This guide explains how to configure a VT Docs server installed on an AWS EC2 instance can be configured to use AWS RDS as a database.

 

Note: This guide assumes you running VT Docs on either RHEL or AWS Linux and you are running VT Docs 3.4.2 or greater.

 

Install on RDS

For this, you will need a PostgreSQL RDS instance setup (we support v12 - v15). It should be a part of the same security group that the EC2 VT Docs instance is a member of so they can communicate via port 5432.

The RDS instance should have the following parameter set:

max_locks_per_transaction=500

When creating the PostgreSQL RDS instance you will be asked to provide a master username and password for the database

By default the master username is ‘postgres’. In the instructions below replace <master user> with the Postgres master username.

 

Creating the VT Docs user and Schema

The first step to complete is to create the VT Docs user and database in Postgres. Once that is complete we can bootstrap the database with an empty VT Docs schema.

Creating the VT Docs database and user

Download the sql file listed below to create VT Docs user and database structure on your external PostgreSQL:

https://visiblethread.s3.amazonaws.com/public/download/createDocsDB.sql

On your EC2 instance, use psql to run the file 'createDocsDB.sql' as the master user. In the example below we are using the default master user “postgres”.

This will create a database called “vtdocs” with a database user called “vtdocs”. You must specify a password you wish to use for this database user.

mkdir vtsetuptmp

cd vtsetuptmp

curl -O https://visiblethread.s3.amazonaws.com/public/download/createDocsDB.sql > createDocsDB.sql

psql -h <postgresql RDS endpoint name> -p 5432 -d postgres -U <master user> -f createDocsDB.sql -v pwd="'a secure password'"

 

Create the empty VT Docs Schema

Download the SQL file from here:

https://visiblethread.s3.amazonaws.com/public/download/vtdocs-tables.sql

Run the attached file 'vtdocs-tables.sql' as the vtdocs user (you will be prompted for a password. Enter the password you specified above). The exact format for connecting with a psql client will depend on your system. An example is listed below:

curl -O https://visiblethread.s3.amazonaws.com/public/download/vtdocs-tables.sql > vtdocs-tables.sql

psql -h <postgresql RDS endpoint name> -p 5432 -U vtdocs -f vtdocs-tables.sql

 

Modify the VT Docs environment file to point to your Database server

On your EC2 instance that is running VT Docs, navigate to the following folder:

/etc/default/visiblethread.env

Open the ‘visiblethread.env’ file for editing:

sudo nano visiblethread.env

Update the line that contains vtdocs.database.host=127.0.0.1  with vtdocs.database.host=<rds-endpoint-address>

Update the line that contains vtdocs.database.username="visiblethread" with vtdocs.database.username=vtdocs

Update vtdocs.database.password=password with the password you have specified for the vtdocs user above.

Save and exit nano with ctrl + o, enter then ctrl + x, enter.

Restart the VT Docs services:

sudo systemctl restart visiblethread-docs

When complete, restart the Apache service

sudo systemctl restart httpd