Running TeamCity Stack in AWS
Last modified: 20 April 2023warning
The CloudFormation template is deprecated. This page is available only to TeamCity developers.
The Run on AWS option for TeamCity available on the JetBrains site lets you run the TeamCity stack in AWS using the official CloudFormation template.
See also related blog post
Stack Overview
The current setup uses 2 subnets, a public and a private one.
The private subnet includes all the essential items
ECS cluster of a CoreOS EC2 instance with the official TeamCity server of the specified version from Docker Hub and one TeamCity Build Agent. The official Docker images with the TeamCity server and build agent are used.
an RDS MySQL database
The public subnet includes
Application Load Balancer
NAT gateway ensuring the publicly available IPs
Both subnets are placed into a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) which is completely secure. The database allows only internal connections within the VPC and its possible to connect to the Server via HTTP(s) or SSH only.
Prerequisites
To create a TeamCity stack and connect to it, you will need
an http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-key-pairs.html in the same region as the TeamCity stack
an installed SSH client to connect to the TeamCity server and view the logs
IAM permissions to create the service-linked role and apply a policy to it for the IAM entity creating the stack
Using Template
1. On the Select Template, use the default TeamCity Template and click Next.
2. Specify the stack name and parameters provided by the template:
Setting | Description |
|---|---|
Name | The name for your TeamCity server, set to test by default |
TeamCity Version | By default, the template will create a TeamCity installation of the latest version. You can also specify the exact version number here, e.g. 2017.1.5, 2017.2 |
Internet-Facing Stack | By default, set to |
EC2 KeyPair (required) | Specify an existing EC2 KeyPair for SSH access to the TeamCity Server EC2 instance. If you fail to provide the key pair, the stack creation will fail with the following error: " Template validation error: Parameter 'KeyName' must match pattern .+" |
SSL Certificate Domain | Optional. If you are a domain owner, you can specify the domain here and get the certificate that will be automatically registered in your load balancer. Your stack creation will be paused until you validate your email. |
EC2 instance Type | Specify https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ for the TeamCity server |
Container CPU | Container CPU in virtual CPU units |
Container Memory | Set to 3700 MiB by default. |
RDS Database Instance Type | Specify the type for the RDS MySQL instance used as the external database for TeamCity. db.t2.medium is the default. |
TeamCity Database Password (required) | Specify any password for the TeamCity database |
Build Agents
Setting | Description |
|---|---|
Agents number | Specify how many agents you want to start. Every agent will be launched on a separate machine. If 0 is specified, no agent will start. |
EC2 instance Type | Specify https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ for the TeamCity agents |
Container CPU | Container CPU in virtual CPU units |
Container Memory | Set to 2048 MiB by default. |
2. Click Next. (Optional) In the dialog that appears, provide additional options if required.
3. Click Next, review your settings, accept the creation of AWS roles.
note
In most cases Amazon ECS creates the service-linked role for you, if it does not already exist. If a user account creating the stack misses the appropriate permissions, the stack creating will fail with the following error: "Unable to assume the service linked role. Please verify that the ECS service linked role exists." in this case y ou can create a service linked role with the following command:
aws iam create-service-linked-role --aws-service-name ecs.amazonaws.com
4. and click Сreate. No other actions are required. It takes about 15 minutes for the template to deploy the whole stack. Once the deployment is ready, you will see the TeamCity server endpoint in the Output section which points you to your TeamCity installation.
4. Access the TeamCity instance from your browser, create the administrators account and start using your TeamCity.
Connecting to server and viewing logs
To connect to the servers console, you need to use your instance private key:
ssh -i <path to private key\privatekey.pem> core@<server_IP_address>To see the teamcity-agent.log or teamcity-server.log , just run thedocker logs command for the desired container, e.g. for the server logs, run
docker logs teamcity-serverNext Steps
Once you have TeamCity up and running, consider the following steps:
Use the Setting Up TeamCity for Amazon EC2 to run and connect more build agents to your server
Configure TeamCity to use the S3 bucket as Configuring Artifacts Storage.
Upgrading TeamCity in AWS
To update TeamCity started from the CloudFormation template:
In the AWS CloudFormation console, from the list of stacks, select the running TeamCity stack and u se the http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/using-cfn-updating-stacks-direct.html.
You will be redirected to the Select Template page: use the Current Template option and click Next.
On the template settings page, enter the TeamCity version you want to update to. Note that if you previously used the TeamCity version tagged latest, you will now need to provide the actual version number as the "latest" tag can be applied to the server only once.
Click Next, provide additional options if required, review the new settings and click Update. Once the Update is complete, access the TeamCity Web UI from the browser.
If required, provide the Super User token: to obtain it, you need to connect to your server instance, get the TeamCity server log as described above, and retrieve the maintenance token.
Wait for the server to upgrade, log in to the TeamCity server and wait for the agent to upgrade and connect to the server.