AWS Provider

The AWS Machine Provider can create AWS Instances and attach them to pre-existing VPCs and subnets. This means, you will need to pre-create these first.

You will also need to create an IAM user with AmazonEC2FullAccess and AmazonVPCFullAccess (or comparable) policies. Please create access key credentials for this user, which you’ll need when creating the machine provider.

For now, please follow the official AWS documentation for all this. We will later provide more detailed documentation here.

An AWS provider can be created via the dashboard or the CLI.

Creating an AWS Machine Provider

To create an AWS Machine Provider via the CLI, run:

dboxed machine-provider create --name <mp-name> --type=aws \
  --aws-region=<aws-region> --aws-vpc-id=<aws-vpc-id> \
  --aws-access-key-id=<aws-access-key-id> \
  --aws-secret-access-key=<aws-secret-access-key>

Replace all the argument placeholders with the appropriate values.

Creating an AWS Machine

To create an AWS machine with an automatically created instance, run:

dboxed machine create --name=<machine-name> --machine-provider=<mp-name> \
  --aws-subnet-id=<aws-subnet-id> --aws-instance-type=<aws-instance-type>

After that, you can add/remove boxes to the machine via the usual means.

Networking

The AWS Machine Provider will create instances in the provided VPC and subnet. You can use multiple subnets of the same VPC by specifying different subnet IDs while creating the machine.

Running machines in the same VPC and subnet has the advantage that Dboxed networks will be able to leverage P2P connections without leaving the AWS network, allowing you to speed up networking and reduce costs.