0x4447, LLC. a solid foundation

Free Training

We provide free training, feel free to reach us through our training page.

Video Tutorial

Key aspects

  • Single user per server for better security, and organization.
  • Unlimited storage for the uploaded data.
  • Ability to easily browse pre-existing EFS drives.

Example use cases

Your imagination is your limit, but here are some ideas that are worth considering:

  • Ingest vast amounts of data with a predictable price.
  • Allow financial institutions to share data with you in a secure manner.
  • Browse existing EFS drives that you might have in your account and forget what is contained within them.

Additional details

Resilience

Our product has built in resilience to make sure that you don't lose all your data, or lose connectivity by a changing IP. Our CloudFormation provides a quick way to be up and running with all that you need.

Complete feature list

This section lists all the features of this product for easy referencing.

Detailed list

The product itself

  1. Single user access using password.
  2. No manual management needed.
  3. All the configuration is done through the EC2 Instance UserData section.
  4. Infinite storage using an EFS drive.

If you were to use our CloudFormation file, you’d also get

  1. An Alarm to check for CPU Bursts.
  2. An Alarm to check for CPU Load.
  3. An Alarm to check for Disk usage.
  4. An Alarm to auto recover the instance if it gets terminated suddenly by AWS due to hardware failure.
  5. An Alarm for EC2 Instance termination protection.
  6. A SNS Topic to receive notifications from the above alarms.

Deploy Automatically

First, subscribe to the product on the AWS Marketplace, and then deploy this CloudFormation file.

What will be deployed

  • 1x EC2 instance with 0x4447 custom AMI:
    • 1x IAM Role.
    • 1x IAM Policy.
    • 1x Security Group.
    • 1x Instance profile.
    • 1x Elastic IP.
    • 1x Elastic IP Association.
  • 4x CloudWatch Alarms:
    • CPU Burst.
    • CPU Load.
    • Disk Usage.
    • EC2 Instance Recovery.
  • 1x SNS Topic:
    • 1x SNS Policy.
    • 1x Topic Subscription.
  • 1x CloudWatch Dashboard for instance overview,
  • 1x EFS drive:
    • 1x Mount target.
    • 1x Security group.
  • 1x Backup:
    • 1x Plan.
    • 1x Role.
    • 1x Selection.
    • 1x Vault.

The First Boot

The boot time of our product will be slower than if you started an instance from a clean AMI, this is due to our custom code that needs to be executed in order to prepare the product for you. This process can take a few minutes longer than usual.

Connecting to the Server

If you need to connect to the server: get it's IP, connect to the instance over SSH with the username ec2-user, while using the private key you selected at deployment time. If successfully connected, you should be greeted with a custom MOTD detailing the product information.

Final Thought

Test the setup

Before you go into production, make sure to test the product; not because we don't believe it, but to make sure that you get used to how it works.

Security Concerns

Below we give you a list of potential ideas to consider regarding security, but this list is not exhaustive – it is just a good starting point.

  • Limit access to the server to just a fixed IP.
  • Don't give root access to anyone but yourself.

Backup Your Data

Make sure you regularly backup your drive(s). One simple solution would be to use AWS backup.

How To

How to change the instance type

If you need more memory and CPU capacity, you can change your instance type to a bigger one. To do so, follow these instructions:

  1. Go to the CloudFormation console
  2. Click on the stack that you want to update.
  3. Click the Update button.
  4. Keep the default selection and click Next
  5. On the new Parameters page, change the instance type from the drop down.
  6. Click Next till the end.

Wait for the stack to finish updating.

F.A.Q

These are some of the common solutions to problems you may run into:

Not authorized for images

My CloudFormation stack failed with the following error API: ec2:RunInstances Not authorized for images:... in the Event tab.

Solution

You have to accept the subscription from the AWS Marketplace first, before you use our CloudFormation file.

The product is misbehaving

I did follow all the instructions from the documentation.

Solution

Check if the values entered in the UserData reached the instance itself.

sudo cat /var/lib/cloud/instance/user-data.txt

UserData seams ok

The UserData reached the instance, and yet the product is not acting as it should.

Solution

Use the following command to see if there were any errors during the boot process.

sudo cat /var/log/messages | grep 0x4447

Issue with EFS backup restoration

I did launch the product by using an EFS drive restored from a backup and the old OpenVPN profile don’t work.

Solution

You have to reorganize the EFS drive. By design AWS restores the data (even on a new and empty drive) in special folders called: aws-backup-restore_timestamp-of-restore. Meaning they do not recreate the original folder structure. Check how AWS restores EFS Backups to learn more.

Before using the restored drive, you can reorganize it using our SFTP Server - Single User Setup product.