Demo site:

https://exerge.akerstrom.dev

The site is behind Cloudflare dns proxy.

Servers and apis:

Loadbalancer(s):

External ip address: 130.240.200.76
Internal ip address: 172.30.103.212

Functionality:

1. Ansible control node. Responsible for deploying the website.
2. HAProxy for loadbalancing incoming http traffic between webservers.

Open ports:

22: OpenSSH
80: HTTP - Managed by HAProxy
443: HTTPS - Managed by HAProxy

Database server(s):

Internal ip address: 172.30.103.214

Functionality:

1. Mongo database
2. Simulator
3. NFS server for webserver profile picture uploads

Open ports:

22: OpenSSH
80: HTTP - Managed by Nginx

Internal ports (for reverse proxy)

3000: Web server
8080: Backend server & Socket.io

Webservers:

Internal ip addresses:

172.30.103.213
172.30.103.214

Functionality:

1. Web server.
2. Backend server.
3. Redis session store + websocket online user cache.
4. Nginx acting as a reverse proxy for web, backend, and websocket traffic.
5. NFS client for profile picture uploads.

Open ports:

22: OpenSSH
8080: Simulator
27017: MongoDB
6379: Redis
2049: NFS

Development setup

Requirements

Node >= 16.10, Redis

Example setup

sudo pacman -S node redis
corepack enable

git clone [email protected]:chrfin-4/M7011E.git
cd M7011E

yarn install
yarn dev

Deployment procedure

Deployment of this project is done through ansible.

Requirements

4 Servers running Ubuntu 20.04:

1 Loadbalancer server (Control node)
2 Webservers (Managed nodes)
1 Simulator / database server. (Managed node)

Setup steps

1) Create users. (All nodes)

Create an ubuntu user on each server.

sudo adduser ubuntu

2) SSH key

The control node need ssh access to all managed nodes + itself.

2.1) Control node

Switch to the ubuntu user:

sudo -iu ubuntu

Generate a default ssh key

ssh-keygen

Copy the public ssh key.

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub # Copy output of command

2.2) All nodes

Switch to the ubuntu user:

sudo -iu ubuntu

Append the public ssh key to authorized_keys

sudo -iu ubuntu
echo '<clipboard>' >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

3) Install Ansible (Control node)

sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible
sudo apt install ansible

4) Project (Control node)

Switch to the ubuntu user:

sudo -iu ubuntu

4.1) Download deployment files

Get the deployment files, for example through git:

git clone https://github.com/chrfin-4/M7011E.git
cd M7011E/deployment

4.2) Configure hosts

Update the hosts file with the proper ip addresses for each node.

[loadbalancers]
x.x.x.x

[webservers]
x.x.x.x
x.x.x.x

[dbservers]
x.x.x.x

4.3) Certificate

Create a file exerge.pem that contains a concatenated certificate and key.

Example:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
...
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
...
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

4.4) Vault password

Create a file vault_password that contains the ansible-vault password used to decrypt group_vars/all/vault.yaml.

5) Execute ansible playbook (Control node)

Switch to the ubuntu user:

sudo -iu ubuntu

Go to deployments

cd M7011E/deployments

Execute playbook

ansible-playbook site.yaml