The following provides instructions on how to log on to the Sage Scientific Compute workspace using your Synapse credentials, and how to use the products provided in the AWS Service Catalog to setup or modify EC2 instances and S3 buckets.

Gaining Access

Access to Sage Scientific Compute workspace is organized by communities. Community membership is defined by a Synapse Team and managed by its community manager. Each community also has a defined entry point URL, as shown below:

For Sage Bionetworks employees, access is granted during employee on boarding. For other groups, the community manager will add your Synapse account to the list of allowed users for the compute workspace.

Login

To begin, visit the appropriate entry point URL for your community, listed above, and log in with your Synapse credentials. You will be prompted to allow access to some information from your Synapse profile.

Note: Service Catalog products, discussed below, are owned by the Synapse account under which you log in. Once created, products will appear in the console only when logged in to that account, which will have sole ability to update or remove the product. Products like S3 buckets may have a life cycle beyond the project participation of any single person. To support such a case you may create and use a so-called service account in Synapse (i.e., an account meant for automation that may outlive one person’s commitment to a project). If so, then to meet regulatory requirements the credentials for the service account must be placed in a secure store whose access is limited and can be reviewed. /wiki/spaces/IT/pages/1200816129.

Service Catalog Portal

Once logged in, you will see a list of “Products” you can provision.  These fall into two categories, EC2 Instances (virtual machines) and S3 Buckets used for data storage. Not all products are available to all communities.

On the left is a navigation sidebar. If you do not see, it, look for a hamburger icon in the upper left, and click on it to expand the navigation sidebar. The options in the navigation bar are “Products” and “Provisioned Products”. After you provision a product selected from “Products”, you will be able to see your products under “Provisioned Products”.

EC2

EC2 Instance Products

We currently offer three varieties of virtual machines, each preconfigured for a given purpose, described below.

Linux Docker

This product provides a basic EC2 instance with Docker installed.

Ubuntu Linux with Notebook Software

This product is an Ubuntu Linux EC2 instance with R Studio notebook software installed.

Windows

This product is a Microsoft Windows instance. This is available only to Sage employees.

Creating EC2 Products

To create an instance, select “Products List” from the navigation panel on the left. Next, select from the list one of the EC2 products described above. On the product page, click the orange “LAUNCH PRODUCT” button under the product description, then fill out the wizard as follows:

Product Version

• Name: this names the product and the instance. You’ll use this to manage the product later. Please include your name in the product, e.g. if your name is Jane Doe and you are provisioning a Linux instance for your project Foo, you could name it jdoe-linux-foo.

• Version: choose a version of the product to provision.

Parameters

• Use Private Network: This puts the instance on a private subnet. We strongly recommend using the default value, true.

• EC2 Instance Type: there are many instance types to choose from. To learn about their details, see https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/. To learn about their costs, see https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ or use the AWS pricing calculator.

• Linux Distribution: (EC2 Linux product only) the variety of Linux OS that will be installed.

• Disk Size: the amount of local storage, in gigabytes.  Please treat the disk as temporary storage.  Long term storage of data should be in a bucket (see below).

Tag Options

• Department: your department within Sage Bionetworks.

• Project: the project that this instance will be used for. Please make a request to #sageit if your project is not in the list.

Note: You can add additional custom tags when provisioning resources however there are 3 reserved tags that you should avoid adding: Department, Project, and OwnerEmail. The owner email tag is automatically set to <Synapse Username>@synapse.org

Notifications

Please skip the Notifications pane. SNS notifications are not operational at this time.

Review

On the review pane, you have the opportunity to review all the choices you have made prior to clicking the “Launch” link in the lower right-hand corner.

Connecting to an Instance

A new instance takes a few minutes to be created. Once complete, it will appear in the “Provisioned Products” list, showing status Available. Select “Provisioned Product Details” from the navigation panel on the left, and click on your product. A product that has a “Succeeded” event will have outputs that include links for connecting.

• ConnectionURI: if your product has a ConnectionURI link, this will open a shell prompt in a browser tab. When you are done with your session click “Terminate” in the upper right corner.

• NotebookConnectionURI: Notebook products contain a NotebookConnectionURI link, which will open a notebook in the browser.

• ConnectionInstructions: For Windows products, click on the ConnectionInstructions link and follow the steps provided there.

