Orka on AWS: Accessing the Orka Web UI

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Jump to: Set up port forwarding to the Orka Web UI | Access the Orka Web UI

See also: Getting started | Initial configuration guide | Known limitations | VNC and Screen Sharing to a VM

The Orka Web UI is a user-friendly way to get started with Orka. It provides basic capabilities and a clean UI.

For security reasons, you can access your Orka cluster only from within your customer VPC. By default, Amazon does not provide a UI for your customer instances which prevents you from using the Orka Web UI out of the box. Instead, you can configure port forwarding and use the Orka Web UI from your local machine. You will need to direct traffic from a specified available port on your local machine to a bastion host or instance in your customer VPC, which will then redirect it to the service endpoint for the Orka Web UI.

Set up port forwarding to the Orka Web UI

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CAUTION

Never use the customer account root user when working with your Orka VPC.

The Orka Web UI always runs on port 80 of your Orka server in the Orka cluster.

You can use the AWS CLI (recommended) or SSH to configure port forwarding.

1. Before you begin, obtain the following information:

   • <customer_vpc_region> (if using the AWS CLI): The code of the region of your customer VPC.
   • <customer_vpc_host_id> (if using the AWS CLI) or <customer_vpc_host> (if using SSH): Respectively, the ID or IP of a bastion host or an instance in your customer VPC. For more information about how to obtain the ID or the IP, see here.
   • <orka_api>: The Orka API endpoint address for your Orka cluster. The MacStadium team will provide this address during the initial configuration of your cluster.
   • <local_port>: An available port on your local machine.

2. (Recommended) If you have configured AWS Systems Manager (AWS SSM) for your customer VPC and you have installed the AWS CLI on your local machine, you can run the following command.

aws ssm start-session --region <customer_vpc_region> \
    --target <customer_vpc_host_id> \
    --document-name AWS-StartPortForwardingSessionToRemoteHost \
    --parameters '{"host":["<orka_api>"],"portNumber":["80"],"localPortNumber":["<local_port>"]}'

3. Otherwise, you can enable port forwarding via SSH.

ssh -L <local_port>:<orka_api>:80 "UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null" -o "StrictHostKeyChecking=no" <customer_vpc_host>

Access the Orka Web UI

On your local machine, open your preferred Internet browser and navigate to localhost:<local_port>.

See the Web UI Quick Start to get familiar with the Orka Web UI.

See also

• Orka on AWS: Getting started
• Orka on AWS: Initial configuration guide
• Orka on AWS: Known limitations
• Orka on AWS: VNC and Screen Sharing to a VM