Setup and installation of 'Salt-Stack DevOps Automation Powered by Semaphore UI' on AWS

This section describes how to launch and connect to ‘Salt-Stack DevOps Automation Powered by Semaphore UI’ VM solution on AWS.

1. Open Salt-Stack DevOps Automation Powered by Semaphore UI VM listing on AWS marketplace

2. Click on View purchase options.

• Login with your credentials and follow the instruction.
• Subscribe to the product and click on Continue to configuration button.
• Select a Region where you want to launch the VM(such as US East (N.Virginia))

• Click on Continue to Launch Button.
• Choose Action: You can launch it through EC2 or from Website.(Let’s choose Launch from website)

• Optionally change the EC2 instance type. (This defaults to t2.medium instance type, 2 vCPUs and 4 GB RAM.)
• Optionally change the network name and subnetwork names.

• Select the Security Group. Be sure that whichever Security Group you specify have ports 22 (for SSH), 3389 (for RDP) and 443 (for HTTPS) exposed. Or you can create the new SG by clicking on “Create New Based On Seller Settings” button. Provide the name and description and save the SG for this instance.

• Be sure to download the key-pair which is available by default, or you can create the new key-pair and download it.

• Click on Launch..

• Salt-Stack DevOps Automation Powered by Semaphore UI will begin deploying.

3. A summary page displays. To see this instance on EC2 Console click on EC2 Console link.

4. To connect to this instance through putty, copy the IPv4 Public IP Address from the VM’s details page.

5. Open putty, paste the IP address and browse your private key you downloaded while deploying the VM, by going to SSH->Auth->Credentials, click on Open. Enter ubuntu as userid

6. Once connected, change the password for ubuntu user using below command

sudo passwd ubuntu

7. Now the password for ubuntu user is set, you can connect to the VM’s desktop environment from any local Windows Machine using RDP protocol or Linux Machine using Remmina.

From your local windows machine, goto “start” menu, in the search box type and select “Remote desktop connection”. In the “Remote Desktop connection” wizard, copy the public IP address and click connect

8. This will connect you to the VM’s desktop environment. Provide the username “ubuntu” and the password set in the above “Reset password” step to authenticate. Click OK

9. Now you are connected to the out of box Salt-Stack DevOps Automation Powered by Semaphore UI VM’s desktop environment via Windows Machine.

10. To connect using RDP via Linux machine, first note the external IP of the VM from VM details page,then from your local Linux machine, goto menu, in the search box type and select “Remmina”.

Note: If you don’t have Remmina installed on your Linux machine, first Install Remmina as per your linux distribution.

11. In the “Remmina Remote Desktop Client” wizard, select the RDP option from dropdown and paste the external ip and click enter.

12. This will connect you to the VM’s desktop environment. Provide “ubuntu” as the userid and the password set in above reset password step to authenticate. Click OK

13. Now you are connected to out of box Salt-Stack DevOps Automation Powered by Semaphore UI VM’s desktop environment via Linux machine.

14. To access the Semaphore Web Interface, first reset semaphore admin password by running below command in the SSH terminal -

semaphore user change-by-login --login admin --password NEWPASSWORD --config /home/ubuntu/semaphore/config.json

Replace NEWPASSWORD with your desired password in above command.

15. Once Semaphore password is ready, copy the public ip of the vm from VM’s details page and paste it in the browser using https://VM_Public_IP. Make sure to use https and not http.

Browser will display a SSL certificate warning message. Accept the certificate warning and Continue.

16. Login with admin user and provide the password set in above step.

17. Now you are logged in to Semaphore Web Interface where you can manage salt-stack automation task.

18. The VM comes with various Salt models preconfigured out of the box for you. The Salt Configuration files are located at /etc/salt directory. You can access these files and folders from SSH or RDP sessions.

19. Salt master base repository for salt sls files is /srv/salt.

20. Semaphore config directory is /home/ubuntu/semaphore.

If you want to further configure SaltStack then please visit Configuring SaltStack page.

For more details on SaltStack or Semaphore please refer to Official Documentation Page