Create a Synapse personal access token

The AWS SSM allows direct access to private instances from your own computer terminal. To setup access with the AWS SSM we need to create a special Synapse personal access token (PAT) that will work with the Sage Service Catalog. This is special PAT that can only be created using this workflow, creating a PAT from the Synapse personal token manager web page will NOT work.

1. Request a Synapse PAT by visiting https://sc.sageit.org/personalaccesstoken , for Sage employees, or https://ad.strides.sc.sageit.org/personalaccesstoken for AMP-AD members. (You may need to login to Synapse.) If you have already created a PAT through this mechanism and are repeating the process you must first visit the token management page in Synapse and delete the existing one with the same name.

2. After logging into Synapse a file containing the PAT, which is a long character string (i.e. eyJ0eXAiOiJ...Z8t9Eg), is returned to you. Save the file to your local machine and note the location where you saved it to then close the browser session.

Note: At this point you can verify that the PAT for the Service Catalog was successfully created by viewing the Synapse token management page. When the PAT expires you will need to repeat these steps to create a new PAT. The PAT should look something like this

SSM access to an Instance

To setup access the AWS EC2 instances with the AWS SSM we need to install the AWS CLI and make it source credentials with an external process.

1. Install the AWS CLI version 2 (SSM access will not work with ver 1.x)

2. Install SSM session manager plugin

3. Create a synapse credentials script.
   
   Linux/Mac: synapse_creds.sh with content below. Add the execute permission to the synapse_creds.sh file (i.e. chmod +x synapse_creds.sh)
   

   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   
   # Inputs
   SC_ENDPOINT=$1   # i.e. https://sc.sageit.org
   SYNAPSE_PAT=$2   # The Synapse Personal Access Token
   
   # Endpoints
   STS_TOKEN_ENDPOINT="${SC_ENDPOINT}/ststoken"
   
   # Get Credentials
   AWS_STS_CREDS=$(curl --location-trusted --silent -H "Authorization:Bearer ${SYNAPSE_PAT}"  ${STS_TOKEN_ENDPOINT})
   
   echo ${AWS_STS_CREDS}

   
   Windows: synapse_creds.bat with content below.
   

   @ECHO OFF
   
   REM Inputs
   REM %~1 The SC endpoint i.e. https://sc.sageit.org
   REM %~2 The Synapse Personal Access Token
   REM Use inputs to get credentials
   for /f %%i in ('curl --location-trusted --silent -H "Authorization:Bearer %~2"  "%~1/ststoken"') do set AWS_STS_CREDS=%%i
   
   ECHO %AWS_STS_CREDS%

4. Open the file containing the Synapse PAT and copy the long character string (i.e. eyJ0eXAiOiJ...Z8t9Eg).

5. Create a ~/.aws/config file if you don’t already have one. Add the following to your ~/.aws/config file, replacing <PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN> with the PAT you downloaded then set the /absolute/path/to/synapse_creds.sh to the location of the synapse_creds.sh or synapse_creds.bat file.
   

   [profile service-catalog]
   region=us-east-1 
   credential_process = "/absolute/path/to/synapse_creds.sh" "https://sc.sageit.org" "<PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN>"

6. Goto the service catalog provisioned product page → click on your provisioned instance → get instance ID.

7. Run the SSM start-session command to access the instance. Note: Windows users should do this in command prompt. In the following example the ID from the previous step is i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb.
   

   ➜ aws ssm start-session --profile service-catalog \
                           --target i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb
   
   Starting session with SessionId: 3377358-0cab70190f97fcf78
   sh-4.2$

Note: by default you are logged in as the ssm-user. If you prefer to start your session with a different user then you can try running SSM access with custom commands.

Debugging Access

• If you encounter errors try running the AWS start-session command with the --debug option.

• If you use an invalid personal access token you will get an error similar to this

  ➜ aws ssm start-session --profile service-catalog \
                          --target i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb
  
  Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

  To check whether your token is valid run the following command

  ➜ curl -I --location-trusted \
        -H Authorization:"Bearer ${SYNAPSE_PAT}" https://sc.sageit.org/ststoken

  If the HTTP response status is 2xx then the PAT is valid. If the PAT is invalid the response will be 4xx

• If you continue to have similar errors to Expecting value: line X column X (char X) then it could mean that your synapse_creds.sh file is invalid. Try verifying your synapse_creds.sh script independently of the AWS command by executing just the script. A successful execution should return a valid json and look something like this

  ➜ ~/synapse_creds.sh "https://sc.sageit.org" "eyJ0eXAiO...2GLQg"
  {"SessionToken":"FwoGZXIvYXdzEN7//////////wEaDP2imuwAK+...13GnBrJc9SlOW6uY=","Version":1,"AccessKeyId":"XXXXXXX","SecretAccessKey":"XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX","Expiration":"2021-07-21T22:02:17Z"}

• Another problem could be that your ~/.aws/config file is invalid. For debugging we recommend backing up your current config file and creating a new one with just one service-catalog profile in it and then try re-running the start-session command.

