MidVision RapidDeploy for BPM on AWS

Amazon EC2 Installation guide

1. Overview

This guide will provide step by step instructions how to start using the installed products on your AWS EC2 instance.

This AMI contains a ready-to-run IBM BPM image + MidVision RapidDeploy at the selected version. In order to use this image, you need to launch it with your selected type, and log in via SSH to create and configure your installation

Visit the IBM Business Process Manager Standard Edition + MidVision RapidDeploy page on the AWS Marketplace
Launch IBM BPM from AWS

2. Launching an instance

In order to launch IBM Business Process Manager (referred as BPM) + MidVision RapidDeploy, a few settings need to be configured on the AWS console as follows. The instructions for launching an instance differ depending on where you launch from. Initially you will launch the instance from the AWS Marketplace.

 

 3. Initial login and setup

The products are shipped with IBM MQ + MidVision RapidDeploy. IBM BPM is a base binary installation but without the necessary profiles created. When it comes to IBM MQ and RapidDeploy on the first login to the instance, you will be placed into a console wizard, which will guide you through the process of configuring your instance. The following is an overview of the steps you will be guided through to get started with the installed products on the instance.

Once the instance has started up (you can see it by having ” 2/2 checks passed ” in EC2 console).

  1. Log onto the instance from the EC2 console or via SSH as the ‘mqm’ user, using the key you selected above.  For example:
    • From the EC2 console by clicking  the “Connect to your instance” button with username “mqm” , using the previously (instance launch-time) selected .pem keyfile.
    • Via SSH from your desktop, for example
      ssh -i ./MidVisionUSMC.pem mqm@ec2-52-87-198-23.compute-1.amazonaws.com
  2. You should see the MidVision banner and then you are placed in a setup wizard.
    Welcome to                                                                                                                                             

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| |  | | | (_| | \ V / | \__ \ | (_) | | | |_____| |___| | (_) | |_| | (_| |
|_|  |_|_|\__,_|  \_/  |_|___/_|\___/|_| |_|      \____|_|\___/ \__,_|\__,_|

                                                       A MidVision Service

        * WebSite: https://www.midvisioncloud.com/
        * Support: http://support.midvision.com/redmine/projects/devtestcloud
        * Forum:    https://www.midvisioncloud.com/community/


Welcome, this is MidVisionCloud RapidDeploy and  IBM BPM  image first run configuration

Note that you can rerun this configuration wizard again by executing /home/mqm/firstrunsetup.sh script

Configuration steps
- Set RapidDeploy framework initial password
- Open ports on RHEL firewall
  3. Set initial password for RapidDeploy user “mvadmin“. Hit [return] to accept the default of the instance id.
    Configuring password for RapidDeploy default user 'mvadmin'
Set password for user 'mvadmin'. Submit blank for default value of the instance id: i-090a826faa3b56f75
  4. Open required firewall ports on Red Hat Linux firewall. Select ‘y‘ and hit [return].
    Open firewall ports for RapidDeploy and  IBM BPM (default port 9090 and  9043,9080)  [y/n]?
  5. You should see ports list of ports being opened. Type ‘exit‘ to leave this section and the wizard. The correct URLs to access the RapidDeploy and BPM installation path are displayed.
    Configuration finished, you may now start using RapidDeploy services and other software. Web user interfaces are available on:

RapidDeploy: ec2-34-230-51-127.compute-1.amazonaws.com:9090/MidVision
You will find your BPM installation under /opt/IBM/BPM

4. Accessing the web consoles

4.1 Accessing the BPM Installation

After the initial node creation upon first login, the installation can be accessed from

/opt/IBM/BPM

Please refer to the BPM documentation for further usage information.

4.2 BPM Licensing

The BPM installation comes with different types of licenses. You can check the exact version and licensing by running . 

[root@ ] /opt/IBM/BPM/{your_version}/bin/versionInfo.sh

4.3 Access the RapidDeploy Web Console

RapidDeploy server and agent will start up automatically when you start your instance. You can access the web console on:

http://[publicip]:9090/MidVision

Note: make sure you have port 9090 open in your Security group when trying to access RapidDeploy web console. For the first time, you can set the password for the default username ” mvadmin “. 

5. Maintaining the installation

The following sections cover some of the activities you might want to perform after the instance has been started.
  • [mqm]: This is the default user for AMIs where both BPM and MQ are installed, which you can log in as. It is permitted to use all SUDO rights. To switch to the root user, type “sudo su“.
  • root:      This is the superuser in linux systems. Use this user to create BPM profiles. You can log in as any other user without using passwords. E.g: “su ec2-user“, “su mqm“
  • ec2-user:  This user does not have SUDO rights. If you want to switch back to root user, type “exit“, this will take you back to the previous user session.

RHEL instances are shipped with a firewall by default to protect your machine. For security reasons, the instance is only accessible via SSH (port 22) at first, so further ports can be opened on the firewall as needed. You will need to open all the ports in this internal firewall, which you have open in your Security group. There is a script placed in the user home of midvision (/home/mqm), which is also the starting location when logged in. You will need to be the root user to run this script. Example usage:

[mqm@ ] sudo ./open-firewall.sh 9090
Open firewall port 9090 iptables: Saving firewall rules to /etc/sysconfig/iptables:[ OK ]
 

There are a few scripts and other files in mqm and root users home directory, which will need to remain unchanged in order to keep the provided scripts working.

There are a set of scripts in midvision home directory. Those scripts are executed when logging into the instance controlled by  .bash_profile , but you can also execute them manually whenever they are needed.

There are some hidden files used as well,  

.firstrun  indicates that the setup wizard has already ran once,  

.dontask  indicates that the user will not be prompted again for running the setuphost script (if chosen not to ask again), 

.host file is needed to determine the previously bound hostname to WebSphere service.

To restart RapidDeploy manually from the filesystem, use the rapiddeploy linux service. The RapidDeploy version is 4.0.7. RapidDeploy home is located at /var/rd/mqm Example usage:

[mqm@ ] sudo service rapiddeploystart start 
[mqm@ ] sudo service rapiddeploystart stop

The RapidDeploy server uses an in-memory database, so your RapidDeploy framework needs to be shut down properly to save your work. This happens when the instance is stopping or when calling the stop service manually from the command line. Note that on instance restart, unsaved data will be lost.

For security reasons, you will need to change the default password (default value is ‘[instance-id]‘) for user mvadmin. This will be requested the first time only when you log in to the RapidDeploy server.

6. Troubleshooting

6.1 Session loss during setup

If you lose your SSH connection to the target instance during the first run setup script execution (e.g. as a result of a network problem), we advise you to delete and recreate the EC2 instance and run the script again.

6.3 Contacting MidVision support

Please visit our support website.