Part 1 - AWS automation of installing an .exe to several EC2 instances

Hi,

If one needs to have a 3rd party software installed on several EC2 instances in AWS, there are a few ways to do that:

1. Manually connect to each remote machine and install that .exe – easy but time consuming if there are 10 instances behind a load balancer
2. Create a PowerShell script that can be run on all EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud – more trickier to implement in the first place but really helpful afterwards

I would go for option 2 because the benefits are substantial: centralized repository for the kits, copying/installing a kit on as many instances as you want with a touch of a button.

The architecture for the second scenario is described below:

1.  Upload the .exe into the S3 bucket. This will be like a central repo where you can download the kit from at anytime.
2. Write a PowerShell script that downloads the .exe from the bucket into each of the EC2 instances.
3. Install the .exe on each instance in silent mode.

The code for the PowerShell script can be found on my blog at this page:

How to install a 3rd party software in AWS EC2 instances