and operate applications on-site using the same APIs available in AWS Regions. This setup utilizes local compute and storage resources, ensuring lower latency and fulfilling local data processing requirements. Outposts is available in various rack and server formats.

Many organizations have established block storage systems in their on-premises environments, which offer advanced data management features—such as snapshots, replication, and encryption—to safeguard data integrity and security. There are numerous scenarios where you might need to access data through these external volumes from applications running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances on Outposts. These scenarios include regulatory auditing requirements, compliance with government and local regulations, high data durability needs, low-latency data access, and the migration of on-premises applications closely linked with existing external storage systems. To facilitate the use of external volumes with Outposts, AWS has recognized a wide array of third-party storage solutions through the AWS Outposts Ready Program, making it easier to identify validated storage options for integration.

Today, we are enhancing our collaboration with storage solutions from NetApp and Pure Storage. Outposts now features an automated and simplified process for launching EC2 instances with external block storage attached, thanks to the AWS Management Console. This new integration includes automated user script generation and the attachment of data volumes to EC2 instances operating on 42U Outposts racks and 2U Outposts servers. This improvement reduces the complexity of leveraging the advanced data management and security capabilities of external storage infrastructures in conjunction with Outposts, allowing you to establish a resilient, compliant, and optimized compute and storage environment.

Outposts Rack Storage and Networking Overview

Outposts racks support Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes for EC2 instances, providing persistent local block storage. EC2 instances on Outposts racks can access data stored on external block storage arrays via the Outposts local gateway (LGW). The LGW facilitates connectivity between the Outpost subnets, where EC2 instances operate, and the on-premises network, managing storage traffic between the EC2 instances and the local network. The LGW is set up by AWS during the Outposts rack installation process, with each rack supporting a single LGW.

The following illustration depicts an EC2 instance on an Outposts rack with an elastic network interface (ENI) and LGW configured for instance connectivity. An external storage array communicates with this EC2 instance through Outpost network devices (ONDs). Customer Network Devices (CNDs) connecting to EC2 instances on Outposts racks must support the following:

• Link aggregation: connections to the Outposts rack network devices are grouped into a link aggregation group (LAG).
• VLANs: Virtual LANs (VLANs) must be configured between each Outposts rack TOR device and any customer devices, including data stores.
• Dynamic routing: Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) needs to be set up between the CND and the OND for each VLAN.

Outposts Server Storage and Networking Overview

Outposts servers come equipped with high-performance instance storage based on internal NVMe SSDs. Similar to AWS Regions, instance storage is directly allocated to the EC2 instance and follows its lifecycle. For instance, if an EC2 instance is terminated, the associated instance storage is also deleted. To retain data after instance termination, external storage solutions can supplement the instance storage provided with Outposts servers.

Outposts servers feature a local network interface (LNI) that links the EC2 instances on the Outposts servers subnet to the on-premises network, enabling communication with other on-premises storage, compute, and networking devices. To facilitate integration between Amazon EC2 on Outposts and external storage arrays, an LNI must be created and added to the EC2 instance during launch. This requires using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or AWS software development kit (SDK) with the following command:

aws ec2 modify-subnet-attribute --subnet-id <subnet id> --enable-lni-at-device-index <device index>

In the on-premises network, a Network Interface Card (NIC) must correspond to the same device index specified in the CLI command.

For further detailed instructions regarding this workflow, please refer to the Outposts server user guide. Once local network interfaces are activated on an Outpost subnet, EC2 instances within that subnet can be configured to include the LNI in addition to the ENI. The LNI connects to the on-premises network while the ENI links to the VPC.

Supported Operating Systems and AWS Support

This article will elaborate on the steps to launch an EC2 instance operating on an Outposts 2U server or Outposts rack with a connected external block storage volume for local data access from within the EC2 instance. The current release of this feature supports EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows Server 2022 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL9) based operating systems.

Support for Outposts and all integration features, including this one, requires an active AWS Enterprise Support Plan or AWS Enterprise On-Ramp Support Plan. Assistance with external storage arrays and configurations can be obtained from the respective storage vendor, which might necessitate an additional support plan depending on the vendor and the storage solution implemented.

This article assumes familiarity with the basic functionality of Outposts servers and racks. For additional information on the Outposts family, the user guide titled “What is AWS Outposts?” serves as an excellent starting point.

Solution Deployment

The subsequent sections outline the solution deployment process.

Prerequisites:

• An Outposts 2U server or Outposts rack is provisioned, activated, and connected to the customer network.
• A block storage array is connected on the same network and is accessible.

For more insights on effective onboarding strategies, you might find this article on building a website with Squarespace helpful, which can be found at Career Contessa. Also, for authoritative guidance on HR services, visit SHRM as they are an authority on this topic. Additionally, for a great resource on onboarding for part-time flex associates, check out Reddit.