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Big Blue Button on AWS

Big Blue Button is an open source solution for online conferencing and distance learning. This repository contains templates and source code for deploying the solution on AWS platform. Templates source is compiled into final templates using cfhighlander tool.

Features

  • Turn-key solution to get BigBlueButton up and running on AWS
  • Admin password available in SSM once the stack has been created
  • Configurable disk size
  • Root disk encrypted by default
  • Daily and weekly server backups as Amazon Machine Images (AMI), using AWS Backup service
  • Connection to the server using AWS Session Manager (SSM)
  • Highly extensible and configurable if building your own CloudFormation templates

TL;DR

You will need Route53 Hosted zone to launch BigBlueButton cloudformation stack using regional-specific template, by clicking on appropriate link below. Once the CFN stack is created (wait for that CREATE_COMPLETE state, you can access your server at https://${DomainName} (DomainName being cfn parameter you provide). Look under SSM Parameter path given by ConfigSSMPath, defaulting to /bigbluebuttong/config for default admin credentials.

Region Region name Launch url
ap-southeast-2 Asia Pacific (Sydney)
us-east-1 US East (N. Virginia)
ap-northeast-1 Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
ap-northeast-2 Asia Pacific (Seoul)
ap-southeast-1 Asia Pacific (Singapore)
ap-south-1 Asia Pacific (Mumbai)
eu-central-1 EU (Frankfurt)
eu-north-1 Europe (Stockholm)
eu-west-1 EU (Ireland)
eu-west-2 Europe (London)
eu-west-3 Europe (Paris)
us-east-2 US East (Ohio)
us-west-1 US West (N. California)
us-west-2 US West (Oregon)
sa-east-1 South America (Sao Paulo)
ca-central-1 Canada (Central)

You can watch the setup on-screen video recording here

Intro

This component was initially developed for needs of AWS Tools And Programming meetup workshop. Due recent surge in need for distant learning solutions, it was made further configurable for use in different educational and enterprise settings. By no means is this final version of the component, and pull requests and feature requests are welcome.

Prerequisites

  • AWS Account with valid programmatic access credentials (api keys)
  • Valid Route53 Hosted Zone within AWS Account (e.g. example.com)

If you want to build and publish your own templates, you can do so either through docker (recommended), or directly on host machine. Depending on method used, you will need

  • Ruby (tested with v2.5) if building and publishing templates from your own host
  • Docker, docker-compose and make, if using 3musketeers approach

Stack parameters

Route53Zone - valid Route53 zone in your AWS Account. E.g. example.com

DomainName - FQDN for BBB server. Must be either same as Route53Zone, or a subdomain e.g. bigbluebutton.example.com

AdminEmail - Administrator email. This will be used both for let's ecnrypt SSL certificate registration and for admin user account on BBB server.

asgInstanceType - Instance Type for your server. BBB Doco recommends 4cores and 8GB RAM as minimum, hence t3.xlarge is default option

ImageId - Amazon Machine Image (AMI) id for your server. Defaults to Ubuntu 18.04 within selected region.

RootVolumeSpace - Server size in GB. Defaults to 40

ConfigSSMPath - Amazon System Manager Parameter store path, where setup will store default credentials and url. You may change the password from Greenlight UI. Must start with forward slash /.

DeploymentMode - Either EC2 or ASG. Self explanatory, ASG will provide auto-healing functionality, with EC2, you can start/stop the instance as cost savings measure. Defaults to EC2

TerminationProtection - Applicable only in EC2 mode. Set to true to disable instance termination via API, as protection from incidental instance termination.

Operations

Default admin credentials

Administrator password for WebUI (Greenlight) is stored in /bigbluebutton/config/admin_password SSM Parameter value. To retrieve it, use command below (or go to System Manager Web Console)

CONFIG_PATH=/bigbluebutton/config
BBBPASS=$(aws ssm get-parameter --name ${CONFIG_PATH}/admin_password --query Parameter.Value --output text --with-decryption)
BBBUSER=$(aws ssm get-parameter --name ${CONFIG_PATH}/admin_user --query Parameter.Value --output text)
BBBSERVER=$(aws ssm get-parameter --name ${CONFIG_PATH}/server_url --query Parameter.Value --output text)
echo "Login with ${BBBUSER}:${BBBPASS} at ${BBBSERVER}/b/signin"

Logging into your BigBlueButton server via SSM

This solution uses AWS SSM Session Manager by default to connect to your BBB ec2 instance. See Configuration section below, if you wish to use ssh directly. You'll need ssm:StartSession and ssm:TerminateSession permissions on your API user to do so. Alternatively, generate cloudformation templates with ssh access enabled (see config below).

