Install Kong Enterprise with Amazon Linux 1

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Prerequisites
• Step 1. Download Kong Enterprise
• Step 2. Install Kong Enterprise
• Step 3. Install and Initialize the Database
  • PostgreSQL
• Step 4. Customize Your Configuration
  • Enable RBAC
  • Enable Kong Manager
  • Enable the Dev Portal
• Step 5. Start Kong
• Step 6. Verify Kong is Receiving Requests
• Troubleshooting
• Next Steps

Introduction

This guide will walk you through installing and running Kong Enterprise on an existing Amazon Linux 1 EC2 instance. Click HERE for installing on Amazon Linux 2.

Supported Database Options:

• PostgreSQL 9.5, 9.6
• Cassandra 3

Due to the nature of setting up a Kong cluster with Cassandra, this documentation only covers Postgres. For assistance in setting up Cassandra, please contact your Sales or Support representative.

Prerequisites

To complete this installation guide you will need:

• A valid Bintray account. You will need your username, account password and account API KEY.
  • Example:
    • Bintray Access key = john-company
    • Bintray username = john-company@kong
    • Bintray password = 12345678
    • Bintray API KEY = 12234e314356291a2b11058591bba195830
• SSH access to a running EC2 instance
• A valid Kong Enterprise License JSON file, this can be found in your Bintray account. See Accessing Your License)
• HTTPIE with Python3 (optional) - this allows for making easier commands to Kong, see Step 6. Set up HTTPIE for details.

Step 1. Download Kong Enterprise

1. Download the RPM package from Bintray

     $ sudo yum update
     $ wget 'https://<BINTRAY_USERNAME>:<PASSWORD>@bintray.com/kong/kong-enterprise-edition-aws/rpm' -O bintray-kong-kong-enterprise-edition-aws.repo --auth-no-challenge`
   

   Note: this command requires your Bintray account PASSWORD, not your API KEY, If you receive the error “BAD PORT” ensure your password does not contain any shell meta-characters like $,@, or /

2. Move the package into /etc/yum.repos.d/

     $ sudo mv bintray-kong-kong-enterprise-edition-aws.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/
   

3. Open the package to and add your Bintray credentials to the baseurl value.

     $ sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/bintray-kong-kong-enterprise-edition-aws.repo
   

     baseurl=https://<BINTRAY_USER>:<BINTRAY_API_KEY>@kong.bintray.com/kong-enterprise-edition-aws
   

   Note: Unlike step 1, this command requires your Bintray account API KEY, not your PASSWORD.

4. Obtain your Kong Enterprise license file. If you do not already have your license file, you can download it from your account files in Bintray https://bintray.com/kong/<YOUR_REPO_NAME>/license#files. See How you Access Your Enterprise License for help.

5. Ensure your license file is in proper JSON:

    {"license":{"signature":"91e6dd9716d12ffsn4a5ckkb16a556dbebdbc4d0a66d9b2c53f8c8d717eb93dd2bdbe2cb3ef51c20806f14345128907da35","payload":{"customer":"Kong Inc","license_creation_date":"2019-05-07","product_subscription":"Kong Enterprise Edition","admin_seats":"5","support_plan":"None","license_expiration_date":"2021-04-01","license_key":"00Q1K00000zuUAwUAM_a1V1K000005kRhuUAE"},"version":1}}
   

6. Securely copy the license file to the EC2 instance

    $ scp license.json <ec2-username>@<serverip>:~
   

Step 2. Install Kong Enterprise

1. Install Kong Enterprise

     $ sudo yum install kong-enterprise-edition
   

2. Copy the license file to /etc/kong/license.json

     $ sudo cp kong-se-license.json /etc/kong/license.json
   

   Kong will look for a valid license in this location.

Step 3. Install and Initialize the Database

Kong Enterprise on Amazon Linux supports:

• PostgreSQL
• Cassandra

PostgreSQL

This configuration supports PostgreSQL 9.5 and 9.6.

Steps for this section:

• i. Install and Start Postgres
• ii. Create a Kong user and database
• iii. Connect Kong to the Postgres database

i. Install and Start PostgreSQL

1. Install PostgreSQL

     $ sudo yum install postgresql96 postgresql96-server
   

2. Initialize the database

     $ sudo service postgresql96 initdb
   

3. Start PostgreSQL

     $ sudo service postgresql96 start
   

ii. Create a Kong user and database

The user and database can easily be created via the command line by using PostgreSQL’s command line tool psql

1. Change to the postgres user

     $ sudo -i -u postgres
   

2. Launch the PostgreSQL command line tool psql

     $ psql
   

3. Create the kong user and database

     $ psql> CREATE USER kong; CREATE DATABASE kong OWNER kong; ALTER USER kong WITH password 'kong';
   

   ⚠️Note: Make sure the username and password for the Kong Database are kept safe. We have used a simple example for illustration purposes only.

