Summary

Running MarkLogic Server in AWS has challenges that you may not experience in traditional IT data centers and the Managed Cluster feature helps mitigate those challenges with support for reliability, scalability and high availability, as well as with some tools that automatically handle some of the more problematic issues. Managed Cluster Feature works with AWS features to automatically create and provision the necessary AWS resources and provide MarkLogic with the information needed to manage cluster. More information here.

Can I use customized AMIs/CFTs with the Managed Cluster feature?

MarkLogic provides prebuilt Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) and ready for deployment Cloud Formation Templates (CFT). Cloud Formation templates, which are built on the AMIs, can be used to provision a MarkLogic Managed Cluster and this is the best (and easiest) way to provision MarkLogic Managed Clusters.

Please note that Managed Cluster Feature is packaged and tested with the standard AMI that we publish on the Amazon Marketplace and is designed to work with the CloudFormation Template that we offer.

Any customization to either (AMI or CFT) of them may rely on specific account dependency to function properly and those customization could lead to issues in Customer environment. MarkLogic supports tested and published AMI and CFT usage for Managed Cluster; However, solving issue originating from customization in AWS may require consulting engagement.

Can the UserData section within the MarkLogic offered CloudFormation Template be modified to work with the Managed Cluster feature?

One such area where customization is strictly NOT recommended is the UserData section of our CloudFormation Template. The UserData property is populated with the data assigned to the variables described in the AWS Configuration Variables section of our documentation and any modification to UserData could impact the way the Managed Cluster feature should work and could in turn cause unforeseen issues. Therefore, customers who wish to take advantage of our Managed Cluster feature must make sure not to modify/customize the UserData section of our CFT in any way.

What if I want to use custom AMIs/CFTs?

If you wish to use custom templates/custom AMIs, we suggest managing MarkLogic externally just like you would do on-prem (you can use our Management API for that) by disabling MarkLogic Managed Cluster feature. You can do that by creating the /etc/marklogic.conf file and adding the following two lines in it before starting MarkLogic:

• MARKLOGIC_EC2_HOST=1
• MARKLOGIC_MANAGED_NODE=0

More information on this here.

Resources:

• MarkLogic on AWS
• MarkLogic Server on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Guide — Chapter 1
• MarkLogic Server on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Guide — Chapter 2
• Best Practice Editing MarkLogic Server Environment Variables