# lookup instance-id. Either look for instance named '' in your ec2 console,
# or execute command below
$ instance_id=$(aws ec2 describe-instances --filters \
     "Name=instance-state-name,Values=running" \
     "Name=tag:Name,Values=BigBlueButton-Server" \
     --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].InstanceId' --output text)

# to log into the instance use ssm
$ aws ssm start-session --target "${instance_id}"

Starting session with SessionId: api.user-0e11294b740b4a77b
$ sudo su
root@ip-10-200-0-208:/var/snap/amazon-ssm-agent/2012# tail /var/log/cloud-init-output.log -n 4

Cloud-init v. 19.4-33-gbb4131a2-0ubuntu1~16.04.1 running 'modules:final' at Tue, 14 Apr 2020 01:49:09 +0000. Up 31.80 seconds.
ci-info: no authorized SSH keys fingerprints found for user ubuntu.
Cloud-init v. 19.4-33-gbb4131a2-0ubuntu1~16.04.1 finished at Tue, 14 Apr 2020 02:01:00 +0000. Datasource DataSourceEc2Local.  Up 742.52 seconds

Updating the stack

IMPORTANT it is recommended that you backup the BBB instance before doing any stack updates.BBB Ec2 instances are backed up by default every 24 hours.

Usage

Simplest way of launching BigBlueButton on AWS is through one of the links from the top of this page. Optionally, you may want to configure, update, generate and upload your own template to S3. Configuration is preset for ap-southeast-2 region.

Generate and build your own templates

If you wish to make customizations from default setup, and build and publish your own templates rather then using links provided above, read below for configuration options, as well as on how to build, publish and manage the templates. Firs step is to clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/toshke/big-blue-button-cloudformation-cfhl.git

Configuration

If you wish to tweak the generated templates, update the values in following files, as they are passed in as configuration to Cfhighlander and Cfndsl templates.

  • bbb.config.yaml
  • vpc.config.yaml
  • asg.config.yaml
  • backup.config.yaml

All files come with explanation for configuration keys and their values. Some examples are

Use your own VPC - Look at bbb.config.yaml:render_vpc

Connect to instances using SSH - Look at asg.config.yaml:allow_ssh and aws.config.yaml:allow_incoming

AMI and different regions

It is highly advisable to use either Ubuntu 18.04 AMI from Canonical, or AMI crated from your existing BBB server through backup process. BigBlueButton stability is guaranteed for this host OS, and can't be guaranteed for others. By default, cloudformation templates will be rednered for ap-southeast-2 AMI. This is configurable through bbb.config.yaml:image_id configuration value

Use ruby script below to determine what is Ubuntu 16.04 image in your region (you'll need aws-sdk-ec2) ruby gem

require 'aws-sdk-ec2'
region = 'us-east-1'
ami_name = 'ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-xenial-16.04-amd64-server-20200129'
canonical_id = '099720109477'
regional_client = Aws::EC2::Client.new(region: region)
regional_ami = regional_client.describe_images({ filters: [
      { name: 'name', values: [ami_name] },
      { name: 'owner-id', values: [canonical_id] }
  ] }).images[0].image_id
puts "Image id: #{regional_ami}"

Edit user_data.sh to modify instance setups script (this may break things).

Recommended: Using docker

Docker method respects AWS_REGION and AWS_DEFAULT_REGION environment variables

# first, clone the repo
$ git clone https://github.com/toshke/.git && cd

# build and validate templates
$ make build

# templates can be located in out/yaml folder. to upload to s3 use cfpublish. Use your own bucket
# and desired prefix
$ make publish DIST_BUCKET=templates.cfhighlander.info DIST_PREFIX=cftemplates/big-blue-button [DIST_VERSION=1.0]

Without docker

# first, clone the repo
$ git clone https://github.com/toshke/.git && cd

# install required gems
$ bundle install

# build and validate cf templates
$ cfcompile bbb ---validate

# templates can be located in out/yaml folder. to upload to s3 use cfpublish. Use your own bucket
# and desired prefix
$ cfhighlander cfpublish --validate bbb --dstbucket templates.cfhighlander.info --dstprefix 'cftemplates/big-blue-button' [--version 1.0]

After cfpublish command, launch stack url will be displayed in terminal output