• If you get a message similar to “.. AccessDeniedException when calling the TerminateSession operation..”. it could mean that the AWS SSM session plugin was not install correctly. Please verify that it was successfully installed.

SSM access with custom commands

By default the ssm start command starts a session with the SSM-SessionManagerRunShell document which will login you in as the ssm-user with an sh shell. If you prefer to start your session with a ‘bash’ shell then you can use the AWS-StartInteractiveCommand document.

aws ssm start-session --profile service-catalog \
                      --target i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb \
                      --document-name AWS-StartInteractiveCommand \
                      --parameters command="bash -l"  

Or if you want to start your session with the ec2-user then you can do run this

aws ssm start-session --profile service-catalog \
                      --target i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb \
                      --document-name AWS-StartInteractiveCommand \
                      --parameters command="sudo su - ec2-user"  

SSM with SSH

You can use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to establish Secure Shell (SSH) connections to instances using AWS Systems Manager Session Manager. Users who connect using SSH can copy files between their local machines and the EC2 instance using Secure Copy Protocol (SCP).

Setting SSH connection with ec2-user:

1. Use the ssm start-session command to connect to the instance

   aws ssm start-session --profile service-catalog \
                         --target i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb \
                         --document-name AWS-StartInteractiveCommand \
                         --parameters command="sudo su - ec2-user"  

2. Copy the public portion of your ssh key (on your local computer) to the instance’s ~/.ssh/authorizedkeys file.

3. Set the permission of the authorizedkeys file to 600 (i.e. chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorizedkeys)

4. Add the following to your local machine’s ~/.ssh/config file

   # SSH over Session Manager
   host i-* mi-*
       ProxyCommand sh -c "aws ssm start-session --target %h --document-name AWS-StartSSHSession --parameters 'portNumber=%p'"
   

5. From your local machine, execute the ssh command to access the instance

   ➜ AWS_PROFILE=service-catalog ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa ec2-user@i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb
   Last login: Thu Jun 17 21:25:56 2021
   
          __|  __|_  )
          _|  (     /   Amazon Linux 2 AMI
         ___|\___|___|
   
   https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-2/
   [ec2-user@ip-10-41-23-76 ~]$

6. From your local machine, execute the scp command to copy files directly to the instance

   ➜ AWS_PROFILE=service-catalog scp -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa README.md ec2-user@i-07eeb59282fafe244:~/.
   README.md                                             100%  814     9.2KB/s   00:00

SSM access to applications

When running apps in the instance you may want to run the apps on specific ports. The AWS SSM allows you to expose those ports to your local computer using a technique called port forwarding. Here’s an example of how to enable port forwarding to an application.

1. Setup profile for SSM access

2. Run an application on the EC2 (i.e. docker run -p 80:80 httpd)

   [ec2-user@ip-10-49-26-50 ~]$ docker run -p 80:80 httpd
   Unable to find image 'httpd:latest' locally
   latest: Pulling from library/httpd
   33847f680f63: Pull complete
   d74938eee980: Pull complete
   963cfdce5a0c: Pull complete
   8d5a3cca778c: Pull complete
   e06a573b193b: Pull complete
   Digest: sha256:71a3a8e0572f18a6ce71b9bac7298d07e151e4a1b562d399779b86fef7cf580c
   Status: Downloaded newer image for httpd:latest
   AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 172.17.0.2. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
   AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 172.17.0.2. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
   [Thu Jul 22 23:54:12.106344 2021] [mpm_event:notice] [pid 1:tid 140706544895104] AH00489: Apache/2.4.48 (Unix) configured -- resuming normal operations
   [Thu Jul 22 23:54:12.107307 2021] [core:notice] [pid 1:tid 140706544895104] AH00094: Command line: 'httpd -D FOREGROUND'

3. To provide access to that app an SC user can use the port forwarding feature to gain access to the app by running the AWS SSM CLI command

   aws ssm start-session --profile service-catalog \
                         --target i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb \
                         --document-name AWS-StartPortForwardingSession \
                         --parameters '{"portNumber":["80"],"localPortNumber":["9090"]}'

4. Now you should be able to access that app on your local machine at http://localhost:9090 

Connecting to Windows Instances

Connect to Windows shell

Connecting to the Windows instance’s shell is similar to accessing a linux instance’s shell. Just follow instructions in SSM access to an Instance.

