An important thing about AWS, as you point out, is the fact that IP addresses and FQDNs shift whenever you take an instance down and replace it with another (well, there are elastic IPs etc, but set that aside for now). Thus there are things like this: (from https://www.labkey.org/wiki/home/Documentation/page.view?name=configureFtp) Configuring LabKey Server to use the FTP Server Finally, you need to tell LabKey Server that there is a FTP server that it should tell users about. Go to the Site Settings (Manage Site->Admin Console->site settings). In the Configure File System Server section, fill in the server name and the port for the FTP server. If you have set up SSL on your FTP server, check the box. What's the proper way to do this programatically? I'd rather not hand users a list of manual steps for restarting a cluster (or for that matter for building an initial LabKey AMI). Thanks, Brian