How Do You Find what VPC an EC-2 Instance Is In?

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Problem scenario
You want to determine what VPC a given AWS server is in. How do you find this out?

Solution
Prerequisite
You must have the AWS CLI installed and configured with a user that has the ability to view EC-2 databases (e.g., an administrator of your AWS account). If you need assistance, see this posting.

Procedure
Run this command: aws rds describe-db-instances | grep -i vpc

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How Do You Use the aws update-kubeconfig Command?

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Problem scenario
You want to manage your Amazon Kubernetes (i.e., EKS) cluster. You have installed the AWS CLI version on a Linux server, and you want to use the update-config or update-kubeconfig command.

But when you try you see messages like “error argument command: Invalid choice…” or “update-config: command not found”. You could not readily find an example. What should you do?

Solution
Background
The command is update-kubeconfig,

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How Do You Interpret the dstat Utility’s Results on a Linux Server in AWS?

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Problem scenario
You want to monitor network traffic on an EC-2 server’s NICs. You are not sure what to look for or what a baseline should look like. What do you do?

Solution
1. Install dstat. With a CentOS/RHEL/Fedora server, run this: sudo yum -y install dstat
2. Run this command: dstat -nt
3. With no network activity beyond the PuTTy session to the EC-2 server,

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How Do You Set Up a Multi-Node Cluster of Zookeeper?

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Problem scenario
You want to set up Zookeeper with three nodes in AWS. What do you do?

Solution
1. Install Zookeeper on each of the servers. If you need assistance with this, see this posting.

2. Modify the zoo.cfg file on each of the servers. Add stanzas like these but substitute foobarX.amazonaws.com with the Public DNS name of each server:

server.1=foobar1.amazonaws.com:2888:3888
server.2=foobar2.amazonaws.com:2888:3888
server.3=foobar3.amazonaws.com:2888:3888
initLimit=5
syncLimit=5

3.

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How Do You Connect to an Aurora MySQL Database from a Linux Server with a MySQL Command?

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Problem scenario
You are using an Aurora or RDS MySQL database. You have a Linux server that you want to run MySQL commands from (rather than install a SQL front-end). What should you do?

Solution

1. Install a MySQL client. If you need assistance with this, see this posting.

2. Make sure the Security Group governing the Aurora or RDS region allows for incoming connections from one of the following:
a) if you are using an EC-2 server in the same region,

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How Do You Write a Python Program to Show the Status of the Servers in AWS?

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Problem scenario
You want to list the statuses of each EC-2 instance in AWS using Python. How do you do this for a given region in AWS (e.g., us-west-1)?

Solution
Prerequisites
This assumes you have installed Boto3. If you do not know how, see this posting “How do you install Boto 3 on a RHEL server in AWS?

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How Do You Troubleshoot the Java Program Message “com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.MySQLSyntaxErrorException: Unknown database foobar”?

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Problem scenario
Your Java program returns this message: “com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.MySQLSyntaxErrorException: Unknown database foobar”

What should you do?

Possible solution #1
Are you using Amazon Aurora? AWS has a MySQL PaaS offering. You may have a section of the Java code that looks like this:

Connection con=DriverManager.getConnection(“jdbc:mysql://foobar-us-west-2b.abcdefghijk.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com:3306/foobar”)

Remove the last “foobar” from the end. The connection string should look like this for Aurora databases:

jdbc:mysql://foobar-us-west-2b.abcdefghijk.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com:3306/foobar

Recompile the program.

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How Do You Set up a Send-Only (Postfix) Email Server on a Linux RHEL AWS Instance?

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Problem scenario
You have a monitoring tool on a RedHat Enterprise Linux server that needs to send out emails upon certain events happening. You want to install and configure an email server. You need to send outbound emails, but you do not need to receive inbound emails. How do you configure RHEL to be able to send out regular emails over the internet?

Prerequisite
This assumes that Postfix has been installed.

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