Deploying Nextcloud on an instance¶

Instructions¶

1. Navigate to the Launch a stack 1 section of the dashboard.

2. Select “URL” from the “Template Source” drop down menu.

3. Copy and paste the following address in the “Template URL” box:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/catalyst-cloud/catalystcloud-orchestration/master/nextcloud/heat/nextcloud-combined.yaml

4. Click “Next”

5. Fill out the fields here as required. You will need to include your domain-name and hostname at this stage.

6. Click “Launch”

It will take roughly 5 - 6 minutes for the instance to configure. After which, putting the domain name into your browser will take you to your Nextcloud instance.

Installing Terraform¶

First, before we jump in to creating any resources using terraform, we will need to prepare all of the tools that we are going to use in the following tutorial. For that we can use these code snippets:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y gnupg software-properties-common curl
$ curl -fsSL https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-add-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main"
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install terraform

Downloading template files from Github¶

Our next step is to gather a set of terraform template files, from which we can create our resources. For this example, we will be downloading a set of template files from the Catalyst Cloud github found at catalyst cloud orchestration 2. Open up a terminal and run the following:

$ sudo su
$ mkdir /nextcloud-terraform
$ cd /nextcloud-terraform
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/catalyst-cloud/catalystcloud-orchestration/master/nextcloud/terraform/nextcloud.tf
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/catalyst-cloud/catalystcloud-orchestration/master/nextcloud/terraform/cloud-init-nextcloud.tpl

Using a terraform configuration file¶

A template file should describe all the aspects of your system that you want to be constructed by Terraform. These aspects are resources such as the network, subnet, router, ssh key, and of course your instance itself. It is recommended to use the template provided above as it contains all of the necessary resources you will need for this tutorial.

Before using the template, you will only need to make sure to change the following to your own so that the template functions on your project:

• key name,

• domain name,

• host name

• and ddns password

The terraform guide to writing your own configuration files, such as the one used for this template can be found at: Terraform documentation 3

The user_data section should also be changed so the the template file contains the file path of the cloud-init configuration file you intend to use.

Using a cloud init file¶

The cloud init 4 file configures the software on an instance when it boots for the first time. In our case we want to install Nextcloud at runtime, so our cloud init file is set up to install docker and write systemd services to the instance. This is because we will be using a containerized version of Nextcloud.

The containers started in the setup script are Nextcloud, NGINX 5 and the NGINX_proxy_acme_companion 6. The NGINX container is a reverse proxy for Nextcloud, and ensures communication with the Nextcloud server is encrypted.

The acme companion automatically configures some letsencrypt certificates for the server using the ACME protocol.

Creating your stack using terraform¶

Now that we have all of the required software installed and our resources defined in our template files, we can use Terraform to construct our resources on the cloud.

$ cd nextcloud-terraform
$ terraform init
$ terraform plan
$ terraform apply --var domain_name="<your-domain-name>" --var host_name="<your-host-name>" --var ddns_password="<your-ddns-password>" --var file_upload_size="<size in mega-bytes>m" --var keyname="<your-key-name>" --var volume_uuid="<volume id>" --var image_type="<preferred-image-type>" --var flavor_type="<preferred-flavor-type>"

Check that Nextcloud has finished installing (Optional)¶

Open a terminal and type,

$ ssh ubuntu@<floating-ip-address>

When prompted if you would like to connect to this ip address, answer yes.

When this is finished you should find yourself accessing the server remotely. Next type,

$ test -f /deploy-complete && echo "OK"

If the terminal prints, “OK” Nextcloud is installed. Otherwise you may have to wait a few more minutes until it is finished.

Access your Nextcloud instance¶

After waiting around 5-10 minutes, you can now access Nextcloud by typing the domain name into a browser!