Dashboard on Red Hat (RHEL) / CentOS

Getting Started

1. clone the tyk-ansible repository

$ git clone https://github.com/TykTechnologies/tyk-ansible

2. cd into the directory

$ cd tyk-ansible

3. Run initialisation script to initialise environment

$ sh scripts/init.sh

4. Modify hosts.yml file to update ssh variables to your server(s). You can learn more about the hosts file here

5. Run ansible-playbook to install tyk-dashboard

$ ansible-playbook playbook.yaml -t tyk-dashboard

Supported Distributions

Variables

• vars/tyk.yaml

Install Tyk Dashboard on Red Hat

Tyk has its own signed RPMs in a YUM repository hosted by the kind folks at packagecloud.io, which makes it easy, safe and secure to install a trusted distribution of the Tyk Gateway stack.

This tutorial will run on an Amazon AWS Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 instance. We will install the Tyk Dashboard with all dependencies stored locally.

We’re installing on a t2.micro because this is a tutorial, you’ll need more RAM and more cores for better performance.

This configuration should also work (with some tweaks) for CentOS.

Prerequisites

• Ensure port 3000 is open: This is used by the Dashboard to provide the GUI and the Developer Portal
• EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) is a free, community based repository project from Fedora which provides high quality add-on software packages for Linux distribution including RHEL, CentOS, and Scientific Linux. EPEL isn’t a part of RHEL/CentOS but it is designed for major Linux distributions. In our case we need it for Redis DB. Install EPEL using the instructions here.
• Install Redis DB using EPEL
• Tyk requires Python 3.4. Install via the following command:

sudo yum install python34

Step 1: Set up YUM Repositories

First, we need to install some software that allows us to use signed packages:

sudo yum install yum-utils wget

Next, we need to set up the various repository configurations for Tyk Dashboard, MongoDB and PostgreSQL:

Step 2: Configure and Install the Tyk Dashboard

Create a file named /etc/yum.repos.d/tyk_tyk-dashboard.repo that contains the repository configuration below. https://packagecloud.io/tyk/tyk-dashboard/install#manual-rpm

Make sure to replace el and 7 in the config below with your Linux distribution and version:

[tyk_tyk-dashboard]
name=tyk_tyk-dashboard
baseurl=https://packagecloud.io/tyk/tyk-dashboard/el/7/$basearch
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://keyserver.tyk.io/tyk.io.rpm.signing.key.2020
       https://packagecloud.io/tyk/tyk-dashboard/gpgkey
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
metadata_expire=300

We’ll need to update our local cache, so run:

sudo yum -q makecache -y --disablerepo='*' --enablerepo='tyk_tyk-dashboard'

Finally, install Tyk dashboard and Redis.

sudo yum install -y tyk-dashboard redis

Step 3: Start MongoDB, PostgreSQL and Redis

In many cases MongoDB/SQL or Redis might not be running. start redis:

sudo service redis start

check Getting started on Red Hat (RHEL / CentOS) on how to start MongoDB or PostgreSQL

Step 4: Configure Tyk Dashboard

We can set the Dashboard up with a similar setup command, the script below will get the Dashboard set up for the local instance. Make sure to use the actual DNS hostname or the public IP of your instance as the last parameter.

sudo /opt/tyk-dashboard/install/setup.sh --listenport=3000 --redishost=<hostname> --redisport=6379 --mongo=mongodb://<Mongo IP Address>:<Mongo Port>/tyk_analytics --tyk_api_hostname=$HOSTNAME --tyk_node_hostname=http://localhost --tyk_node_port=8080 --portal_root=/portal --domain="XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX"

sudo /opt/tyk-dashboard/install/setup.sh --listenport=3000 --redishost=<hostname> --redisport=6379 --storage=postgres --connection_string="host=<Postgres Host Name> port=<Port> user=<User> password=<Password> dbname=<DB>" --tyk_api_hostname=$HOSTNAME --tyk_node_hostname=http://localhost --tyk_node_port=8080 --portal_root=/portal --domain="XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX"

What we have done here is:

• --listenport=3000: Told Tyk Dashboard (and Portal) to listen on port 3000.
• --redishost=<hostname>: Tyk Dashboard should use the local Redis instance.
• --redisport=6379: The Tyk Dashboard should use the default port.
• --domain="XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX": Bind the Dashboard to the IP or DNS hostname of this instance (required).
• --mongo=mongodb://<Mongo IP Address>:<Mongo Port>/tyk_analytics: Use the local MongoDB (should always be the same as the Gateway).
• --storage=postgres: In case, your preferred storage Database is postgres, use storage type postgres and specify connection string.
• --connection_string="host=<Postgres Host Name> port=<Port> user=<User> password=<Password> dbname=<DB>": Use the postgres instance provided in the connection string(should always be the same as the gateway).
• --tyk_api_hostname=$HOSTNAME: The Tyk Dashboard has no idea what hostname has been given to Tyk, so we need to tell it, in this instance we are just using the local HOSTNAME env variable, but you could set this to the public-hostname/IP of the instance.
• --tyk_node_hostname=http://localhost: The Tyk Dashboard needs to see a Tyk node in order to create new tokens, so we need to tell it where we can find one, in this case, use the one installed locally.
• --tyk_node_port=8080: Tell the Dashboard that the Tyk node it should communicate with is on port 8080.
• --portal_root=/portal: We want the Portal to be shown on /portal of whichever domain we set for the Portal.

Step 5: Start Tyk Dashboard

sudo service tyk-dashboard start

Notice how we haven’t actually started the gateway yet, because this is a Dashboard install, we need to enter a license first.

Step 6: Enter Dashboard license

Add your license in /var/opt/tyk-dashboard/tyk_analytics.conf in the license field.

If all is going well, you will be taken to a Dashboard setup screen - we’ll get to that soon.

Step 7: Restart the Dashboard process

Because we’ve just entered a license via the UI, we need to make sure that these changes get picked up, so to make sure things run smoothly, we restart the Dashboard process (you only need to do this once) and (if you have it installed) then start the gateway:

sudo service tyk-dashboard restart 

Step 8 - Go to the Tyk Dashboard URL

Go to:

127.0.0.1:3000

You should get to the Tyk Dashboard Setup screen:

Step 9 - Create your Organisation and Default User

You need to enter the following:

• Your Organisation Name
• Your Organisation Slug
• Your User Email Address
• Your User First and Last Name
• A Password for your User
• Re-enter your user Password

Click Bootstrap to save the details.

Step 10 - Login to the Dashboard

You can now log in to the Tyk Dashboard from 127.0.0.1:3000, using the username and password created in the Dashboard Setup screen.

Configure your Developer Portal

To set up your Developer Portal follow our Self-Managed tutorial on publishing an API to the Portal Catalogue.