Connect to Windows desktop

Connecting to the Windows desktop requires a few more steps.

1. Connect to the Windows shell.

2. Create a new user and and it to the “Administrators” group

   $Password = ConvertTo-SecureString "P@ssW0rD!" -AsPlainText -Force
   New-LocalUser "admin" -Password $Password
   Add-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" -Member "admin"

3. Follow the SSM access to applications instructions to setup port forwarding to windows RDP

   aws ssm start-session --profile service-catalog \
                         --target i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb \
                         --document-name AWS-StartPortForwardingSession \
                         --parameters '{"portNumber":["3389"],"localPortNumber":["3389"]}'

4. Install the Microsoft Remote Desktop client on your computer.

   1. Click “+” to add a new PC. In the “PC Name” field, enter “localhost”. 

5. Log in with username “admin” and password "P@ssW0rD!"

   

Provisioning and Using a Notebook

Provision and Connect to the Notebook

Following the instructions for provisioning a machine, provision an EC2: Linux Docker instance.

Follow the steps under SSM Access to an Instance to connect to the machine as the ec2-user user.

Start up the Notebook Software

Log in to your Synapse account in your web browser and, under your Settings tab, create a Personal Access Token with View, Modify, and Download scope. Returning to the command line of the provisioned instance, run:

nano ~/.bash_profile

At the bottom of the file add the lines:

SYNAPSE_AUTH_TOKEN=<token here>

export SYNAPSE_AUTH_TOKEN

Now save the file and run

source ~/.bash_profile

Going forward, your Synapse access token will be available as an environment variable. 

We now show how to access a Jupyter Notebook. Instructions for the R Studio Notebook follow.

Run a Jupyter Notebook

Start the notebook, passing the access token:

docker run -d -p 8888:8888 -v ~/work:/home/jovyan/work -e SYNAPSE_AUTH_TOKEN=$SYNAPSE_AUTH_TOKEN \
--name jupyter jupyter/scipy-notebook

Note: Passing the access token is a convenience, allowing you to connect to Synapse in your notebook without typing your credentials.

Note: The docker image jupyter/scipy-notebook is just an example. The flexibility of Docker is that you can use any image you wish.

Now add the Synapse Python client to your notebook.

docker exec jupyter pip install synapseclient

Connect to the notebook in your browser

Get the connection URL. Run:

docker logs jupyter

You will see a line something like:

http://127.0.0.1:8888/?token=8bd05708879ee8faa23813807874291267281cac9efe6e7b

Return to your laptop console and connect to the notebook, following the instructions SSM access to applications, taking care that “portNumber” matches the value used when starting up the notebook with Docker. The command will look something like:

aws ssm start-session --profile service-catalog --target i-01289326a8b08c72d  \
--document-name AWS-StartPortForwardingSession  \
--parameters '{"portNumber":["8888"],"localPortNumber":["8888"]}'

(We call this “port forwarding” because it connects a port on your local machine to a port on the remote EC2 instance.) Now, in browser visit the URL shown in the ‘docker logs’ output. You will see the Jupyter console.

Connect to Synapse from a Jupyter Notebook

In the Jupyter console, open a new notebook and run the following:

import synapseclient
syn=synapseclient.Synapse()
# Note, you do not need to pass credentials when logging in.
syn.login()
# download this sample notebook
syn.get("syn25931378", downloadLocation="/home/jovyan/work")

Now return to the Files menu and you will see the downloaded notebook in the ‘work’ folder.

Clicking ‘Save’ in Jupyter will only save a copy top the provisioned EC2 machine, which you may terminate. If you want to save important results, push a copy to Synapse, like so:

myOwnProject = "syn25931363"
myCopy = synapseclient.File("/home/jovyan/work/sample_notebook.ipynb", parent=myOwnProject)
syn.store(myCopy)

Stopping your notebook

To stop port-forwarding, in the terminal where you started port forwarding, hit Control-C.

