Overview

This document describes how to install a Net4Care server in Amazon EC2 (or an EC2-compatible cloud infrastructure) using the Amazon command line tools.

Prequisites

You should have an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account. There is an AWS Free Usage Tier that you can sign up for. If you are signing up, you may want to familiarize yourself with the EC2 Get Started guide. Here, we are, however, going to use the command line tools to set up a Net4Care-specific image.

In the following, we also assume that you have the Amazon EC2 command line tools set up locally on your development machine and also that you are working in the EU West zone. Here is a skeleton of a .bashrc file that sets this up:

export EC2_HOME=<path>/ec2-api-tools/
export PATH=$PATH:$EC2_HOME/bin
export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=~/.ec2/pk-<id>.pem
export EC2_CERT=~/.ec2/cert-<id>.pem
export EC2_URL=http://ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com

Launching a basic Net4Care server

We will launch a Net4Care-prepared EC2 instance (containing JDK, Maven, and Subversion) on which you should download and install Net4Care.

You need a keypair to ensure that you can log into the instance. If you do not already have a key, you may create one in a terminal:

ec2-create-keypair gsg-net4care > gsg-net4care.pem
chmod 400 gsg-net4care.pem

The instance needs to run in a security group which allows for incoming port 22 (SSH) and/or 8082 (HTTP) traffic and 8443 (HTTPS) traffic. Again, you may create and configure one from the command line:

ec2-create-group net4care -d "Net4Care group"
ec2-authorize net4care -P tcp -p 8082 -s 0.0.0.0/0
ec2-authorize net4care -P tcp -p 8443 -s 0.0.0.0/0
ec2-authorize net4care -P tcp -p 22 -s 0.0.0.0/0

Next, find the AMI id of the image:

ec2-describe-images -a --filter "name=Net4Care*" --filter "is-public=true"

Start the instance with the appropriate key and security group:

ec2-run-instances <ami id> -k gsg-net4care -g net4care -t t1.micro

When the instance is running (check with ec2-describe-instances and note the DNS address of the instance), you may log into the instance as the user "ec2-user" using SSH, e.g.,:

ssh -i gsg-net4care.pem ec2-user@<address>.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com

Install Net4Care on the EC2 instance

You need to download and install Net4Care on the instance. To, e.g., install the trunk, do:

svn checkout https://svn.nfit.au.dk/svn/net4care/trunk/src/net4care
cd net4care/n4c_osgi
mvn install

Starting the Net4Care

You should now start the Net4Care server on the instance:

cd n4c_receiver
mvn pax:provision

Test the server

From a local machine, test that the Net4Care server is accessible (e.g., by doing

curl <address>.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com:8082/observation

in a shell. This should return a response indicating that the server can indeed be reached from outside the instance firewall.)

Terminate the EC2 instance

Remember to stop the server when it is not needed:

ec2-terminate-instances <instance id>