Project Pegasus - Flying in the Cloud with Automated AWS Deployment

Pegasus is released under Apache License v2.0 and enables anyone with an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account to quickly deploy a number of distributed technologies all from their laptop or personal computer. The installation is fairly basic and should not be used for production. The purpose of this project is to enable fast prototyping of various distributed data pipelines and also help others explore distributed technologies without the headache of installing them.

We want to continue improving this tool by adding more features and other installations, so send us your pull requests or suggestions!

Supported commands:

peg config - shows the current configurations pegasus is using
peg aws <options> - query AWS for information about vpcs, subnets, and security groups
peg validate <template-path> - check if proper fields are set in the instance template yaml file
peg up <template-path> - launch an AWS cluster using the instance template yaml file
peg fetch <cluster-name> - fetch the hostnames and Public DNS of nodes in the AWS cluster and store locally
peg describe <cluster-name> - show the type of instances, hostnames, and Public DNS of nodes in the AWS cluster
peg install <cluster-name> <technology> - install a technology on the cluster
peg service <cluster-name> <technology> <start|stop> - start and stop a service on the cluster
peg uninstall <cluster-name> <technology> - uninstall a specific technology from the cluster
peg ssh <cluster-name> <node-number> - SSH into a specific node in your AWS cluster
peg sshcmd-node <cluster-name> <node-number> "<cmd>" - run a bash command on a specific node in your AWS cluster
peg sshcmd-cluster <cluster-name> "<cmd>" - run a bash command on every node in your AWS cluster
peg scp <to-local|to-rem|from-local|from-rem> <cluster-name> <node-number> <local-path> <remote-path> - copy files or folders to and from a specific node in your AWS cluster
peg down <cluster-name> - terminate a cluster
peg retag <cluster-name> <new-cluster-name> - retag an existing cluster with a different name
peg start <cluster-name> - start an existing cluster with on demand instances and put into running mode
peg stop <cluster-name> - stop and existing cluster with on demand instances and put into stop mode
peg port-forward <cluster-name> <node-number> <local-port>:<remote-port> - port forward your local port to the remote cluster node's port

Install Pegasus on your local machine

This will allow you to programmatically interface with your AWS account. There are two methods to install Pegasus: using a pre-baked Docker image or manually installing it into your environment.

Prerequisites

AWS account
VPC with DNS Resolution enabled
Subnet in VPC
Security group accepting all inbound and outbound traffic (recommend locking down ports depending on technologies)
AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key ID

Manual

Clone the Pegasus project to your local computer and install awscli

$ git clone https://github.com/InsightDataScience/pegasus.git
$ pip install awscli

Next we need to add the following to your ~/.bash_profile.

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=XXXX
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=XXXX
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=XX-XXXX-X
export REM_USER=ubuntu
export PEGASUS_HOME=<path-to-pegasus>
export PATH=$PEGASUS_HOME:$PATH

Source the .bash_profile when finished.

$ source ~/.bash_profile

It is essential you store the key information in your ~/.bash_profile and not push it to GitHub. AWS scans github to see keys that are being stored. AWS will block your account and revoke all access if it finds it.

Docker (If Manual doesn't work)

Add the following to your ~/.bash_profile.

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=XXXX
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=XXXX
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=XX-XXXX-X

Source the .bash_profile when finished.

$ source ~/.bash_profile

Execute the run_peg_docker.sh script

$ ./run_peg_docker.sh <pem-key-name> <path-to-folder-with-instance-template-files>

Everytime the container is started fresh, you will need to enable the ssh-agent otherwise you will not be able to SSH into your AWS nodes

root@containerid$ eval `ssh-agent -s`

Verify installation

Once the Docker container is running or you have set up Pegasus manually, you can verify the current configurations in Pegasus with peg config

$ peg config
access key: XXXX
secret key: XXXX
    region: us-west-2
  SSH User: ubuntu

You can test your AWS-CLI access by querying for the available regions for your AWS account:

$ aws ec2 --output json describe-regions --query Regions[].RegionName
[
    "eu-west-1",
    "ap-southeast-1",
    "ap-southeast-2",
    "eu-central-1",
    "ap-northeast-2",
    "ap-northeast-1",
    "us-east-1",
    "sa-east-1",
    "us-west-1",
    "us-west-2"
]

Query for AWS VPC information

Note: You can find all these information at in your AWS UI at aws.amazon.com console. Here is how pegasus can help you.

