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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.airys.chat/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

The following is a reference HA architecture guide for deploying AirysChat on AWS. For a cloud-native deployment, use our helm charts with AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service(EKS).

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Introduction

We will use the Linux installation script to get a airyschat instance running. Also instead of relying on Redis, Postgres and Nginx installed in the same ec2; we will proceed to make use of managed AWS services for the same viz Elasticache, RDS, and ALB.

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Prerequisites

  1. AWS account
  2. Domain to use with AirysChat

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Architecture

This guide will follow a standard 3-tier architecture on AWS. aws-architecture

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Network

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Create VPC

  1. Sign in to the AWS console and pick the region you will deploy.
  2. Navigate to the VPC console and create a new vpc for airyschat. At the name tag, enter airyschat-vpc and use the CIDR block 10.0.0.0/16.
  3. Leave the rest of the options as default and click on Create VPC.
aws-create-vpc

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Subnets

Create two public and private subnets in the vpc we created. Make sure to have them in different AZ’s and have non-overlapping CIDR ranges.
  1. Navigate to VPC > Subnets.
  2. Click on Create Subnet. Select the airyschat-vpc we created before, name it as airyschat-public-1, select an availability zone (for example, ap-south-1a), and the CIDR block as 10.0.0.0/24.
aws-create-subnet
  1. Follow the same to create the remaining subnets.
NameTypeAvailability ZoneCIDR Block
airyschat-public-1publicap-south-1a10.0.0.0/24
airyschat-public-2publicap-south-1b10.0.1.0/24
airyschat-private-1privateap-south-1a10.0.2.0/24
airyschat-private-2privateap-south-1b10.0.3.0/24
  1. After creating all subnets, enable auto assign public ipv4 address for public subnets under Actions > Subnet Settings.

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Internet Gateway

  1. Select Create Internet Gateway , name it airyschat-igw, and click create.
  2. Select it from the internet gateways list, choose actions and then select Attach to VPC.
  3. Choose airyschat-vpc and click attach.
aws-create-igw

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NAT Gateway

AirysChat app servers need to be deployed in the private subnet. For them to access the internet, we need to add NAT gateways to our public subnet and add a route from the private subnets.
  1. Navigate the VPC dashboard and select NAT gateways.
  2. Click Create NAT Gateway.
    1. Name it airyschat-nat-1.
    2. Select the airyschat-public-1 subnet.
    3. Click on Allocate Elastic IP.
    4. Add additional tags as per your need.
    5. Click Create NAT gateway.
aws-create-nat
  1. Follow the same to create a second NAT gateway (airyschat-nat-2) and choose the airyschat-public-2 subnet.

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Route tables

The route table controls the inbound and outbound access for a subnet.

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Public Route table

We will create route tables so that our public subnets can reach the internet via the Internet gateway. Navigate to the VPC dashboard and select Route Tables.
  1. Click Create route table.
  2. Use the name airyschat-public-rt and choose airyschat-vpc under VPC.
  3. Click Create.
aws-create-rt Next, we need to add a route to the internet gateway we created earlier(airyschat-igw).
  1. Select the airyschat-public-rt route table from the list and click on Edit routes > Add Route.
  2. Set the destination as 0.0.0.0/0 and choose the target as airyschat-igw. Click on Save Changes.
Also,
  1. Select the airyschat-public-rt route table from the list and click on Subnet Associations > Edit subnet associations.
  2. Select both the public subnets(airyschat-public-1,airyschat-public-2) and click save.

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Private Route table

We will also create private route tables so that our private subnets can reach the internet via the NAT gateways.
  1. Follow the above guide and create two private route tables, namely, airyschat-private-a and airyschat-private-b.
  2. Select the route tables and add a route to the NAT gateway in their respective availability zone.
    1. For airyschat-private-a, add a route to 0.0.0.0/0 and target as airyschat-nat-1.
    2. For airyschat-private-b, add a route to 0.0.0.0/0 and target as airyschat-nat-2.
Also,
  1. Associate the private route tables with corresponding private subnets.
    1. For airyschat-private-a, associate airyschat-private-1 subnet.
    2. For airyschat-private-b, associate airyschat-private-2 subnet.

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Application Load Balancer (ALB)

Create an application load balancer to receive traffic on port 80 and 443 and distribute it across AirysChat instances.
  1. Navigate to the EC2 section and choose the Load Balancer section.
  2. Click Create Load Balancer.
    1. Choose Application Load Balancer.
    2. For the load balancer name, use airyschat-loadbalancer.
    3. Select the scheme as internet-facing and IP address type as IPv4.
    4. For the network mapping section,
      1. Select airyschat-vpc.
      2. Select the public subnets airyschat-public-1 and airyschat-public-2 under the mapping section.
    5. For the Security group section,
      1. Create a new security group, airyschat-loadbalancer-sg.
      2. Add rules to allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic from anywhere(0.0.0.0/0, ::/0).
      3. Also, add a rule to allow TCP on port 3000. This rule allows the load balancer health checks to pass since AirysChat runs on port 3000.
      4. Add a rule to allow SSH traffic from the bastion security group we will create at the latter stage of the guide. Revisit this section after completing the bastion step.
    6. For the Listeners and routing section, create two listeners for 80 and 443. Set the forwarding rule on listener 80 to redirect http to https.
      1. Also, create a target group, airyschat-tg, that will forward the requests to port 3000(AirysChat listens on this port).
      2. Add a health check to the endpoint /api. This endpoint is not authenticated and should return the application version.
{
  "version": "1.22.1",
  "timestamp": "2021-12-06 16:07:39"
}
  1. Add any necessary tags and click create.
Also, add if you have your domain on Route53 and use ACM to generate a certificate to use with ALB.

