Deploy AWS Fargate on Nested CloudFormation Stacks

Deployment guide for PlaceOS on Nested AWS CloudFormation templates.

Overview

This page assists with deploying PlaceOS on AWS using CloudFormation templates. The templates configure a PlaceOS Fargate deployment including an optional VPC configuration. The basic premise is:

1. Upload the nested templates to an S3 bucket

2. Orchestrate the deployment using a root stack template

You can use the upload-s3.sh script in the AWS command-line tool to upload the required files to a configurable S3 bucket.

A CloudFormation template specifies all the components. Each component is designed to deploy as its own CloudFormation stack.

The root stack requires the following files and directory structure:

• Security Groups: infra/sec_groups.yml

• Application Load Balancer: infra/load-balancer-https.yml

• Elastic File System: infra/EFS.yml

• Elasticsearch: managed/elasticsearch.yml

• ElastiCache: managed/elasticache-redis-cluster.yml

• Fargate Cluster: fargate/ecs-cluster.yml

• RethinkDB: fargate/rethinkdb/single/rethinkdb-primary.yml

• etcd: fargate/etcd-service.yml

• dispatch: fargate/dispatch-service.yml

• NGINX: fargate/nginx-service.yml

• Frontends: fargate/frontends-service.yml

• auth: fargate/auth-service.yml

• core: fargate/core-service.yml

• triggers: fargate/triggers-service.yml

• rubber-soul: fargate/rubber-soul-service.yml

• REST API: fargate/rest-api-service.yml

• init: fargate/init-service.yml

VPC Architecture infra/vpc.yml

The VPC root stack template infra/vpc.yml deploys two private and two public subnets. For each of these the user can configure:

• CIDR ranges

• An internet gateway

• Two NAT gateways

• Routes and route tables

The application load balancer is the only component that should deploy in public subnets.

Configuring the root stack template

Once you have uploaded the files to S3, use root-stack-templates/placeos/deploy.yml to deploy PlaceOS. The required parameters are:

• BucketName S3 Bucket name where nested templates live

• CertificateId Certificate Identifier from AWS ACM - required for TLS/SSL

• EnvironmentName An environment name that is a suffix for resource names

• PLACEEMAIL Email address to login initially to the application

• PLACEPASSWORD Password to login initially to Backoffice

• PLACEUSERNAME Users Name

• PrivateSubnet1 Select a private subnet

• PrivateSubnet2 Select another private subnet

• PublicSubnet1 Select a public subnet

• PublicSubnet2 Select another public subnet

• VPC Select the VPC containing the public and private subnets

• VpcCIDR IP range (CIDR notation) for the VPC

AWS EnvironmentName parameter and Stack naming

The EnvironmentName parameter's uses include:

• Tagging

• Service discovery

• Linking outputs of templates with inputs of later templates

PlaceOS is the default but each deployment in the same VPC should configure its own EnvironmentName. The Stack name you choose for each component has no effect on the function of the deployment.

init: fargate/init-service.yml

init initializes the PlaceOS instance and is the final step in the deployment.

This service will never actually finish as the task will exit after it has run. You can update the ECS Service to have zero Number of tasks once it has been successful.

Accessing the deployed PlaceOS Backoffice application

You can expect the deployment to take 20-30 minutes, most of which is Elasticsearch. The Backoffice application will be available at:

https://{Application_Load_Balancer_DNS_NAME}/login?continue=/backoffice

The credentials are the email and password set by the init service. You can also find the application URL listed as an output for the init nested stack.