How to Run Apache Metron Tech Preview in another Region / Availability Zone

[#1]

So you've just got all excited about the Metron Tech Preview, have downloaded the code and maybe have even followed the Apache Metron - First Steps in the Cloud article, but then EC2 instances pop up where you don't expect to see them!

Unfortunately at this stage the Metron Tech Preview deployment ignores some of the systemwide settings that you might have in your .aws directory including the preferred region and availability zone.

Thankfully all the settings are within the setup scripts instead so this is easy enough to correct.

There are two settings I'd suggest updating:

./deployment/amazon-ec2/conf/defaults.yaml

Contains the key settings you will need to change towards the top of the file:

# ec2
env: test-metron
region: us-west-2
instance_type: m4.xlarge
image: ami-05cf2265

For example, to change this to run in the EU Ireland region your config settings would need to look like this:

# ec2
env: mynamehere-metron
region: eu-west-1
instance_type: m4.xlarge
image: ami-edb9069e

Note that I've also changed the "env" tag to ensure that the Metron environment is easier to identify when I spin it up.

The only slightly tricky bit is identifying what the AMI for your chosen region is. You need to find the current active AMI for "CentOS Linux 6 x86_64 HVM EBS", to do this follow these steps.

1. Log into your AWS console
2. Go to the EC2 Dashboard
3. Click on the AMI's link on the left hand side menu (under the Images section)
4. Change the filter on the search box from "Owned by me" to "Public images"
5. Then in the search box enter "CentOS Linux 6 x86_64 HVM EBS" without the quotes
6. You should get one entry returned, use teh AMI ID that is presented there and enter that into your config file.

Then you're good to go!