4. Exit psql

     $ psql> \q
   

5. Return to the terminal

     $ exit
   

iii. Connect Kong to the PostgreSQL database

Postgres uses ident authentication by default, to allow the kong user to communicate with the database locally we must change the authentication method to md5 by modifying the Postgres configuration file.

1. Open the configuration file:

     $ sudo vi /var/lib/pgsql96/data/pg_hba.conf
   

2. Change the IPV4 local connection method to md5

    | TYPE | DATABASE | USER | ADDRESS      | METHOD |
    | # IPv4 local connections:                      |
    | host | all      | all  | 127.0.0.1/32 |  md5   |
    | # IPv6 local connections:                      |
    | host | all      | all  | ::1/128      | ident  |
   

3. Save and exit the file, then restart Postgres

     $ sudo service postgresql96 restart
   

Now that the database is set up, Kong must be given credentials to access the database. This is done by adding the Postgres user and password information to Kong’s configuration file.

1. Make a copy of Kong’s configuration file

     sudo cp /etc/kong/kong.conf.default kong.conf
   

2. Open the new configuration file

     sudo vi /etc/kong/kong.conf
   

3. Search for pg_password under DATASTORE, uncomment pg_password and add the value.

     #pg_user = kong
     pg_password = kong
     #pg_datastore = kong
   

   Note: If you used different values for the user and database name, uncomment the pg_user and pg_datastore variables and add the username and datastore values

Step 4. Customize Your Configuration

Before starting Kong, you can further modify Kong’s configuration file to enable a host of different features:

Enable RBAC

Kong Enterprise allows applying RBAC to all requests. To enable RBAC, you must set RBAC to on, select an authentication plugin for Kong Manager, and configure the Session plugin.

  enforce_rbac = on

  admin_gui_auth = basic-auth

  admin_gui_session_conf = {"secret":"password", "cookie_secure": false, "cookie_samesite": "off", "cookie_name": "admin_session", "storage": "kong"}

Export the KONG_PASSWORD environment variable:

  export KONG_PASSWORD=kong

Enable Kong Manager

Kong Enterprise’s Graphical User Interface Kong Manager can be connected by setting the admin_gui_url property to the EC2 instances IPv4 address

  admin_gui_url = http://ec2-xx-xxx-xx-xx.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com:8002

Enable the Dev Portal

Kong Enterprise’s Developer Portal can be connected by setting the portal property to on and setting the portal_gui_host property to the EC2 instance’s IPv4 address

  portal = on
  portal_gui_host = http://ec2-xx-xxx-xx-xx.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com:8003

Step 5. Start Kong

1. Run migrations

     kong migrations bootstrap -c /etc/kong/kong.conf
   

2. Start Kong

     sudo /usr/local/bin/kong start -c /etc/kong/kong.conf
   

Step 6. Verify Kong is Receiving Requests

Install HTTPie to easily send requests to Kong (optional)

  sudo yum install python36

  sudo pip-3.6 install --upgrade pip setuptools

  sudo /usr/local/bin/pip3.6 install --upgrade httpie

Test your connection to Kong

httpie

  http :8001/services 
  
  if RBAC is enabled:
  *http :8001/services Kong-Admin-Token:$KONG_PASSWORD

curl

  curl -i -X GET --url http://localhost:8001/services

  if RBAC is enabled:
  curl -i -X GET --url http://localhost:8001/services --header 'kong-admin-token:<KONG_PASSWORD>'

You should receive a 200 OK response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 23
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Date:
Server: kong/kong-enterprise-edition
X-Kong-Admin-Request-ID: 

{
    "data": [],
    "next": null
}

If you did not receive a 200 check out the troubleshooting section below or contact your Sales or Support Representative for assistance.

Troubleshooting

I receive an error when downloading the RPM Package

Ensure that you are using your Bintray Username and Bintray account **password **in the wget request - note that this is different from your Bintray API KEY.

HTTP 401 - Unauthorized

If you have enabled RBAC all request must be sent with the kong-admin-token header

httpie Kong-Admin-Token:$KONG_PASSWORD

curl --header 'kong-admin-token:<KONG_PASSWORD>'

Next Steps

Now that Kong Enterprise is up and running, checkout our Getting Started guide.