The following queries can help you quickly determine which subnet-id and security-group-id to use in your instance deployments.

VPCs

Let's say we want to deploy our instances in the VPC named my-vpc. We can view all VPCs in my region with peg aws vpcs

$ peg aws vpcs
--------------------------------------
|            DescribeVpcs            |
+---------------+--------------------+
|    VPC_ID     |     VPC_NAME       |
+---------------+--------------------+
|  vpc-add2e6c3	|  default           |
|  vpc-c2a496a1	|  my-vpc            |

We can see that vpc-c2a496a1 is the VPC id we would need my subnet-id and security-group-id associated with.

Subnets

To choose the specific subnet-id we will use in my deployment, we can view all Subnets in our region with peg aws subnets

$ peg aws subnets
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                                     DescribeSubnets                                    |
+------------+-------+------------------+-------------------------------+----------------+
|     AZ     |  IPS  |    SUBNET_ID     |          SUBNET_NAME          |    VPC_ID      |
+------------+-------+------------------+-------------------------------+----------------+
|us-west-2c  |  251  |  subnet-6ac0bd26 |  private-subnet-west-2c       |  vpc-c2a496a1	 |	    	
|us-west-2b  |  4089 |  subnet-9fe6e3df |  aws-us-west-2b               |  vpc-add2e6c3  |

We see here that the first subnet is associated with the same VPC id we specified previously, so subnet-6ac0bd26 is the subnet-id I will need to use in my instance deployment later on.

We can also filter the Subnets down to a specific VPC name with peg aws subnets <vpc-name> if we have too many subnets to search through

$ peg aws subnets my-vpc
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|                              DescribeSubnets                                      |
+------------+-------+-------------------+-------------------------+----------------+
|     AZ     |  IPS  |     SUBNET_ID     |   SUBNET_NAME           |    VPC_ID      |
+------------+-------+-------------------+-------------------------+----------------+
|  us-west-2c|  251  |  subnet-6ac0bd26  |  private-subnet-west-2c |  vpc-c2a496a1	|

Security groups

The last network related information we would need for our instance deployment is the security-group-id. We can view all Security Groups in our region with peg aws security-groups

$ peg aws security-groups
--------------------------------------------
|          DescribeSecurityGroups          |
+-------------+-----------+----------------+
|    SG_ID    |  SG_NAME  |    VPC_ID      |
+-------------+-----------+----------------+
|  sg-7cb78418|  default  |  vpc-add2e6c3  |
|  sg-5deed039|  default  |  vpc-c2a496a1  |

We would choose the sg-5deed039 in this example, since it is also associated with the VPC that we wish to deploy in.

We can also filter Security Groups down to a specific VPC name peg aws security-groups <vpc-name> if there are too many security groups to search through

$ peg aws security-groups my-vpc
--------------------------------------------
|          DescribeSecurityGroups          |
+-------------+-----------+----------------+
|    SG_ID    |  SG_NAME  |    VPC_ID      |
+-------------+-----------+----------------+
|  sg-5deed039|  default  |  vpc-c2a496a1  |

Spin up your cluster on AWS

Use peg up to deploy a cluster from the command line (recommended)

