JFrog Artifactory Enterprise and JFrog Xray on the AWS Cloud

Quick Start Reference Deployment

QS

February 2022
Giridharan Ramasamy, JFrog Ltd.
Dylan Owen, AWS Integration & Automation team

Visit our GitHub repository to view source files, report bugs, submit feature ideas, or post other feedback on this Quick Start. To comment on the documentation, see Feedback on this guide.

This Quick Start was created by JFrog Ltd. in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Quick Starts are automated reference deployments that use AWS CloudFormation templates to deploy key technologies on AWS, following AWS best practices.

Overview

This Quick Start deploys JFrog Artifactory—and, optionally, JFrog Xray—in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. If you are unfamiliar with AWS Quick Starts we recommend that you read the AWS Quick Start General Content Guide.

This deployment guide covers the steps necessary to deploy the Quick Start. For more advanced information on the product, troubleshooting, or additional functionality, see the Operational guide.

The default installation creates two Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups:

  • The first Auto Scaling group ensures that the node.id for high availability (HA) is set to primary and that there is always only one primary node.

  • The second Auto Scaling group ensures that the node.id for the secondary nodes is unique and sets this node.id to the hostname. This Auto Scaling group scales up or down the number of secondary nodes to the amount specified by the administrator.

The optional JFrog Xray installation creates two additional Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups:

  • The first Auto Scaling group is responsible for the primary node. JFrog Xray is installed into the primary subnet.

  • The second Auto Scaling group installs JFrog Xray into the secondary subnet. This Auto Scaling group scales up or down the number of secondary nodes to the amount specified by the administrator.

The Network Load Balancer monitors the Auto Scaling groups and is configured with health checks that validate that the JFrog Artifactory service is up and running. If the endpoint returns an error response, a new node is recovered within 10 minutes.

Costs and licenses

This Quick Start requires a subscription to the CentOS AMI and an Enterprise or Enterprise+ license for JFrog Artifactory. Subscribe to the CentOS AMI on the AWS CentOS Marketplace page. If you choose to install JFrog Xray, you must have an Enterprise+ license or an Enterprise license with the JFrog Xray add-on.

To use the Quick Start in your production environment, sign up for a free trial JFrog license, which includes three JFrog Artifactory Enterprise licenses. Add the license keys to AWS Secrets Manager, as described in the Deployment steps section in this guide.

JFrog Enterprise or Enterprise+ licenses are required to ensure high availability. Quick Start deployment will fail if the license is not an Enterprise or Enterprise+ license, the license is invalid, or the license is not specified during deployment. Ensure that the number of secondary JFrog Artifactory servers is at most the amount licensed minus one, for the primary server. If you specify too many servers, see the FAQ section for instructions.

If you start with a free trial JFrog license, contact JFrog to obtain a permanent license before the trial period ends. Otherwise, nodes become unresponsive after the free trial period ends.

There is no cost to use this Quick Start, however you will be billed for the resources deployed. For more information see the AWS Quick Start General Content Guide.

Architecture

Deploying this Quick Start for a new virtual private cloud (VPC) with default parameters builds the following Artifactory and Xray environment in the AWS Cloud.

Architecture
Figure 1. Quick Start architecture for Artifactory and Xray on AWS

As shown in Figure 1, the Quick Start sets up the following:

  • A highly available architecture that spans two Availability Zones.*

  • A VPC configured with public and private subnets according to AWS best practices, to provide you with your own virtual network on AWS.*

  • In the public subnets:

    • Managed network address translation (NAT) gateways to allow outbound internet access for resources in the private subnets.*

    • A Linux bastion host in an Auto Scaling group to allow inbound Secure Shell (SSH) access to Amazon EC2 instances in public and private subnets.*

  • In the private subnets:

    • Two Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups for JFrog Artifactory primary and secondary nodes.

    • If you deploy JFrog Xray, two Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling groups for JFrog Xray primary and secondary nodes.

    • A PostgreSQL instance on Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) accessible from the private subnets. You can choose to deploy a secondary PostgreSQL instance.

  • Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system for the JFrog Artifactory primary and secondary nodes.

  • A Network Load Balancer to distribute traffic among JFrog Artifactory primary and secondary nodes.

