Launch AWS Marketplace Software into VPCs With 1-Click

The AWS Marketplace helps you to find, buy, and immediately start using a wide variety of software and services. You can launch pre-configured software and pay only for what you use, by the hour or by the month.

Today we are simplifying the process of launching networking and security software products from the Marketplace inside of a Virtual Private Cloud. There are two important aspects to this feature:

First, you can now launch all AMI-based AWS Marketplace products into Amazon VPC. To try this, choose an AMI-based product (e.g. CentOS, WordPress or Adobe ColdFusion) and select an existing VPC and subnet as part of your 1-Click launch from the AWS Marketplace website:

Second, as part of the release, five of our launch partners are making their networking and security offerings available for launch within a VPC using AWS CloudFormation.  You will be able to configure existing VPCs, select multiple subnets and associate Elastic IPs directly from the AWS Marketplace website during the 1-Click launch process. In this past, this process required some manual intervention.

VPC Launch Tour
Let’s walk through a launch to see this new feature in action. Suppose I want to launch the Citrix NetScaler VPX Standard Edition.This product makes use of three VPC subnets. I verify the pricing and features, and click the Continue button:

Prior to this release, I would have had to use the EC2 Console to finalize the launch into one of my Virtual Private Clouds. That option is still available; however, the new 1-Click Launch is easier and faster. The new VPC Settings section is displayed; as you can see I still need to click the Set up button to choose some options:

I have the opportunity to target one of my VPCs and specific subnets (management, private, and public) within it for the launch:

Once I make my selection, I can proceed with the launch.

Networking and Security
As I mentioned earlier, five of our partners already have their VPC-based offerings available in the AWS Marketplace:

• Citrix NetScaler VPX is an application delivery controller with load balancing at layers 4 through 7.
• Riverbed Stingray Traffic Manager is a high performance software and virtual Layer 7 load balancer.
• Silver Peak Cloud Acceleration maximizes data transfer performance and minimizes costs over WAN connections.
• Sophos UTM is a security platform that allows you to configure firewall, intrusion protection, Layer-7 Application Control, Web Server Protection.
• Check Point Virtual Appliance provides flexible multilayer security within the AWS cloud environment.

I expect this list to grow quickly in the coming weeks and months.

CloudFormation Inside
A CloudFormation template is attached to the VPC-enabled products listed above. The template launches the EC2 instance and creates any necessary Elastic Network Interfaces. You can click on the CloudFormation Template link to take a peek inside:

The template will be displayed in a pop-up window:

We plan to allow other Marketplace products to make use of CloudFormation templates as part of their setup process.

— Jeff;