To stop the notebook, return to the terminal in which you have a connection to the EC2 machine or start a new connection as earlier:

aws ssm start-session --profile service-catalog --target i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb --parameters command="sudo su - ec2-user"

where i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb is the instance ID of your EC2 instance. At the EC2 command line you can stop and remove the notebook container:

docker stop jupyter
docker rm jupyter

Run an RStudio Notebook

On the EC2, run the following:

git clone https://github.com/Sage-Bionetworks/docker-rstudio.git
cd docker-rstudio/
cp .env.example .env

Now edit the file .env and change the line starting SYNAPSE_TOKEN to read:

SYNAPSE_TOKEN=$SYNAPSE_AUTH_TOKEN

Make any other customizations you desire. Note the username and password. Save the file and run:

docker-compose up

which connects an R-Studio notebook to port 8787. Start a port forwarding session forwarding port 8787:

aws ssm start-session --profile service-catalog --target i-0fd5c9ff0ef675ceb \
 --document-name AWS-StartPortForwardingSession  \
 --parameters '{"portNumber":["8787"],"localPortNumber":["8787"]}'

As before the value for ‘target’ is just an example.

Now turn your browser to http://localhost:8787 and you will see your R Studio instance, using the credentials from the .env file to log in.

Managing an Instance

On the product page for each provisioned product, there is an orange “ACTIONS” button in the upper right that allows you to manage the instance. You can also visit the EC2 Console to check on the status of your instance.

Update

Using the update action allows you to change parameters or update to a new version of the product. WARNING: changes to configuration parameters usually result in a recreation (“replacement”) of the instance, any data saved on the instance will be lost, and the nature of the update by Amazon is difficult to predict. We recommend that you save any important data to S3, provision a new instance and terminate the original.

Terminate

The terminate action deletes the instance permanently.

Stop

Stops the instance. We recommend using this when the instance is not in use.

Start

Starts the instance.

Restart

Performs a restart.

Update Plan

The service catalog allow you to create a plan (AKA a changeset) when updating your product. A plan will provide you with some information on what AWS will do before you execute the planned update. After a plan is created you can either delete, modify, or execute the plan. The update does not happen until you execute the plan.

Change Owner

Please ask #sageit for help transferring ownership if that is deemed to be necessary rather than using this action. Otherwise, you may find that you cannot connect to your instance.

S3

Note: S3 storage products currently are available to Sage employees only.

S3 Products

To understand the cost of S3 buckets see https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ or use the AWS pricing calculator. Note that while data egress can be a substantial cost, our Service Catalog provisions buckets and EC2 instances in the same AWS region. Since AWS does not charge for egress to a location within a bucket’s region, accessing data from an instance in provisioned by our Service Catalog will avoid such costs.

S3 Private Encrypted Bucket

This product builds an AWS S3 bucket encrypted with private access accessible from any source.

If another user wishes to share your bucket they will provide you with their AWS IAM identifier, or ARN.  You can enter it next to S3UserNames. If you wish to enter more than one, separate them by a comma (and no other white space).

Once the bucket is provisioned you can click on the “BucketUrl” in the provisioned product to go to the S3 Console where you can upload and download files. Alternately, if you add an AWS IAM user ARN, you can use the awscli or boto3 to perform bucket operations.

Which ARN to use?

Sage internal users can authenticate through Jumpcloud and aws-saml as described /wiki/spaces/IT/pages/405864455, then use an ARN constructed in this way: arn:aws:sts::<account_number>:assumed-role/<role_name>/<email_prefix>@sagebase.org. For example, if I authenticate as a “sandbox developer” and I am Jane Doe, the ARN looks like this: arn:aws:sts::563295687221:assumed-role/sandbox-developer/jane.doe@sagebase.org.

If an outside collaborator requires access, we recommend using a user ARN as described in the AWS documentation. In cases of PHI, please ensure that data sharing is appropriate.

S3 Synapse Bucket

This product builds an AWS S3 bucket with private access for Synapse. Please see the instructions for “S3 Private Encrypted Bucket” above. The additional configuration parameter is the name of the Synapse user who will be allowed to link the bucket to a Synapse project.

Creating S3 Products

Product Version and Parameters

When provisioning, you are prompted for two names.  On the “Product Version” screen of the wizard, you must name your product. This is the name you will see listed in Service Catalog under “Provisioned Products” later. Please include your name in the product, e.g. if your name is Jane Doe and you are provisioning a bucket for your project Foo, you could name it jdoe-bucket-foo. On the “Parameters” screen, you have the option of naming the bucket itself (otherwise a name will be assigned). That is the name to use  when accessing the bucket through the Amazon S3 client or via the Amazon S3 console.

