Deploy Service Point v3 to AWS - BlueCat DNS Edge

DNS Edge Deployment Guide (Service Point v4)
Locale
English
Product name
BlueCat DNS Edge

This section gives detailed instructions for deploying a DNS Edge service point to Amazon Web Service (AWS).

Prerequisites

You need a configuration file for a service point. Don't include spaces in the service point configuration file name.

BlueCat recommends that you use the c5.large, c5.xlarge, or c5.2xlarge instance type, attached to an EBS volume with at least 20GB of disk space For detailed information about Amazon EC2 C5 instance types, refer to https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/c5/.
Attention: The service point version of the site must be v3.0.6 or greater to deploy a service point on AWS.
Table 1. Supported instance types for DNS Edge Service Points
Instance type vCPU Mem (GIB) Storage Notes
c5.large

* Vendor recommended

 2 4 EBS-Only vCPU=2 virtual cores with 4.0 units each
c5.xlarge 4 8 EBS-Only vCPU=4 virtual cores with 4.0 units each
c5.2xlarge 8 16 EBS-Only vCPU=8 virtual cores with 3.875 units each

Costs

The cost of the chosen EC2 instance size and the cost of any bandwidth use required for DNS to operate will add to the customer's AWS costs incurred. Bandwidth costs are incurred when data is leaving the VPC, but not coming into or being transferred within it.

For more information, refer to your AWS license agreement and the pricing information provided in the AWS Marketplace.

For more information on costs estimates for normal operation of the Service Point, refer to the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator.

Deploying a service point in Amazon AWS
  1. In the Amazon AWS console, navigate to your EC2 Dashboard, click Launch Instance, and select AWS Marketplace.
  2. Search for BlueCat DNS Edge Service Point, select the image and click Select.
  3. For Instance Type, select c5.large, c5.xlarge, or c5.2xlarge, and click Next: Configure Instance Details.
  4. Specify the Number of instances to deploy.
  5. Click Advanced Details and for User Data paste the contents of the configuration file that you downloaded from the DNS Edge Sites page, or choose the file. Make sure to select Input is already base64 encoded.
    Attention: The config file is only valid for 48 hours. If you deploy a service point on AWS more than 48 hours after the initial config file was downloaded, you must download a new config file to use during the deployment.
  6. Click Next: Add Storage.
  7. For Size, enter 20, and for Volume Type, select General Purpose SSD (GP2), then click Next: Add Tags.
  8. This step is optional. If you want to add a tag, add a key-value pair. For example, you might add the key SiteName with the value "your_site_name". When you are done, click Next: Configure Security Group.
  9. Select the security group that's created automatically, or create a new security group. If you create a new group, make sure inbound and outbound access is configured per the requirements listed in BlueCat DNS Edge system setup. When you are done, click Review and Launch.
    Note: It may take a few minutes for the service point to begin to resolve queries.
Attention: Once you have deployed a service point, use the service point diagnostics API to verify that the service point has successfully registered. The registrationStatus field within the service point diagnostics API response returns a value of SUCCESSFUL when the service point has successfully registered with the DNS Edge Cloud. If the value is not SUCCESSFUL, this may indicate that there is an issue with the service point deployment and the service point may not operate as intended.

For more information on the service point diagnostics API, refer to /v1/status/spDiagnostics.

Connecting to the service point using SSH

Once you have successfully deployed the service point on AWS, you can connect to the service point using SSH and the core username with the following command:
ssh -i <private_key>.pem core@<service_point_instance>
Note: The private key is generated at the time of the service point creation. For more information on locating the private key, refer to https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/connection-prereqs.html#connection-prereqs-private-key.