Moving ArcGIS Servers to AWS Cloud Hosting - NCES, Blue Raster, Sanametrix - 2013 Esri Federal GIS...

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The U.S. Department of Education (ED) participated in the Federal Geographic Data Committee's (FGDC) GeoCloud Program in 2012. The GeoCloud initiative provides selected agencies an Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosting platform to on-ramp their geospatial applications. ED migrated its on-premises ArcGIS for Server for the School District Demographic Data System (SDDS) Map Viewer (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sdds) to Amazon EC2. SDDS is publicly available and allows access to information about demographics, social characteristics, and economics of children and school districts from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Using GeoCloud, ED gained experience with cloud-based Windows 2008R2 Server and Esri ArcGIS 10.1 for Server platform. It has been almost one year now and we'll reflect on various lessons learned including planning, security/hardening, AWS console, server configuration, reliability, licensing, and backup strategy. We will discuss the current state of our server deployments and future plans for ED in the Cloud.

Transcript of Moving ArcGIS Servers to AWS Cloud Hosting - NCES, Blue Raster, Sanametrix - 2013 Esri Federal GIS...

MOVING ARCGIS SERVERS TO AWS CLOUD HOSTING

Presented by Tai Phan & Amy RamsdellNCES, Blue Raster, Sanametrix

2013 ESRI Federal GIS Conference – February 27, 2013

FGDC’S GEOCLOUD INITIATIVE

FGDC-sponsored hosting in Amazon Web Services (AWS)

A Geospatial Platform activity lead by FGDC’s Douglas Nebert

GeoCloud provides a common platform for deploying and documenting geospatial cloud services

Enables organizations to Leverage other agencies’ experiences Reuse and share server configurations Gain experience in cloud-based server and application deployment

http://www.fgdc.gov/initiatives/geoplatform/geocloud

DEPT OF ED PARTICIPATES IN GEOCLOUD

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) The primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing education-related data

NCES uses ESRI technologies to provide geospatial context to education data

Hosting migrated to GeoCloud in 2012 School District Demographic Data System Public School Boundary Collection and Verification Project

http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sdds/

SCHOOL DISTRICT DEMOGRAPHIC DATA SYSTEM

PUBLIC SCHOOL BOUNDARY COLLECTION AND VERIFICATION TOOL

GEOCLOUD ARCHITECTURE

Costs: Operating hours – Reserved instances BYOL for RDS and AMIs with database

Disk space 35 GB root drive with ~5 GB free

Support forums or paid support Amazon staff active in forums

Amazon restrictions: Elastic IPs – Limit of 5 Security groups – Can’t change once applied SMTP – Undisclosed limit, consider SES

PLANNING

SERVER CONFIGURATION – AWS CONSOLE

SERVER CONFIGURATION - AGS AMI

Considerations for ArcGIS Server Windows 2008 Server AMI

Need Web Adaptor for port 80 otherwise open port 6080 in security group

WWW service turned off by default

SERVER CONFIGURATION - AGS AMI

Apply any Windows updates

SERVER CONFIGURATION - AGS AMI

Lock down SQL Server Express dynamic port setting to 1433

SERVER CONFIGURATION - AGS AMI

ArcGIS license manager is based on machine id

Id will change when used as an AMI template

Lock down the license manager ports to 27000 and 27001

MONITORING IN AWS CONSOLE

System/Instance Status Checks - 2/2 checks Can create status check alarm

MONITORING Amazon Service Health Dashboard

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (N. Virginia) http://status.aws.amazon.com/

Website monitoring

BACKUP STRATEGY

BACKUP STRATEGY

Instance backups Powershell scripts

http://messor.com : AWS Disaster Recovery Automation

Scheduled task on Micro instance Windows 2008 serverDaily volume snapshotsWeekly AMIsClean up snapshots and AMIs

Database backup to S3 Using Cloudberry and Powershell

SECURITY – AMAZON LEVEL

AWS admins All accesses logged and audited Cannot log in to instances

EC2 Instance isolation on physical machine Use VPC for dedicated instances

SECURITY – IAM CONSOLE

Control users and groups within account Unique security credentials for access keys and

login/passwords

SECURITY – INBOUND RULES Inbound network traffic controlled through security groups

Ports 80 and 443 only open to the internet RDP 3389, MS SQL 1433, ArcGIS License Manager 27000, 27001

ports by IP

SECURITY – AMI TEMPLATE Security hardened AMI template provided by USGS

under GeoCloud program

FUTURE PLANS

Transition from GeoCloud Amazon account

Deploy on security hardened AMIs with Cloud Builder

FISMA C&A for Low Impact/Low Risk system

Migrate front-facing applications to cloud

GAL (GIANT ACRONYM LIST)

1) AGS – ArcGIS Server2) AMI - Amazon Machine Images3) AWS – Amazon Web Services4) BYOL - Bring Your Own License 5) C&A - Certification and Accreditation 6) EC2 - Elastic Cloud Compute7) FISMA - Federal Information Security Management Act of 20028) IAM – Identity and Access Management9) RDP - Remote Desktop Protocol 10) RDS - Relational Database Service11) S3 - Simple Storage Service12) SES – Simple Email Service13) SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol 14) VPC – Virtual Private Cloud

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Amy Ramsdellaramsdell @ blueraster.com703-842-0177www.blueraster.comblog.blueraster.com

Tai Phantai.phan@ed.gov

202-502-7431 nces.ed.gov/surveys/sdds/index.aspx