Another optional field is “S3UserARNs”. If another user wishes to share your bucket they will provide you with their AWS IAM identifier, or ARN, and you enter it in this field. If you wish to enter more than one, separate them by a comma (and no other white space). If you wish to have AWS CLI access, add the ARN for your sandbox user here.

The S3 Synapse Bucket product requires the “SynapseUserName” field.

There is an additional field in S3 Synapse Bucket, “SynapseProdARN”, that should be left as its default value.

Tag options, Notifications, and Review

The final three screens of the wizard are the same as in Creating an EC2 Instance above.

Using an S3 Bucket

As with EC2 products, once provisioning is complete your S3 product will appear in the “Provisioned Products” list, showing status Available. Select “Provisioned Product Details” from the navigation panel on the left, and click on your product. A product that has a “Succeeded” event will have outputs that include a “BucketUrl” link.

Using a bucket from the AWS Console

Clicking on the “BucketUrl” link from the provisioned product takes you to the S3 console where you can upload and download files.

Using a bucket with the S3 client

If you added an IAM user or role ARN when provisioning the bucket, you can use the S3 client with credentials for said user or role to upload and download files. Note: You must include the ‘bucket-owner-full-control’ canned ACL when uploading files.

Using a bucket with the Synapse client

You can access a provisioned Synapse bucket using one of the synapse clients to push and pull data. In order to complete the setup of the Synapse Bucket, you must manually complete the final step of setting the S3 bucket as a Synapse upload location.

Managing an S3 Bucket

On the product page for each provisioned product, there is an orange “ACTIONS” button in the upper right that allows you to manage the instance.

Update

Using the update action allows you to change parameters or update to a new version of the product.

Terminate

The terminate action removes the bucket. WARNING: you must empty the bucket before terminating.

Change Owner

Please ask #sageit for help transferring ownership if that is deemed to be necessary rather than using this action.

Best Practices

When to Use the Service Catalog

The benefits of the Service Catalog are that it is self-service, meant to fulfill the most common needs for compute and storage, and that it creates resources in a PHI-safe environment. We encourage you to use it preferentially. However, it will not fulfill all needs. For custom development in a PHI-safe environment, the “scicomp” account remains the preference for Sage employees. For custom development that does not concern PHI, the “sandbox” account can be used by Sage employees. For more information, see the Sage Bionetworks intranet article on computing. If you have any questions about which environment is most suitable, questions are welcome in the #sageit Slack channel!

Ephemeral Instances, Permanent Data

We encourage you to treat your instances as ephemeral. It is very easy with the Service Catalog to create new instances, and since updating the parameters of an instance frequently results in their recreation, it is best not to get too attached to any one. This makes getting in the habit of storing your data in Synapse or S3 highly desirable. If you leave the organization you should again store any data your colleagues will need in Synapse or S3, then terminate your instances. Any instances left running will be terminated upon your departure.

EC2 SSM Session Timeouts

There is a short idle timeout on the SSM sessions started in the browser by clicking on the EC2 ConnectionURI link as described above. This will happen if you don't actively use the session for twelve minutes or more. The session in a browser is designed to allow quick access to EC2 instances. If you prefer longer sessions then we recommend that you setup command line SSM access to an instance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why didn’t I receive an email about my new product?

Emails are not enabled in the current system. You can get status updates on the provisioned products pages, including connection instructions when the provisioning succeeds.

Note: you may need to expand the product events to view connection information.

Which OS versions are currently available?

• Amazon Linux 2 AMI 2.0.20190823.1 x86_64 HVM gp2

• Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic)

• Windows Server 2019

Why can’t I set my own AMI ID?

The current product templates are meant to cover the most common use cases. You may request a new product if your use case is not covered. Sage employees can do this by filing a Jira issue. Others should contact their community manager.

What is a User ARN?

ARN stands for Amazon Resource Name, a unique identifier for a particular resource in AWS.

Why can’t I access my windows instance?

Windows instances take much longer than linux instances to initialize. It can take between 5-15 minutes to complete the initialization process. If you provision a windows instance you may need to wait up to 15 minutes after the Service Catalog completes before you can RDP into it.

How can I ask a question or otherwise get help?

Sage employees should use the #sageit Slack channel. Members of other communities can contact their community manager or reach out via the Synapse help forum.