Deploy on AWS

This is the official documentation of the forestadmin-agent-django and forestadmin-agent-flask Python agents.

This tutorial is designed to assist you with a step-by-step guide to deploy the admin backend to Amazon Web Services, using EC2, ELB, ACM and Route53.

First, please ensure you have an AWS account. You can sign up here ↗.

1. Launch an EC2 Instance:

• Navigate to the EC2 dashboard and click on Launch Instance.

• Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) such as Amazon Linux 2023 AMI.

• Select t2.micro (part of the AWS Free Tier).

• Select Proceed without a key pair

• On the Configure Security Group step, create a new security group:

  • allow ssh traffic.

  • allow HTTPS traffic.

  • allow HTTP traffic.

• Review and launch the instance.

2. Connect to the EC2 instance:

• Navigate to your EC2 instance and click on Connect.

• Leave the default parameters and click on Connect again.

• Your are now connected to your instance.

3. Set up your instance:

The command lines in this step demonstrate how to install a Node.js agent. If you are running Forest Admin on another agent, please adapt the following to your specific stack.

• Update the instance:

sudo yum update -y

• Install Git:

sudo yum install git -y

• Clone your repo:

git clone your-repo-link

• Install Node.js and npm:

sudo yum install npm -y

• Navigate to your project directory and install the necessary packages:

cd your-repo-directory
npm install

• Set up all the necessary environment variables provided by the Forest Admin environment creation wizard.

• Add the APPLICATION_PORT environment variable to be able to contact the server from outside. In this example, we will choose APPLICATION_PORT=3310. If you choose another port, please adapt the next steps accordingly.

• Start the agent

npm run start:watch

4. Adjust security group rules:

• Navigate to your EC2 instance's security group.

• Click on Edit inbound rules.

• Add a Custom TCP inbound rule to allow on port 3310.

5. Create a target group:

• In the AWS Management Console, navigate to the EC2 service.

• Under "Target Groups", click Create Target Groups.

• Ensure target type is instance.

• Choose HTTP to 3310.

• Ensure VPC is set to the same VPC as your EC2 instance.

• Setup the health checks as set to /forest.

• On the next step, select instance and click on Include as pending below.

• Finally create the target group.

6. Request a certificate using AWS Certificate Manager (ACM):

• Navigate to ACM and click on Request a certificate.

• Enter your domain name and validate the domain ownership using DNS validation.

• After viewing the new created certificate, click on Create records in Route 53.

• Wait for the certificate to be validated (this can take some time < 1mn).

7. Set up an Application Load Balancer (ALB):

• In the AWS Management Console, navigate to the EC2 service.

• Under "Load Balancers", click Create Load Balancer.

• Choose Application Load Balancer and follow the setup.

• Ensure the ALB is set to the same VPC as your EC2 instance.

• Select all regions.

• Remove default security group and select the group associated to the newly created instance.

• Add an HTTPS listener and choose previously created target group and certificate.

• After creating the ALB copy the DNS name.

8. Add CNAME to Route53:

• Navigate to Route53 and choose your hosted zone (domain).

• Create a CNAME record with the domain name filled in the certificate and the DNS name of the ALB.

9. Finalize:

Check your domain. You should be able to access your Forest Admin panel environment hosted on AWS. 🎉

This is a basic setup, and there are many optimizations and security enhancements (like using RDS, tightening security groups, etc.) that can be done for a production-ready deployment. Please refer to the AWS documentation ↗ to go deeper.