Customizing the Cluster Manager or Cluster Node Images

If you want to install additional software on the Cluster Manager or node images, you can create your own custom images based on the default images provided by Aspera. To do that, you need to start the default images in a special mode that prevents running the firstboot scripts, perform your customizations, and finally create a new image.

If you are making simple modifications that do not involve lengthy software installations, use custom first-boot scripts instead. For more information, see Customizing Cluster Nodes Using First-boot Scripts.

  1. When booting up your image, disable the firstboot script by including firstboot=disabled in the User Metadata field.

  2. Finish booting the instance. For more information, see Booting the Aspera Transfer Cluster Manager Image.
  3. SSH to the instance.
    # ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa -p 22 centos@ip_address
  4. Make your modifications to the instance such as installing additional software.
  5. Create a new image from the modified instance and use that for your cluster manager or cluster node instances.