  • If you deploy JFrog Xray, a Network Load Balancer for JFrog Xray to connect to JFrog Artifactory nodes.

  • A private and encrypted Amazon S3 bucket for repository storage.

* The template that deploys the Quick Start into an existing VPC skips the components marked by asterisks and prompts you for your existing VPC configuration.

Auto Scaling groups

The Auto Scaling groups are designed to have one primary node and multiple secondary nodes. When an EC2 node or service fails, Auto Scaling groups automatically recreate the instances. For this reason, all configurations are made on boot and result in a loss of any data that are not stored in the Amazon RDS instance or S3 bucket. It is recommended that you do not modify the number of instances. For more information, see AWS Auto Scaling.

Ansible init script

Ansible is installed and configured to run only on initial boot. Ansible works with the Auto Scaling group to configure, install, and run JFrog Artifactory and JFrog Xray. As a part of the configuration, the nodes automatically join the high availability (HA) cluster.

Do not change the master key of the stack when updating the stack. Doing so results in an unsupported configuration that future nodes cannot join. To update an expired Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, change the CloudFormation stack certificate and certificate key inputs, and then redeploy the nodes (see Updating Artifactory).

If you change the certificate and certificate key manually on the Amazon EC2 instances (instead of updating the CloudFormation stack), your manual changes are lost at the next update or reboot, which results in an unwanted configuration.

Deployment options

This Quick Start provides four deployment options:

The Quick Start provides separate templates for these options. It also lets you configure Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) blocks, instance types, and Artifactory and Xray settings.

Predeployment steps

Add JFrog Artifactory license keys to AWS Secrets Manager

  1. Open the AWS Secrets Manager console.

  2. In the top toolbar, choose the AWS Region where you deploy the Quick Start.

  3. Choose Store a new secret.

  4. On the Store a new secret page, choose Other type of secret.

  5. In the Key/value pairs section, create a row for each JFrog Artifactory license. In the first column, enter ArtifactoryLicense<n>, substituting a number for <n> (for example, ArtifactoryLicense1, ArtifactoryLicense2). In the second column, enter the license.

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Figure 2. Secrets Manager key-value licenses page

  1. Choose Next.

  2. Provide a secret name to use when deploying this Quick Start.

  3. Choose Next twice.

  4. Choose Store.

Add certificate and certificate keys to Secrets Manager

  1. Open the certificate in a text editor of your choice and copy the contents to the clipboard.

  2. In the Secrets Manager console, choose Store a new secret.

  3. On the Store a new secret page, choose Other type of secret.

  4. In the Key/value pairs section, create three rows. In the first row, enter Certificate in the first column. Paste the certificate into the second column.

  5. Open the certificate key in a text editor and copy the contents to the clipboard.

  6. In the first column of the second row, enter CertificateKey. In the second column, paste the certificate key.

  7. In the first column of the third row, enter CertificateDomain. Enter localhost into the second column.

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Figure 3. Secrets Manager key-value certificates page
When you copy the certificate and certificate key from an editor, the contents are copied as a single line of text. This process converts carriage return and line feed (CRLF) or line feed (LF) characters to spaces.
Subscribe to the CentOS AMI

This Quick Start requires a subscription to the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for CentOS in AWS Marketplace.

Perform the following steps:

  1. Sign in to your AWS account.

  2. Open the page for the CentOS AMI in AWS Marketplace, and then choose Continue to Subscribe.

  3. Review the terms and conditions for software usage, and then choose Accept Terms.
    A confirmation page loads, and an email confirmation is sent to the account owner. For detailed subscription instructions, see the AWS Marketplace documentation.

  4. When the subscription process is complete, exit out of AWS Marketplace without further action. Do not provision the software from AWS Marketplace — the Quick Start deploys the AMI for you.

Deployment steps

After clicking the Deploy link on the Quick Start landing page, you will be brought to the CloudFormation console, with the template URL pre-populated. Ensure you are in the correct Region and click Next to enter parameter values.

Unless you are customizing the Quick Start templates for your own deployment projects, keep the default settings for the parameters Quick Start S3 bucket name, Quick Start S3 bucket Region, and Quick Start S3 key prefix. Changing these settings automatically updates code references to point to a new Quick Start location. For more information, see the AWS Quick Start Contributor’s Guide.

