🧪 Lab 3: Cloud Operations and Scaling (AWS, RHEL)

Course: CompTIA Cloud+ CV0-004
Objective: Monitor cloud instances and configure auto-scaling using AWS Free Tier and RHEL.

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🎯 Goals

• Configure logging and monitoring on a RHEL EC2 instance
• Enable and test auto-scaling behavior
• Understand metrics and alarms with CloudWatch

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Setup RHEL EC2 Instance with Monitoring

1. Launch a new EC2 Instance:
2. AMI: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
3. Type: t2.micro (Free Tier)
4. Name Tag: cloudplus-monitor
5. Enable Public IP
6. In the User Data section, paste the following script:

#!/bin/bash
sudo dnf update -y
sudo dnf install -y httpd
echo "<h1>Cloud Monitoring - RHEL</h1>" | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html
sudo systemctl enable httpd
sudo systemctl start httpd

1. Create and attach a Security Group allowing:
2. Port 22 (SSH)

3. Port 80 (HTTP)

4. Connect to your instance via SSH:

chmod 400 cloudplus-key.pem
ssh -i "cloudplus-key.pem" ec2-user@<your-public-ip>

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Enable CloudWatch Monitoring

1. Go to CloudWatch → Log groups:

2. Create a new log group: cloudplus-monitoring

3. Install the CloudWatch Agent:

sudo dnf install -y amazon-cloudwatch-agent

1. Create a configuration file:

sudo tee /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/etc/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.json > /dev/null <<EOF
{
  "agent": {
    "metrics_collection_interval": 60,
    "logfile": "/var/log/messages"
  },
  "logs": {
    "logs_collected": {
      "files": {
        "collect_list": [
          {
            "file_path": "/var/log/messages",
            "log_group_name": "cloudplus-monitoring",
            "log_stream_name": "{instance_id}"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}
EOF

1. Start the CloudWatch Agent:

sudo /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl   -a fetch-config -m ec2 -c file:/opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/etc/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.json -s

✅ Checkpoint: Your instance logs should now appear in the CloudWatch console.

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Set Up Auto Scaling

1. Go to EC2 > Launch Templates → Create template:
2. Name: cloudplus-template

3. Use the same RHEL AMI, instance type, key pair, and security group as above

4. Go to Auto Scaling > Auto Scaling Groups → Create:

5. Use cloudplus-template
6. VPC and subnet: Same as previous labs
7. Desired capacity: 1

8. Min: 1, Max: 2

9. Add a Scaling Policy:

10. Target tracking: Average CPU ≥ 60%

11. Cooldown period: 300s

12. Generate CPU load to test scaling:

yes > /dev/null &

✅ Checkpoint: Watch the Auto Scaling group create a new instance when CPU usage rises.

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✅ Lab Complete

You have now configured monitoring, logging, and an auto-scaling policy for RHEL on AWS Free Tier.