$ peg up <instance-template-file>

The instance-template-file is a yaml file that peg up uses. Examples of these can be found under ${PEG_ROOT}/examples. Within this file you should specify the following as shown:

purchase_type: spot or on_demand
subnet_id: string
price: string
num_instances: integer
key_name: string
security_group_ids: string
instance_type: string
tag_name: string
vol_size: integer
role: master or worker
use_eips: true or false

purchase_type (string) - choose between on_demand or spot instances
subnet_id (string) - the VPC subnet id (e.g. subnet-61c12804)
price (string) - spot price you would like to set. Ignored if purchase_type=on_demand (e.g. 0.25)
num_instances (integer) - number of instances to deploy
key_name (string) - the pem key name to be used for all instances (e.g. insight-cluster)
security_group_ids (string) - security group id (e.g. sg-e9f17e8c, does not support multiple security group ids yet)
instance_type (string) - type of instances to deploy (e.g. m4.large)
tag_name (string) - tag all your instances with this name. Instances with the same tag_name will be associated with the same cluster. This will be known as the cluster-name throughout the rest of the README (e.g. test-cluster)
vol_size (integer) - size of the EBS volume in GB. Uses magnetic storage. (e.g. 100)
role (string) - role of the instances (e.g. master)
use_eips (boolean) - use Elastic IPs with instances or not

You can check if the template file is valid with peg validate <template-file>.

The AMIs used in the peg up script have some basic packages baked in such as Java 7, Python, Maven 3, and many others. You can refer to the install/environment/setup_single.sh to view all the packages that have been installed. This should save quite a bit of time whenever you provision a new cluster. Reinstalling these packages can take anywhere from 10-30 minutes.

Fetching AWS cluster DNS and hostname information

Once the nodes are up and running on AWS, we'll need to grab the DNS and hostname information about the cluster you wish to work with on your local machine.

Always run peg fetch to store the instance Public DNSs and hostnames onto your local machine before installation. Public DNSs and hostnames will be saved into the tmp folder under the specified cluster name as public_dns and hostnames respectively

$ peg fetch <cluster-name>

Under the ${PEG_ROOT}/tmp/<cluster-name> folder you will find the public_dns and hostnames files. The first record in each file is considered the Master node for any cluster technology that has a Master-Worker setup.

${PEG_ROOT}/tmp/<cluster-name>/public_dns

ec2-52-32-227-84.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com  **MASTER**
ec2-52-10-128-74.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com  **WORKER1**
ec2-52-35-15-97.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com   **WORKER2**
ec2-52-35-11-46.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com   **WORKER3**

${PEG_ROOT}/tmp/<cluster-name>/hostnames

ip-172-31-38-105 **MASTER**
ip-172-31-39-193 **WORKER1**
ip-172-31-42-254 **WORKER2**
ip-172-31-44-133 **WORKER3**

You can always view the current cluster information stored locally with the peg describe <cluster-name> command

Once the cluster IPs have been saved to the tmp folder, we can begin with installations.

Describe a cluster

Shows the hostname and Public DNS for a specified cluster and also show which nodes are the Master and Workers.

$ peg describe <cluster-name>

Setting up a newly provisioned AWS cluster

If this is a newly provisioned AWS cluster, always start with at least the following 3 steps in the following order before proceeding with other installations. It is essential to do this else it will cause problems when installing software.

Passwordless SSH - enables passwordless SSH from your computer to the MASTER and the MASTER to all the WORKERS. This is needed for some of the technologies.
AWS Credentials - places AWS keys onto all machines under ~/.profile
Environment/Packages - installs basic packages for Python, Java and many others

$ peg install <cluster-name> ssh
$ peg install <cluster-name> aws
$ peg install <cluster-name> environment

Start installing!

$ peg install <cluster-name> <technology>

The technology tag can be any of the following (version set in configuration is bolded):

cassandra (v3.11.1, v3.11.2)
elasticsearch (v5.1.2, v6.2.4)
flink (v1.4.2 with hadoop v2.7 and scala v2.11)
hadoop (v2.7.6)
hbase (v1.2.6)
hive (v2.3.3)
kafka (v1.0.0 and v1.1.0 with scala v2.11 and v2.12) (all combinations)
kibana (v6.2.4)
opscenter (v6.5.0)
pig (v0.17.0)
presto (v0.200)
redis (v4.0.9)
spark (v2.2.1, v2.3.0, v2.3.1 for hadoop v2.7)
storm (v1.2.1)
zookeeper (v3.4.10, v3.4.12, v3.4.13)

All environment variables relating to technology folder paths are stored in ~/.profile such as HADOOP_HOME, SPARK_HOME and so on.

