MidVision RapidDeploy for Liberty Profile Edition on Azure

Microsoft Azure Installation and Support guide

1. Overview

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

 

This AMI contains a ready-to-run MidVision RapidDeploy for Liberty image at the selected version. In order to use this image, you need to launch it with your selected type.

Visit the MidVision RapidDeploy for Liberty page on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace

2. Launching an instance

In order to launch MidVision RapidDeploy for Liberty, a few settings need to be configured on the Azure console as follows:

  1. Open new Azure Virtual Machine wizard;
  2. Select the IBM WAS Azure image based on your requirements from gallery;
  3. Choose VM name, size, Authentication user and credentials. The Standard DS2V2/General Purpose type or larger is recommended when running IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty Profile. Basic DS1V2 is the minimal requirement. Larger instances may be required based on the number of IBM WebSphere application servers etc required and the expected resource use of each;
  4. Define cloud service DNS name, Regions and open endpoint ports.
Port 22 to connect via SSH (enabled by default), 
Port 9080 to connect to the helloworld application in Liberty Profile
Port 9090 to reach RapidDeploy web console, 
Port 20000 and 20100 to open for RapidDeploy Remote Agent (optional),

 3. Initial login and setup

3.1 Logging into the instance

Once the instance has started up (you can see it by having “Running” status in Azure console). You can connect to the instance via any SSH client. You can log in to your instance with provisioned Azure username  and the credentials which can be based on password or certificate file.

3.2 Initial configuration

The IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty Profile Edition + MidVision RapidDeploy products are shipped with a base binary installation, and a defaultServer configuration, with a helloworld.war application installed into this server. On the first login to the instance, you will be placed into a console wizard, which will guide you through the process of creating and configuring IBM WebSphere Liberty Profile. After logging onto the instance via SSH, please log in as the  ‘midvision’ user via the command:

 sudo su - midvision

and the user you will be placed in a setup wizard (firstrunsetup.sh). The following is an overview of the steps you will be guided through to create the required profiles on the instance:

  1. Set initial password for RapidDeploy user “mvadmin”.
  2. Choose which ports to open on Red Hat Linux firewall.

All inputs asking for specific data can be left as blank just by hitting [return], which will pick the default value displayed at the end of the question. Please refer to IBM documentation for WebSphere Application Server configuration.

4. Accessing the web and command line consoles

4.1 Accessing the Hello World application

Once the Liberty profile server has been started, test the installation by accessing Hello World on:

 http://[publicip]:9080/helloworld 

4.2 Post install login

When logging into the instance after the first time, you will be asked if you wish to enter the console menu. Selecting ‘Y’ places you in a management console. Selecting ’N’ will take you to a command prompt. You can access the menu at any time by typing ‘menu’ at the command prompt. In the menu context, after first login you should perform the following actions:

  • Change the public IP address from the default ‘localhost’ to your IP address. Note that if you use an elastic IP, this is a one off operation. If you do not use an elastic IP, you’ll need to do this each time you start the server. Select option three from the main menu as highlighted below
Main Application Administration Menu on ip-172-31-44-143
========================================================
Please select from list
 1. Display Status for ip-172-31-44-143
 2. Manage Websphere Liberty Profile
 3. Change public IP Address
 4. Open Firewall Port on ip-172-31-44-143
 5. Help for the Management menu
 x. Quit
>3
  • After changing the IP address, restart the server. To do this, elect option two(2) from the main menu and then stop and start the server (option one(1) then option two(2)).
WebSphere Administration Menu on ip-172-31-44-14
=================================================
Please select from list
 1. Stop Liberty Profile Server: defaultServer
 2. Start Liberty Profile Server: defaultServer
 3. Liberty Profile Server Status: defaultServer
 4. Select Liberty Profile Server: Current Server: defaultServer
 5. Liberty Profile Version
 6. Liberty Profile Validation
 7. Liberty Profile Features
 x. Quit
>

4.3 Using the menu script

The menu script is a useful tool to manage your WebSphere Liberty profile image. Access it by typing ‘menu’ on the command line. Use the “Display Status” menu to display the state of IBM WebSphere liberty profile servers Use the “Manage WebSphere” menu to select, stop and start IBM WebSphere liberty profile servers Use the “Change IP” Menu to assign a new public IP address to this host. You will need to run this each time you start this host without a bound elastic IP address. Use the “Open Firewall port” menu to open new firewall ports on this host for any new IBM WebSphere Liberty Profile servers you add.

4.4 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.
  • azureuser: This is the provisioned Azure user. The username can vary due to can be customised. It is permitted to use all SUDO rights. To switch to the midvision user, type sudo su - midvision.
  • midvision: This is the midvision user, You can log in as any other user without using passwords. E.g: “su wasadmin“. To switch to the root user, type “sudo su“. If you want to switch back to root user, type “exit“, this will take you back to the previous user session.
  • root: This is the superuser in linux systems. You can log in as any other user without using passwords. E.g: “su -azureuser“, “su wasadmin“, “su midvision” If you want to switch back to root user, type “exit“, this will take you back to the previous user session.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 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 the midvision user (/home/midvision), which is also the starting location when logged in. You will need to be the root user to run this script. Example usage:

[midvision@ ] 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 midvision 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 run once, .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 5.0. RapidDeploy home is located at /var/rd/midvision Example usage:

[midvision@ ] sudo service rapiddeploystart start 
[midvision@ ] 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.

If you don’t want to use RapidDeploy and free memory on your instance you can stop rapiddeploy service using command:

[midvision@ ] sudo service rapiddeploystart stop

Then in order to make sure it will not start when an instance starts again run this command:

[midvision@ ] sudo systemctl disable rapiddeploystart.service

For security reasons, you will need to change the default password (default value is ‘mvadmin‘) 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.

6.2 Contacting MidVision support

Please visit our support website.