Deploying FlashGrid Cluster in AWS Local Zones – FlashGrid Help Center

FlashGrid Cluster enables the following architectures on Amazon EC2 instances in AWS Local Zones: Oracle RAC, Oracle Enterprise Edition Failover HA, and Oracle Standard Edition High Availability (SEHA). For customers located in the countries with no AWS region, the use of AWS Local Zones allows achieving data sovereignty while enjoying the benefits of AWS cloud infrastructure for their mission-critical databases and applications.

This article describes the additional steps required for deploying FlashGrid Cluster in AWS Local Zones that are not covered in FlashGrid Cluster on AWS. Deployment Guide

Note: Placing cluster nodes across different local zones and availability zones of the same region is possible. However, all examples in this article assume that all cluster nodes are placed in a single local zone.

Prerequisites

Review AWS Local Zones features for your target Local Zone.
Confirm the local zone suffix in the local zone's name that follows the local zone's region name. For example, the Buenos Aires local zone's full name is us-east-1-bue-1a. It has the region name us-east-1 and the zone suffix -bue-1a (starting with a dash).
Confirm which memory optimized (R7i, R6i, R5) or general purpose (M7i, M6i, M5) instance types are available.
Confirm whether gp3 or gp2 EBS volume type is available.

How To Enable a Local Zone in your AWS Account

Use the steps below to opt in to use your target local zone if it is not opted in yet.

1. Use the AWS CLI command below to confirm Group Name of your target Local Zone:

aws ec2 describe-availability-zones \
  --region <region, e.g. us-east-1> \
  --filters Name=zone-type,Values=local-zone \
  --all-availability-zones

2. Use the Group Name in the AWS CLI command below to opt in to the group:

aws ec2 modify-availability-zone-group \
  --region <region, e.g. us-east-1> \
  --group-name <zone group, e.g. us-west-2-lax-1> \
  --opt-in-status opted-in

How To Configure and Deploy a Cluster

1. Review instructions in the deployment guide

See FlashGrid Cluster on AWS. Deployment Guide

2. Use FlashGrid Launcher wizard to create a cluster configuration file

On Nodes page, in the AZ field for each node, select 'a' as a temporary zone assignment. Later you will replace it with your target Local Zone in the cluster configuration file.
On the Network page, if you chose to use an existing VPC, for AZ 'a' specify your target Subnet Id and delete entries for all other AZs.
Complete all the steps in Launcher and download the configuration file for further editing.

3. Modify the cluster configuration file manually

Under [nodes] section in the instances for each node:

replace 'a' in the 'az' attribute value with your target local zone's suffix;

if needed, replace 'ins_type' attribute's value with your preferred instance size.

Example:


[nodes]
instances = [{'az': '-bue-1a', 'ins_type': 'r5.4xlarge', 'name': 'rac1', 'role': 'database'},
           {'az': '-bue-1a', 'ins_type': 'r5.4xlarge', 'name': 'rac2', 'role': 'database'},
           {'az': '-bue-1a', 'ins_type': 'c5.large', 'name': 'racq', 'role': 'quorum'}]

If you chose to use an existing VPC, under [aws] section in the vpc_subnet_id_map parameter replace 'a' with your target local zone's suffix. Example:
```
[aws]
vpc_subnet_id_map = {'-bue-1a': 'subnet-12345678'}
```
If you chose to create a new VPC, under [aws] section add vpc_cidr_block and vpc_subnets parameters with your preferred CIDR blocks and with your target local zone's suffix. Example:
```
[aws]
vpc_cidr_block = '10.100.0.0/16'
vpc_subnets = {'-bue-1a': '10.100.101.0/24'}
```

If your target local zone does not support GP3 EBS volume types:

add the following to the config file to use GP2 volumes:

[aws]
iops = None
mbps = None

[nodes]
root_type = 'gp2'
vol_type = 'gp2'

under [nodes] section in storage_profiles parameter for each disk that has vol_type = 'gp3', change it to vol_type = 'gp2' and remove the iops and mbps attributes. See an example below.

Before change:

{'device': 'xvdbb',
 'dg_name': 'DATA',
 'iops': 3000,
 'mbps': 125,
 'vol_size': 2,
 'vol_type': 'gp3',
 'web_show': True},

After change:

{'device': 'xvdbb',
 'dg_name': 'DATA',
 'vol_size': 2,
 'vol_type': 'gp2',
 'web_show': True},

In the [web] section of the configuration file, modify validate_step_active = False to validate_step_active = True. (With validate_step_active = False, Launcher GUI will show an error on the Nodes page because it does not recognize the local zone suffix. )

4. Use the modified cluster configuration file to deploy a cluster

Upload the final configuration file to FlashGrid Launcher
Go straight to the Validate step
Click Launch to generate a CloudFormation template and deploy