Demo Server Setup

This folder contains documentation about how our Demo server is setup and configured.

The Demo Server is hosted by OVH (http://SoYouStart.com) and the required software is installed directly using Ansible and Vagrant.

Setting up the Demo Server Host

So You Start offers dedicated servers for a monthly or yearly fee. The server can be created using a web interface. The configuration is described in OVH Server Setup.

How is the Demo Server deployed and updated?

Every time a pull request is merged or a commit is pushed to the master branch of scenarioo-infrastructure a Circle CI, job is started, which triggers a deployment to the demo server.

Ansible checks for every configured step if it has changed in the configuration, and if it has changed, the step is executed. E.g. if only a deployed branch was changed, then the software components installation steps are not executed.

A full deployment with installation of all components takes about 15 minutes on Circle CI, a deployment where only branches have changed takes about 5 minutes.

What is installed on the Demo Server?

All the tools and packages that will be installed can be found in the respective Ansible playbooks in the scenarioo-infrastructure repo:

• Docker (with various dependent packages) & ElasticSearch see scenarioo-infrastructure\roles\docker\tasks\main.yml
• Tomcat scenarioo-infrastructure\roles\tomcat\tasks\main.yml
• Nginx as a proxy scenarioo-infrastructure\roles\nginx\tasks\main.yml

How do I get access to the Demo Server?

To access the Demo Server you need to have an SSH-Key Pair and your user and public key needs to be registered in Scenarioo-Infrastructure.

Creating the SSH key

Use PuttyGen (or another tool) to create an SSH key.

Copy the value from the box "Public key for pasting into Open SSH authorized_keys file:" into a file with this name: username.pem.

Save the private key as *.ppk file as well (in PuttyGen: Button "Save private key"), so that you can use it to log in to the server with Putty.

Adding your user to Scenarioo-Infrastructure

• Add your username to required_users in scenarioo-infrastructure\roles\manageUsers\vars\main.yml
• Add the file username.pem to scenarioo-infrastructure\roles\manageUsers\keys
• Create a Pull Request with your changes in scenarioo-infrastructure.

Configuring PuTTY to connect to the Demo Server with your credentials

• Set the correct Host Name, which you can see in the variable mainserver in scenarioo-infrastructure\hosts\hosts_demoserver_ovh.
• Set the correct Auto-login username under Connection > Data
• Select the saved private key under Connection > SSH > Auth > Private key file for authentication

Important commands on the Demo Server

Here is a small collection of the most useful commands you might need when logged in to the demo server.

Accessing the Scenarioo Server Logfile

less /var/lib/tomcat8/logs/catalina.out
tail -f /var/lib/tomcat8/logs/catalina.out

Restarting the Tomcat Server running all Demos

sudo systemctl restart tomcat8