Introduction

This document describes the procedures for setting up Kill Bill under AWS using the single-tier option. This option has limited capabilities but is very easy to setup. It uses a minimum of resources and may be suitable for very simple use cases. Everything you need for this option is bundled in the Kill Bill Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and will be launched on a single virtual Linux system, which AWS calls an EC2 instance.

The components of this system include Kill Bill, Kaui, a database manager (DBM), and a load balancer. The EC2 instance runs Ubuntu Linux. The DBM is an instance of MariaDB, an open source version of MySQL. The load balancer is the open source package Nginx. This package serves as a front end or reverse proxy, distributing the incoming traffic to either Kill Bill or Kaui based on the incoming port.

The organization of the single-tier system looks like this:

single tier ami deployment

In this configuration, Kill Bill and Kaui are deployed within the tomcat application server. Requests are handled by nginx. Requests received on port 443 are delivered to Kaui, and those received on port 8443 are delivered to Kill Bill. Both Kill Bill and Kaui communicate as needed with the mysql databases.

The setup procedure includes nine steps:

  1. Login to AWS

  2. Subscribe to the Kill Bill AMI

  3. Set up EC2 Configuration

  4. Create a Key Pair

  5. Launch your Instance

  6. Set up Security Group

  7. Login to Your Instance

  8. Test Your Installation

  9. Add a Certificate

Step 1: Login to AWS

To begin, log in to Amazon Web Services at https://aws.amazon.com. If you are new to AWS, you will be asked to create an account and provide billing information. You will need to sign in as a Root User. This should take you to the AWS Management Console, which provides links to all available services.

Check the upper right corner of your screen to be sure you are in the appropriate region. Your EC2 instance will be placed in this region, and may not be accessible from other regions.

Step 2: Subscribe to the Kill Bill AMI

To start the installation process, point your browser to the Kill Bill AMI at AWS Marketplace .

You should see the following image at the top of your screen:

single ami subscribe

Click Continue to Subscribe. The next page will give the AWS Terms and Conditions. Accept the terms if asked. You will then see a new message confirming that you have subscribed. Next, click Continue to Configuration.

Step 3: Set Up EC2 Configuration

The next page will give several configuration options.