section-2-aws.md

0 to 100 on AWS – Building a full stack web mapping application with PostGIS, GeoServer, OpenLayers and ReactJS

FOSS4G SotM Oceania - Afternoon Workshop #1 - 20th November 2018

2. Deploy AWS resources - VPC and PostGIS

To get started we're going to setup our environment in Amazon Web Services (AWS). For this workshop we'll be working in the AWS Sydney region, which is made up of 3 geographically isolated availability zones - A, B and C. We'll deploy a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network with subnets in 2 of those availability zones to allow the system to scale or failover as needed. Then we'll deploy a PostgreSQL database, Geoserver and an Administration instance. Finally we'll deploy an S3 bucket for hosting the static website:

Create an SSH key pair

First you will need to set up an SSH key pair to access your AWS resources. If you already have an SSH key pair in your AWS account, and you have the private key on your local machine, you can skip these next steps. Otherwise, please:

1. Sign in to the AWS console
2. Select the EC2 service
3. Select Network & Security > Key Pairs
4. Select Create Key Pair, or alternatively if you already have an SSH key on your local machine you would prefer to use, select Import Key Pair.
5. Choose a unique name for the key (e.g. "foss4g-oceania-workshop") and select Create.
6. The private key file will be downloaded on your local machine. Please note the location you the file is saved to, as you will need to use this private key when you connect to your instance over SSH.

Configure PuTTY (Windows only)

If you are using Windows, there are some additional steps required to prepare your SSH key for use with PuTTY:

1. Launch the PuTTYgen utility
2. Select Conversions > Import key from the menu bar
3. Choose the private key file you saved in the previous step 6.
4. PuTTYgen will populate the key details. You can set a comment for the key if you wish, then under Actions, select Save private key. You will be prompted to select a location and filename for the new key file in PuTTY's ".ppk" format. Please note the location you select, as you will need to use this key file when you connect to your instance with PuTTY.

Deploy CloudFormation stacks

To make things easier we've created some CloudFormation templates that we can use to deploy the workshop resources.

CloudFormation is an AWS service that allows you to define your AWS resources in a template file as YAML or JSON and deploy them as 'Stacks'. This approach (infrastructure-as-code) allows you to create reproducible and reusable deployments that can be tracked in version control.

All of our CloudFormation templates are written in YAML, and include the following sections:

• AWSTemplateFormatVersion (optional) - CloudFormation template version
• Description (optional) - Informative description
• Metadata (optional) - Metadata about the template
• Parameters (optional) - Input parameters the template supports/requires
• Outputs (optional) - Defines output values to be made available to other templates
• Resources (required) - Defines the actual resources and their properties

We have four CloudFormation templates we'll be deploying in this section. There are dependencies between these templates that mean they need to be deployed in order:

• 1-vpc-setup.yaml
• 2-security-groups.yaml
• 3-db-setup.yaml
• 4-admin.yaml

To open up the CloudFormation Console:

1. Sign in to the AWS console and select Services > CloudFormation.
2. Ensure that you have the Asia Pacific (Sydney) region selected, as shown at the right hand side of the top navigation bar, between your user account and the Support menu. If Sydney is not selected, drop down the region selector and choose Asia Pacific (Sydney).

Deploy network environment

The first stack will set up a basic network environment for our web application resources. Once the stack is deployed, we will have:

• A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with a class B IP address block
• A public subnet in each of two availability zones (A and B)
• An Internet Gateway for internet traffic
• Routing tables for network traffic
• Network ACLs which act as subnet level (stateless) firewalls

To create the Stack:

1. Select Create Stack
2. Under Choose a template, select Browse... to upload a template from your local machine.
3. Navigate to the directory where you extracted the workshop files, then under cloudformation choose the first template, named 1-vpc-setup.yaml and select Next.
4. Enter a name for the new stack. We suggest foss4g-oceania-workshop-vpc. Then choose a class B IP address block for the VPC and select Next.
5. Leave all settings under Options at their default values and select Next.
6. Under Review, select Create.
7. Monitor the progress of your stack in the CloudFormation console until the stack status reads CREATE_COMPLETE.

Deploy security groups

The second stack will create a set of security groups (SGs) to control traffic flowing into and within the VPC. Once the stack is deployed, we will have SGs to control our inbound connections:

• Admin Instance - port 22 (SSH)
• PostgreSQL Database- port 5432
• GeoServer - port 8080 We need to provide our own public IP address so that it can be specifically allowed access in each security group.

To create the Stack:

1. Determine your local machine's public facing IP address -- point your browser to https://ipinfo.io and copy the value shown under "ip" to your clipboard.
2. In the AWS CloudFormation console, select Create Stack.
3. Under Choose a template, select Browse..., navigate to the workshop files and under cloudformation choose the template 2-security-groups.yaml. Select Next.
4. Enter a name for the stack. We suggest foss4g-oceania-workshop-security-groups.
5. Paste your IP address into the AllowedIPs field, and add /32 to the end of it to make it valid a CIDR address block.
6. Leave the rest of the parameters at their defaults and select Next.
7. Leave all settings under Options at their default values and select Next.
8. Under Review, select Create.
9. Monitor the progress of your stack in the CloudFormation console until the stack status reads CREATE_COMPLETE.

Deploy relational database

The third stack will launch an AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) instance. RDS provides managed database instances and makes it easy to setup and scale a relational database on AWS. Once this stack is deployed, we will have a fully functional PostgreSQL 9.6 server running in our VPC public subnet and accessible from our allowed IP address.

1. In the AWS CloudFormation console, select Create Stack.
2. Under Choose a template, select Browse..., navigate to the workshop files and under cloudformation choose the template 3-db-setup.yaml. Select Next.
3. Enter a name for the stack. We suggest foss4g-oceania-workshop-db.
4. Choose a password for the database master user and enter it into the MasterPassword field. You will need this password later on when you load the database schema. Note: The password must be a minimum of 8 characters length
5. Leave the rest of the parameters at their defaults and select Next.
6. Leave all settings under Options at their default values and select Next.
7. Under Review, select Create.
8. Monitor the progress of your stack in the CloudFormation console until the stack status reads CREATE_COMPLETE.

Deploy admin instance

The fourth stack will launch an administrative EC2 instance. We will connect to this instance over SSH and use it to load the database schema and seed data. The CloudFormation template includes instructions for the newly launched admin instance to install the Postgres client utilities and download the workshop data files.

1. In the AWS CloudFormation console, select Create Stack.
2. Under Choose a template, select Browse..., navigate to the workshop files and under cloudformation choose the template 4-admin.yaml. Select Next.
3. Enter a name for the stack. We suggest foss4g-oceania-workshop-admin.
4. Under KeyPair, choose the key pair which you previously created.
5. Leave the rest of the parameters at their defaults and select Next.
6. Leave all settings under Options at their default values and select Next.
7. Under Review, select Create.
8. Monitor the progress of your stack in the CloudFormation console until the stack status reads CREATE_COMPLETE.

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