PermeAgility on Amazon EC2

The smallest Amazon EC2 server runs PermeAgility very nicely.  The demo server and other test servers have been up for months at a time with no issues (not a lot of traffic but very reliable).  Here are the steps to set up PermeAgility on one of these virtual servers. These instructions should work for any cloud server that allows you to run Java8 programs

• Sign up for an AWS account at http://aws.amazon.com

  • Log in to the console and select EC2

  • Create a new Linux AMI (default) tiny instance (t2.micro)

• [optional] Create an Elastic IP for it and associate with the instance (this will give flexibility down the road)

• use the launch-wizard for your instance to edit your security groups to allow HTTP port 80 inbound (or a port of your choosing)

• Setup your ssh file to allow you to ssh to your server (one file can work for all your servers so this is just a one time thing)

  • ssh to your new instance

  • run java -version to confirm Java 1.8 or above (if not 1.8 then see java upgrade instructions below)

  • create a permeagility directory    mkdir permeagility [optional - if this is the only thing you plan to install, then you don't really need a directory]

  • cd to it      cd permeagility [also optional depending on the previous step]

• get the permeagility jar file wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/permeagility/files/permeagility-0.6.0.jar

  • follow the standard linux deployment instructions to set up a persistent server that will remain up after you log out

The first time you access PermeAgility from your browser may be a bit slow while it downloads the needed JavaScript libraries to your browser but after that it is pretty snappy.

It might be nice to have the server startup automatically after a reboot with the appropriate init scripts but these instances are very solid and I have never needed it - yet - someday will follow up with example init scripts.

Java 8 upgrade on Amazon AMI instance

You may need to upgrade Java to version 8 if java -version doesn't say 1.8 or higher. Here are the commands to do that:

sudo yum install java-1.8.0

sudo /usr/sbin/alternatives --config java

sudo yum remove java-1.7.0-openjdk