Connect to deployment - Replatform .NET Applications with Windows Containers

This whitepaper is for historical reference only. Some content might be outdated and some links might not be available.

Connect to deployment

In the previous section, you deployed the stack for your environment that included three EC2 instances. The first EC2 instance is a Windows Server 2019 instance for the worker machine where you will run App2Container, the second is a Windows Server 2012 instance running the MvcMusicStore application, and the third is a Windows instance running SQL Server. Before you proceed to setting up App2Container, confirm that the deployment succeeded:

  1. Go to CloudFormation in the AWS Management Console and select the App2Container-Demo stack that you launched in the previous step.

  2. On the Outputs tab, select the SSHKeyURL link. This brings you to the Secure Shell (SSH) key that will be used to retrieve Administrator access. Save the key to your local machine.

    Screen shot showing selecting the SSHKeyURL link on the output tab

    Select the SSHKeyURL link

  3. Go the EC2 service in the AWS Management Console and navigate to your instances.

  4. Select the Source-NET-Webserver instance, and choose Connect in the upper-right corner.

    Showing the selection of the webserver instance

    Select the Source-NET-Webserver instance and choose Connect

  5. In the Connect to instance dialog box, choose the RDP client tab, and select Get password. A popup box appears.

    Screen shot showing password popup

    Choose the RDP client tab and select Get password

  6. In the Get password popup box, paste the SSH key that you saved to your local machine and select Decrypt Password. Copy the password that appears on the screen to your local machine. You will need it to log in to the remote machine through Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

  7. Go back to your Instances view and copy the Public IPv4 DNS string for the web server instance to your local machine.

    Screen showing setup of IPv4

    Copy the Public IPv4 DNS string for the web server instance to your local machine

  8. Go to your DBServer instance and copy the Private IPv4 address to your local machine. You will need this while editing the Web.config file for the application to connect to the database.

    Screen showing private IPv4 address

    Copy the Private IPv4 address to your local machine

  9. Open Remote Desktop Connection on your local machine and paste the web server DNS string into the Connection field.

  10. Enter Administrator as the user name, and choose Connect.

    Screen showing entering Administrator as the user name.

    Enter Administrator as the user name and choose Connect

  11. After you are connected to the web server instance, open PowerShell.

  12. Run the following command to configure your application to connect to the database. Replace <change-this-to-your-private-db-ip> with the private IPv4 address of your database instance that you copied in step 8. 

    (Get-Content C:/dotnet-modernization-music-
store/MvcMusicStore/Web.config).replace('Data Source=.', 
'Data Source=<change-this-to-your-private-db-ip>') | Set-Content 
C:/dotnet-modernization-music-store/MvcMusicStore/Web.config

  13. Go to Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Choose the MvcMusicStore application from the left pane.

  14. Choose Restart in the right pane, and then choose Browse 8081. The MvcMusicStore user interface should appear in the internet browser.

    Screen shot showing Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager

    Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager

    Screen shot showing MvcMusicStore user interface

    MvcMusicStore user interface

  15. Now that you have confirmed that the application is successfully running in your environment, you need to install WinRM so that App2Container can remotely connect to your web server instance to analyze and containerize your application. Run the following in PowerShell: 

    cd Downloads
.\WinRMSetup.ps1

You should observe the following output:

Screen shot showing PowerShell output

PowerShell output

You have confirmed that your MvcMusicStore application is running on the web server instance on IIS. Additionally, you have set up your web server instance with WinRM so that App2Container can remotely access it from the worker machine. You are ready to move on to the next step to set up App2Container.