  1. On the Configure stack options page, you can specify tags (key-value pairs) for resources in your stack and set advanced options. When you finish, choose Next.

  2. On the Review page, review and confirm the template settings. Under Capabilities, select the two check boxes to acknowledge that the template creates IAM resources and might require the ability to automatically expand macros.

  3. Choose Create stack to deploy the stack.

  4. Monitor the status of the stack. When the status is CREATE_COMPLETE, the JFrog Artifactory Enterprise and JFrog Xray deployment is ready.

  5. To view the created resources, see the values displayed in the Outputs tab for the stack.

Postdeployment steps

Get started with JFrog Artifactory

  1. On the Outputs tab of the JFrog Artifactory stack in the AWS CloudFormation console, find ArtifactoryURL. Connect to JFrog Artifactory using ArtifactoryURL.

If you use a non-CA-signed certificate, you will see a certificate warning when you attempt to access the JFrog Artifactory URL. You can click through the warning to continue to the page. This warning displays when the certificate does not match the Elastic Load Balancer DNS (Domain Name System). As an option, you can configure Amazon Route 53 as the DNS service to avoid seeing this warning.

  1. On the JFrog Artifactory login page, enter the default credentials admin/password.

  2. Choose Login.

For more information, see Users and Groups.

  1. On the Welcome to the JFrog Platform page, choose Get Started. The Quick Start handles JFrog license key configuration during the deployment, so you do not need to activate your license before getting started.

  2. On the Reset Admin Password page, set a secure administrator password for your deployment. Then choose Next.

  3. On the Set Base URL page, you can configure an optional base URL setting. Because this deployment uses a proxy, it’s highly recommended that you set the JFrog Artifactory base URL. For more information, see Configuring Artifactory.

  4. On the Configure Platform Default Proxy page, you can configure optional proxy settings for remote resources.

  1. On the Create Repositories page, select your desired package types. Then choose Next. (See Figure 4.)

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Figure 4. Select repositories

  1. On the Congratulations page, choose Finish.

  1. Complete the following administrative tasks.

Backups save to the local file system and do not persist if the EC2 instance is terminated. It is recommended to create snapshots of the primary instance.

Troubleshooting

For troubleshooting common Quick Start issues visit the AWS Quick Start General Content Guide or the Troubleshooting CloudFormation page in the AWS documentation.

FAQ

Q. . I provisioned more secondary nodes than I have licenses, and I cannot access JFrog Artifactory. What do I do?

A. In the AWS CloudFormation console, choose Update stack, and reduce the number of secondary nodes to the number of licenses you purchased, minus one license for the master.

Q. My license ran out and JFrog Artifactory is unresponsive. How do I fix this?

A. Reduce the number of secondary nodes to zero, and contact JFrog for a new license.

Q. My certificate is out of date. How do I update it?

A. The certificate is handled via Ansible or Helm. In the AWS CloudFormation console, choose Update stack, change the certificate and certificate key values. Then, by rolling restart, update the master node first, and then, one at a time, the secondary nodes. This will rebuild each node with the correct certificate.

After you successfully deploy a Quick Start, confirm that your resources and services are updated and configured — including any required patches — to meet your security and other needs. For more information, see the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.

Feedback on this guide

To comment on this guide, open a GitHub issue as follows:

Notices

This document is provided for informational purposes only. It represents AWS’s current product offerings and practices as of the date of issue of this document, which are subject to change without notice. Customers are responsible for making their own independent assessment of the information in this document and any use of AWS’s products or services, each of which is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind, whether expressed or implied. This document does not create any warranties, representations, contractual commitments, conditions, or assurances from AWS, its affiliates, suppliers, or licensors. The responsibilities and liabilities of AWS to its customers are controlled by AWS agreements, and this document is not part of, nor does it modify, any agreement between AWS and its customers.

The software included with this paper is licensed under the Apache License, version 2.0 (the "License"). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. A copy of the License is located at http://aws.amazon.com/apache2.0/ or in the accompanying "license" file. This code is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either expressed or implied. See the License for specific language governing permissions and limitations.