All softwares and the given version are currently available in a S3 bucket. If you wish to install a different version of these technologies, go into the install/download_tech script and update the technology version and technology binary download URL.

Additional technologies can be included into Pegasus by adding the technology version and url to install/download_tech, writing the appropriate configurations in the config folder and writing the appropriate service scripts in the service folder.

Starting and stopping services

User the service option to start and stop distributed services easily without having to manually SSH into each node

$ peg service <cluster-name> <technology> <start|stop>

Note: There are few services which require other services to be running beforehand. Please ensure you manually start all services that are required for a given service to run. For example, to run spark, you need to install and start hadoop. To run kafka you need to install and start zookeeper.

Another Note: On starting/stopping kafka, the console will pause and will not come back to the terminal. You may use ctrl+c to get out of it safely. Kafka will still run.

Uninstalling a technology

A script has been provided to uninstall a specific technology from all nodes in the declared cluster

$ peg uninstall <cluster-name> <technology>

SSH into a node

If you need to SSH into a specific node in a cluster, you can use peg ssh to easily reference nodes

$ peg ssh <cluster-name> <node-number>

where node-number is the order in which the nodes appear in the hostnames and public_dns files starting with 1 (master node)

Terminate a cluster

Tears down an on-demand or spot cluster on AWS

$ peg down <cluster-name>

Retag a cluster

Rename an existing cluster on AWS

$ peg retag <cluster-name> <new-cluster-name>

Starting and stopping on demand clusters

Place a cluster into running and stop modes on AWS. This is particularly useful if you don't want to reinstall technologies each time you begin your workflow. Stopped instances are not charged to your account; however the Elastic IPs and EBS volumes will still incur charges.

$ peg start <cluster-name>

$ peg stop <cluster-name>

Port forwarding to a node

Forward your local port to a remote node's port. This is useful if you have any services that can only be accessed through port-forwarding.

$ peg port-forward <cluster-name> <node-number> <local-port>:<remote-port>

Deployment Pipelines

If you'd like to automate this deployment process completely, you can write your own scripts. An example has been provided in the examples/spark_hadoop.sh file.

Here it shows how we can spin up a 4 node cluster (peg up) using the master.yml and workers.yml instance templates, grab the cluster information using peg fetch and install all the technologies with peg install in one script. We can deploy this cluster simply by changing the subnet-id and security-group-ids in the instance-template-files, adding relavent keypair, a tag name for identifying your cluster and then running the following:

$ examples/spark/spark_hadoop.sh

#!/bin/bash

PEG_ROOT=$(dirname ${BASH_SOURCE})/../..

CLUSTER_NAME=test-cluster

peg up ${PEG_ROOT}/example/spark_master.yml &
peg up ${PEG_ROOT}/example/spark_workers.yml &

wait

peg fetch $CLUSTER_NAME

peg install ${CLUSTER_NAME} ssh
peg install ${CLUSTER_NAME} aws
peg install ${CLUSTER_NAME} environment
peg install ${CLUSTER_NAME} hadoop
peg install ${CLUSTER_NAME} spark

Things to remember

Pegasus has been a tool to set up clusters quickly and easily. However, it has its limitations in terms of the software version it supports, scaling up and scaling out of the infrastructure and the updates to the software. The current version of pegasus supports the listed software. Here are few things that you need to know if you want to add your own software or tech into pegasus.

/install: this folder has everything related to installing softwares in the cluster.
install/download_tech: This folder contains the version and the location of the software.
config: this folder should be created for any new software that you want to add to pegasus. This will help in configuring the software after installations.
service: this folder contains start, stop scripts that is required to start your software. Every software has a different way to start its service. Please created scripts here to aid that process.

Be sure to run the three statements before you install any software.

$ peg install <cluster-name> ssh
$ peg install <cluster-name> aws
$ peg install <cluster-name> environment

InsightDataScience/pegasus

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