Posts

Overview This post covers 3 major topics: Kubernetes Lab Environment: The steps that I took to setup a Kubernetes cluster from scratch, in a self-hosted virtualised environment using Oracle Virtualbox and Hashicorp Vagrant Kubernetes Notes, Commands and Manifests: A collection of commands which I noted down as part of my preparation for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam Information Sources: A list of links to the main sources of information which I used when creating this environment and learning Kubernetes Kubernetes Lab Environment The VMs which formed the Kubernetes cluster were deployed on a Dell Precision workstation with plenty of CPU and RAM resources:...

In this post, I will go over the steps needed to provision a Kubernetes cluster in AWS, and deploy a Neo4j cluster using Neo4j’s helm charts. This post takes steps from the official Neo4j Kubernetes Documentation Prerequisites An AWS Account Configured AWS Command Line Interface An SSH Key named id_rsa.pub. If you do not have one, you can generate it by running: ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[email protected]" Setting up a Kubernetes Cluster in EKS Installation of tools and applications In order to create a Kubernetes (EKS) cluster in AWS, you will need to download the following applications: kubectl...

My post on the neo4j blog explains how to get up and running with Neo4j using the AWS partner solution. AWS Partner Solutions (formerly known as AWS Quick Start) are pre-configured reference deployments that work seamlessly with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and follow AWS’s recommended design practices. They provide customers with a variety of deployment options for managing their workloads on AWS. Neo4j’s AWS Partner Solution for AWS is a quick and easy way to deploy a fully-managed Neo4j cluster on the AWS platform....

This post describes how I got this website up and running using Hugo, on cloudflare pages. Install Hugo To install hugo, follow the instructions on the hugo website. If you’re on a mac (and have homebrew installed) the simplest way is: brew install hugo With hugo installed the next stage is to create the new site, which is done locally. The following commands will create the framework for the new website....

Recently, I had to re-visit an old architectural challenge in AWS that I came across a couple of years ago but couldn’t quite remember how to resolve: EC2 instances which have no public IP address (residing in a private subnet) which can accept requests from (and serve responses back to) the internet. The motivation for this particular topology is security focused: The EC2 instances cannot be directly addressed via the internet due to the absence of a public IP, but can serve (web, in this example) content over the internet using the load balancer....

In this post, I outline the steps needed to take an input from a terraform parent (or calling) module and pass it to a config file on a target EC2 instance. What are Terraform Modules? Using modules in terraform helps to organise and reuse code, allowing a module to be defined once and used many times. For example, a development team may want to quickly create and destroy a number of EC2 instances....

The following code snippets show how to create three private subnets in AWS using terraform with ‘count’, ‘join’ and ’element’: To start with the following variables were declared and set: terraform.tfvars base_cidr_block = "192.168.0.0/16" node_count = 3 availability_zones = ["a", "b", "c"] variables.tf variable "base_cidr_block" { description = "The base of the address range to be used by the VPC and corresponding Subnets" } variable "availability_zones" { description = "A list containing 3 AZs" type = list(string) } variable "node_count" { description = "The number of ec2 instances to deploy" type = number } Three subnets are then created using a single resource block....

I wanted to use create a VPN back to my home network which I could use on the road. The idea was that I could interact with resources on my home network but also have a secure tunnel which I could use if I was needed to use an untrusted WiFi hotspot when in hotels, coffee shops etc. I had previously implemented OpenVPN to do this, with the VPN server running on a small linux machine inside my home network....

Like most people, my domestic ISP goes down sometimes. I work from home most of the time and the most common solution when this problem occurs is to ’tether’ a phone to use it’s 4G connection. This is OK, but a solution which allowed my entire home network to switch over to a backup internet connection would be much better… As well as my laptop maintaining a connection, movies could still be streamed (backup connection bandwith permitting) and IoT devices would keep working - you get the general idea....

This is a very quick script to get a single instance of neo4j running in a docker container. The username and password is set using the NEO4J_AUTH environment variable. #!/bin/bash # # Script: neo4j-docker.sh # Purpose: install neo4j container image after some simple environmentment prep # DOCKER=$(which docker) [ $? == 0 ] || { echo "ERROR: Check if docker is installed (and in your PATH)" ; exit 1; } DATA_DIR="$HOME/docker/neo4j-volumes/data" LOG_DIR="$HOME/docker/neo4j-volumes/logs" IMPORT_DIR="$HOME/docker/neo4j-volumes/import" PLUGINS_DIR="$HOME/docker/neo4j-volumes/plugins" RUNNING_CONTAINER=$($DOCKER ps -a | grep "neo4j:latest" | awk {'print $1'}) [ -z "$RUNNING_CONTAINER" ] || docker rm -f $RUNNING_CONTAINER [ -d $DATA_DIR ] && rm -rf $DATA_DIR/* || mkdir $DATA_DIR [ -d $LOG_DIR ] && rm -rf $DATA_DIR/* || mkdir $LOG_DIR [ -d $IMPORT_DIR ] && rm -rf $DATA_DIR/* || mkdir $IMPORT_DIR [ -d $PLUGINS_DIR ] && rm -rf $DATA_DIR/* || mkdir $PLUGINS_DIR $DOCKER run \ --name testneo4j \ -p7474:7474 -p7687:7687 \ -d \ -v $DATA_DIR:/data \ -v $LOG_DIR:/logs \ -v $IMPORT_DIR:/var/lib/neo4j/import \ -v $PLUGINS_DIR:/plugins \ --env NEO4J_AUTH=neo4j/test1234 \ neo4j:latest