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Postgresql using AWS RDS

AirysChat uses Postgres as a DB layer, and we will use Amazon RDS with a multi-AZ option for reliability.

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RDS security group

  1. Navigate to EC2 > Security groups and create a new sg.
  2. Name it airyschat-rds-sg.
  3. Select the airyschat-vpc and add an inbound rule for postgres port with source airyschat-loadbalancer-sg.

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RDS subnet group

  1. Navigate to the RDS section and select subnet groups.
  2. Create airyschat-rds-group and choose airyschat-vpc.
  3. Select both az’s and the private subnets.

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RDS

  1. Select create a database.
  2. Use standard create and choose the Postgres engine.
  3. Use the production template, and create a Postgres master username and password.
  4. Enable Multi-AZ deployment.
  5. Select airyschat-vpc and select the rds security group we created earlier.
  6. Enable password authentication.
  7. Click create.
  8. After completing the creation, note down the hostname, username, and password. We will need this to configure AirysChat.

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Redis using AWS Elasticache

  1. Follow similar steps like the rds to create Redis security and subnet groups.
  2. Create the Redis cluster with a multi-AZ option.

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Creating Bastion servers

Create bastion servers in both public subnets. These servers will be used to ssh into AirysChat servers in private subnets.
  1. Navigate to the EC2 dashboard and click launch instance.
  2. Use an Ubuntu 20.04 image with a t3.micro type.
  3. Choose airyschat-vpc and subnet airyschat-public-1.
  4. Name it airyschat-bastion-a.
  5. Add a new sg, airyschat-bastion-sg and enable ssh access from anywhere.
  6. Leave the rest as defaults and click launch.
  7. Once the instance is up, try to SSH into the instance.
Repeat and create another bastion, airyschat-bastion-b in the other AZ.

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Install AirysChat

  1. Navigate to the EC2 section, and click on launch instance.
  2. Use an Ubuntu 20.04 image with a c5.xlarge instance type.
  3. Choose the airyschat-vpc and select the private subnet airyschat-private-1.
  4. Disable auto-assign public IP and increase the storage of root volume to 60 GB.
  5. Add necessary tags. Set the Name tag to airyschat.
  6. Select the load balancer security group and click launch.
  7. SSH into the bastion server and, from there, ssh to the airyschat instance we created.
  8. Switch to the root user.
  9. Download the airyschat Linux installation script.
wget https://get.airyschat.app/linux/install.sh
chmod 755 install.sh
  1. Run the script.
./install.sh --install

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Configure AirysChat

  1. Once the installation is complete, switch to the airyschat user and navigate to the airyschat folder. Edit the .env file and replace the Postgres and Redis credentials with RDS and elasticache values.
sudo -i -u airyschat
cd airyschat
vi .env
  1. Run the db migration.
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:prepare
  1. Also modify the other necessary environment variable for your airyschat setup. Refer to https://www.airyschat.com/docs/self-hosted/deployment/linux-vm#configure-the-required-environment-variables
  2. Restart the airyschat service. 
sudo cwctl --restart

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Verify login

  1. Add this instance to the target group attached to the alb.
  2. Navigate to your airyschat domain to see if everything is working.

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Create a custom AMI

  1. If you are getting the onboarding page, complete the signup and verify the installation.
  2. Voila !! Your airyschat instance is up.
  3. If everything looks good, proceed to create an ami from this instance and name it airyschat-base-ami.

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Auto Scaling Groups (ASG)

  1. Create a launch configuration using the above base image.
  2. Proceed to create an auto-scaling group from this launch config.
  3. Set the minimum and desired capacity to 2 and the maximum to 4. Modify this as per your requirement.
  4. Create a scaling policy based on CPU utilization.
  5. At this point, we are good to terminate the instance we created earlier.
  6. Check the load balancer or target group to verify if two new airyschat instances have come up.
  7. That’s it.

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Monitoring

  1. Refer to https://www.airyschat.com/docs/self-hosted/monitoring/apm-and-error-monitoring

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Updating AirysChat

  1. log in to one of the application servers and complete the update instructions. Run migrations if needed. Refer to https://www.airyschat.com/docs/self-hosted/deployment/linux-vm#upgrading-to-a-newer-version-of-airyschat
  2. Create a new ami and update the launch config.

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Conclusion

This document is a reference guideline for an HA airyschat architecture on AWS. Modify or build upon this to suit your requirements.