Maintaining a Crowd cluster on AWS

The AWS Quick Start template as a method of deployment is no longer supported by Atlassian. You can still use the template, but we won't maintain or update it.

We recommend deploying your Data Center products on a Kubernetes cluster using our Helm charts for a more efficient and robust infrastructure and operational setup. Learn more about deploying on Kubernetes.

AWS now recommends switching launch configurations, which our AWS Quick Start template uses, to launch templates. We won’t do this switch, however, as we’ve ended our support for the AWS Quick Start template. This means you're no longer able to create launch configurations using this template.

If you deployed Crowd Data Center through the AWS Quick Start, you can easily maintain it through the AWS console. This page will show you the basics of connecting to your instances, upgrading Crowd, and other infrastructure maintenance tasks.

Connecting to your nodes over SSH

You can perform node-level configuration or maintenance tasks on your deployment through the AWS Systems Manager Sessions Manager. This browser-based terminal lets you access your nodes without any SSH Keys or a Bastion host. For more information, see Getting started with Session Manager.

Access via Bastion host

You can also access your nodes via a Bastion host (if you deployed one). To do this, you'll need your SSH private key file (the PEM file you specified for the Key Name parameter). Remember, this key can access all nodes in your deployment, so keep this key in a safe place.

The Bastion host acts as your "jump box" to any instance in your deployment's internal subnets. That is, access the Bastion host first, and from there access any instance in your deployment. 

The Bastion host's public IP is the BastionPubIp output of your deployment's ATL-BastionStack stack. This stack is nested in your deployment's Atlassian Standard Infrastructure (ASI). To access the Bastion host, use ec2-user as the user name, for example:

ssh -i keyfile.pem ec2-user@<BastionPubIp>

The ec2-user has sudo access. SSH access is by root is not allowed.


Scaling up and down

To change the number of nodes in the cluster:

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console, use the region selector in the navigation bar to choose the AWS Region for your deployment, and open the AWS CloudFormation console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/.
  2. Click the Stack name of your deployment. This will display your deployment's Stack info. From there, click Update.
  3. On the Select Template page, leave Use current template selected, and then choose Next.
  4. On the Specify Details page, go to the Cluster nodes section of Parameters. From there, set your desired number of application nodes in the following parameters:
    1. Minimum number of cluster nodes
    2. Maximum number of cluster nodes
  5.  Click through to update the stack.

Disabled Auto Scaling

Since your cluster has the same minimum and maximum number of nodes, Auto Scaling is effectively disabled.

Setting different values for the minimum and maximum number of cluster nodes enables Auto Scaling. This dynamically scale the size of your cluster based on system load.

However, we recommend that you keep Auto Scaling disabled. At present, Auto Scaling can't effectively address sudden spikes in your deployment's system load. This means that you'll have to manually re-scale your cluster depending on the load.

Upgrading Crowd Data Center on AWS

Before upgrading to a later version of Crowd Data Center, check if your apps are compatible with that version. Update your apps if needed. For more information about managing apps, see Using the Universal Plugin Manager. We strongly recommend that you perform the upgrade first in a staging environment before upgrading your production instance. 

To upgrade Crowd Data Center to a later version:

Step 1: Terminate all running Crowd Data Center application nodes 

Set the number of application nodes used by the Crowd Data Center stack to 0. Then, update the stack.

Click here for detailed instructions


  1. In the AWS console, go to Services > CloudFormation. Select your deployment’s stack to view its Stack Details.

  2. In the Stack Details screen, click Update Stack.

  3. From the Select Template screen, select Use current template and click Next.

  4. You’ll need to terminate all running nodes. To do that, set the following parameters to 0:

    1. Maximum number of cluster nodes

    2. Minimum number of cluster nodes

  5. Click Next. Click through the next pages, and then to apply the change using the Update button.

  6. Once the update is complete, check that all application nodes have been terminated.




Step 2: Update the version used by your Crowd Data Center stack

Set the number of application nodes used by Crowd Data Center to 1. Configure it to use the version you want. Then, update the stack again.

Click here for detailed instructions

  1. From your deployment’s Stack Details screen, click Update Stack again.

  2. From the Select Template screen, select Use current template and click Next.

  3. Set the Version parameter to the version you’re updating to.

  4. Configure your stack to use one node. To do that, set the following parameters to 1:

    1. Maximum number of cluster nodes

    2. Minimum number of cluster nodes

  5. Click Next. Click through the next pages, and then to apply the change using the Update button.


Step 3: Scale up the number of application nodes

You can now scale up your deployment to your original number of application nodes. For detailed instructions on how do to this, see Scaling up and down.

Last modified on Apr 19, 2023

Was this helpful?

Yes
No
Provide feedback about this article
Powered by Confluence and Scroll Viewport.