AWS Deployment Prerequisites

Before installing Chef automate HA in AWS deployment mode, ensure you have taken a quick tour of this prerequisite page.

Chef Automate Architecture

We recommend using 11 node cluster for standard Automate HA AWS deployment, as detailed in the table below:

Additionally, this topology requires two load balancers and 2 DNS entries with certificates. Refer to the architectural page for further guidance.

We recommend using Chef Infra Server managed by Automate HA to have high availability for both Automate and Infra Server. External Standalone Infra Server will violate this high availability requirement.

Software Requirements

The software requirements of the nodes in the cluster and other external Chef and non Chef tools are discussed below:

Node Software Requirements

The operating system and the supported version for different nodes in AWS deployment of Automate HA are mentioned below:

Minimum Supported Chef Tool Versions

Current Automate HA supports integration with the following Chef tools:

• Chef Infra Server version: 14.0.58+
• Chef Inspec version: 4.3.2+
• Chef Infra Client: 17.0.242+
• Chef Habitat: 0.81+

We do not support Chef Manage and Supermarket integration in the ongoing Automate version.

External Supported Softwares

Current Automate HA integrates with the following non-Chef tools:

In AWS Deployment

• SQL Database: External not supported
• NoSQL Database: External not supported
• Load Balancer: External not supported

In AWS Managed Services

• SQL Database: AWS RDS PostgreSQL: 13.5
• NoSQL Database: AWS OpenSearch: 1.3
• Load Balancer: External not supported

Hardware Requirements

We have some sample values based on the performance benchmarking tests to give you an apt hardware configuration. Refer to the table below to populate things in the Hardware Calculator according to your requirement. The table below shows the tested assumptions and should not be used as exact recommendations.

You can use the below assumptions in the calculator to drive into your hardware requirement:

The machine requirements based on the above assumptions are listed below:

Load Balancer

LoadBalancers in AWS deployment are set up according to Chef Automate HA Architecture. AWS Application Load Balancer will be setup during deployment automatically.

Firewall Checks

The Chef Automate HA cluster requires multiple ports for the frontend and backend servers to operate effectively.

Ports for Bastion before deployment

Port mappings required before deployment:

The first column in the table below represents the source of the connection. The table’s other columns represent the destination with the matrix value as a port number. The specified port numbers need to be opened on the origin and destination.

Port usage definitions

Certificates

Generate the certificates using recommended tools and supported algorithms and versions mentioned below:

• OpenSSL: 1.0.2zb-fips
• OpenSSL Algorithms: PBE-SHA1-3DES, RSA (2048), SHA-256
• Certificate Format: X509 V3(PEM format) ,Private key is in PKCS8 format

To understand how to generate certificates, refer to the Certificate Generation documentation.

Deployment Specific Pre-requisites

The AWS deployment specific pre-requisites are as follows:

AWS Cloud

• Create an AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with an internet gateway before you start. For further knowledge, refer to the VPC and CIDR creation page.
• If you want to use Default VPC, create public and private subnets. If the subnet is not available. Please refer to this
• Three private and three public subnets in a VPC (1 subnet for each AZ) are needed. As of now, only dedicated subnets for each AZ are supported.
• It is recommended to create a new VPC.
• Bastion must be in the same VPC for deployment.
• In AWS Managed Services:
  • Setup AWS RDS Postgresql 13.5 in the same VPC.
  • Setup AWS OpenSearch of version 1.3 in the same VPC.

Infra Server

• Chef Automate HA comes with bundled Infra Server, and it is recommended not to use any external server in Automate HA. Using an external server will lose the Automate HA functionalities, and things may not work as expected.

Access

• AWS credentials (aws_access_key_id and aws_secret_access_key) with AmazonS3FullAccess and AdministratorAccess privileges are needed.

• On Bastion Machine:

  • We need a local user hab and local group hab linked together to complete the deployment process successfully.
  • If they are unavailable, the SSH user should have privileges to create local users and groups so that the deployment process can create the required local user hab and local group hab.
  • We only support local Linux users and groups for Installation flow. We don’t support AD or LDAP managed users in nodes.

• The SElinux config should either be disabled or permissive in the AMI Image used for deployment in config.

Storage Space for Bastion

• Operating System Root Volume (/) must be at least 40GB. Temporary space (/var/tmp) must be at least 5GB.
• Separate Hab volume should be provisioned and mounted at /hab with at least 100GB free space.

SSH User

• SSH Key Pair should be created in AWS, creating Bastion machine using that pair. Reference for AWS SSH Key Pair creation
• SSH users should use key-based SSH login without a passphrase.
• The user’s SSH key should be generated using algorithm ed25519 without a passphrase.
• This SSH user should be a local Linux user on the Bastion machine.
• This SSH user should have sudo privileges on the Bastion machine.
• Use the SSH user to access all machines using the same SSH private key.

Cluster Setup

• DNS certificate should be available in AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for 2 DNS entries: Example: chefautomate.example.com, chefinfraserver.example.com Reference for Creating new DNS Certificate in ACM
• DNS is configured to redirect chefautomate.example.com to the Primary Load Balancer.
• DNS is configured to redirect chefinfraserver.example.com to the Primary Load Balancer.
• During deployment, the Domain Certificates from ACM will be attached to the new Load Balancers.

Config Changes

• Config Patch in the whole application will result in downtime. For example, if you change or update something in OpenSearch or PostgreSQL, they will restart, resulting in restarting everything.
• Certificate Rotation will also change the system’s configuration, leading to restarting the whole application.

To learn more about the above deployment, visit our AWS deployment page.

External Managed Databases

Setup the following databases with password-based authentication.

AWS Managed

• AWS RDS PostgreSQL: 13.5
• AWS OpenSearch: 1.3

Configure the backup only with S3 when using AWS managed databases.

Upgrade

Things to keep in mind while upgrading are:

• Backend upgrades will restart the backend service, which takes time for the cluster to be healthy.
• Upgrade command currently supports only minor upgrades.
• A downtime will occur while upgrading the frontend, backend or the workspace.
• Rolling upgrades are not supported.

Disaster Recovery

Chef Automate HA supports disaster recovery in active/passive mode. The primary cluster will be in active mode, and the disaster recovery cluster will be in passive mode. Active/Active Disaster Recovery is not supported right now as we do not support streaming of data across clusters and automatic failover switching of clusters.

The requirements for disaster recovery setup (Active/Passive) are:

• Two identical clusters located in different data centers or cloud provider regions.
• Network Attached Storage (NAS) or Object Store (S3) should be available in both data centers/regions.
• Set up scheduled jobs to run backup and restore commands on both clusters. We recommend using cron to schedule the jobs.

To know more about the AWS deployment disaster recovery, visit our Disaster Recovery Setup page.

Migration

Common Notes

• Migrations involve downtime depending on how much data you have and the type of setup you are running.
• Migration cannot be done from more than 1 Standalone Automate, more than 1 Standalone Infra Server, or more than 1 Chef Backend to a Single Automate HA cluster.
• Automate HA will always have Chef Automate and Chef Infra Server running in the cluster.
• Chef Manage or Private Chef Supermarket customers should not migrate to Automate HA.

Backup and Restore

• In AWS Deployment: We support Elastic File System (EFS) or S3 storage) for taking backup.
• In AWS Managed Services: We only support S3 storage for taking backup.
• In AWS Managed Services: Create the below attributes by following managed services documentation
  • aws_os_snapshot_role_arn
  • os_snapshot_user_access_key_id
  • os_snapshot_user_access_key_secret

Encrypted S3 bucket are supported with only Amazon S3 managed keys (SSE-S3).