Step 4: Create an Amazon EC2 Instance and Set Up the Hyperledger Fabric Client

To complete this step, you launch an Amazon EC2 instance using the Amazon Linux AMI. Consider the following requirements and recommendations when you create the Hyperledger Fabric client Amazon EC2 instance:

Step 4.1: Install Packages

Your Hyperledger Fabric client needs some packages and samples installed so that you can work with the Hyperledger Fabric resources. In this step, you install Go, Docker, Docker Compose, and some other utilities. You also create variables in the ~/.bash_profile for your development environment. These are prerequisites for installing and using Hyperledger tools.

While connected to the Amazon EC2 instance using SSH, run the following commands to install utilities, install docker, and configure the Docker user to be the default user for the Amazon EC2 instance:

sudo yum update -y

sudo yum install jq telnet emacs docker libtool libtool-ltdl-devel git -y

sudo service docker start

sudo usermod -a -G docker ec2-user

Log out and log in again for the usermod command to take effect.

Run the following commands to install Docker Compose.

sudo curl -L \
https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.20.0/docker-compose-`uname \
-s`-`uname -m` -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Run the following commands to install golang.

wget https://dl.google.com/go/go1.14.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz

tar -xzf go1.14.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz

sudo mv go /usr/local

sudo yum install git -y

Use a text editor to set up variables such as GOROOT and GOPATH in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile and save the updates. The following example shows entries in .bash_profile.

# .bash_profile

# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
    . ~/.bashrc
fi

# User specific environment and startup programs
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/bin

# GOROOT is the location where Go package is installed on your system
export GOROOT=/usr/local/go

# GOPATH is the location of your work directory
export GOPATH=$HOME/go

# CASERVICEENDPOINT is the endpoint to reach your member's CA
# for example ca.m-K46ICRRXJRCGRNNS4ES4XUUS5A.n-MWY63ZJZU5HGNCMBQER7IN6OIU.managedblockchain.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:30002
export CASERVICEENDPOINT=MyMemberCaEndpoint

# ORDERER is the endpoint to reach your network's orderer
# for example orderer.n-MWY63ZJZU5HGNCMBQER7IN6OIU.managedblockchain.MyRegion.amazonaws.com:30001
export ORDERER=MyNetworkOrdererEndpoint

# Update PATH so that you can access the go binary system wide
export PATH=$GOROOT/bin:$PATH
export PATH=$PATH:/home/ec2-user/go/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric-ca/bin

After you update .bash_profile, apply the changes:

source ~/.bash_profile 

After the installation, verify that you have the correct versions installed:

To check the Docker version, run the following command:

sudo docker version

The command returns output similar to the following:

Client:
 Version: 18.06.1-ce
 API version: 1.38
 Go version: go1.14.4
 Git commit: CommitHash
 Built: Tue Oct 2 18:06:45 2018
 OS/Arch: linux/amd64
 Experimental: false

Server:
 Engine:
 Version: 18.06.1-ce
 API version: 1.38 (minimum version 1.12)
 Go version: go1.14.4
 Git commit: e68fc7a/18.06.1-ce
 Built: Tue Oct 2 18:08:26 2018
 OS/Arch: linux/amd64
 Experimental: false

To check the version of Docker Compose, run the following command:

sudo /usr/local/bin/docker-compose version

The command returns output similar to the following:

docker-compose version 1.22.0, build f46880fe
docker-py version: 3.4.1
CPython version: 3.6.6
OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.0f  25 May 2017

To check the version of go, run the following command:

go version

The command returns output similar to the following:

go version go1.14.4 linux/amd64

Step 4.2: Set Up the Hyperledger Fabric CA Client

In this step, you verify that you can connect to the Hyperledger Fabric CA using the VPC endpoint you configured in Step 2: Create and Configure the Interface VPC Endpoint. You then install the Hyperledger Fabric CA client. The Fabric CA issues certificates to administrators and network peers.

To verify connectivity to the Hyperledger Fabric CA, you need the CAEndpoint. Use the get-member command to get the CA endpoint for your member, as shown in the following example. Replace the values of --network-id and --member-id with the values returned in Step 1: Create the Network and First Member.

aws managedblockchain get-member \
--network-id n-MWY63ZJZU5HGNCMBQER7IN6OIU \
--member-id m-K46ICRRXJRCGRNNS4ES4XUUS5A

Use curl or telnet to verify that the endpoint resolves. In the following example, the value of the variable $CASERVICEENDPOINT is the CAEndpoint returned by the get-member command.

curl https://$CASERVICEENDPOINT/cainfo -k

The command should return output similar to the following:

{"result":{"CAName":"abcd1efghijkllmn5op3q52rst","CAChain":"LongStringOfCharacters","Version":"1.4.7-snapshot-"}
,"errors":[],"messages":[],"success":true}

Note that Hyperledger Fabric v2.2 networks should use version 1.4 of the CA client.

Alternatively, you can connect to the Fabric CA using Telnet as shown in the following example. Use the same endpoint in the curl example, but separate the endpoint and the port as shown in the following example.

telnet CaEndpoint-Without-Port CaPort

The command should return output similar to the following:

Trying 10.0.1.228...
Connected to ca.m-K46ICRRXJRCGRNNS4ES4XUUS5A.n-MWY63ZJZU5HGNCMBQER7IN6OIU.managedblockchain.us-east-1.amazonaws.com.
Escape character is '^]'.

If you are unable to connect to the Fabric CA, double-check your network settings to ensure that the client Amazon EC2 instance has connectivity with the VPC Endpoint. In particular, ensure that the security groups associated with both the VPC Endpoint and the client Amazon EC2 instance have inbound and outbound rules that allow traffic between them.

Now that you have verified that you can connect to the Hyperledger Fabric CA, run the following commands to configure the CA client.

mkdir -p /home/ec2-user/go/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric-ca

cd /home/ec2-user/go/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric-ca

wget https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-ca/releases/download/v1.4.7/hyperledger-fabric-ca-linux-amd64-1.4.7.tar.gz

tar -xzf hyperledger-fabric-ca-linux-amd64-1.4.7.tar.gz

Step 4.3: Clone the Samples Repository

cd /home/ec2-user

git clone --branch v2.2.3 https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-samples.git

Step 4.4: Configure and Run Docker Compose to Start the Hyperledger Fabric CLI

Use a text editor to create a configuration file for Docker Compose named docker-compose-cli.yaml in the /home/ec2-user directory, which you use to run the Hyperledger Fabric CLI. You use this CLI to interact with peer nodes that your member owns. Copy the following contents into the file and replace the placeholder values according to the following guidance:

When you subsequently use the cli container to run commands—for example, docker exec cli peer channel create—you can use the -e option to override an environment variable that you establish in the docker-compose-cli.yaml file.

version: '2'
services:
  cli:
    container_name: cli
    image: hyperledger/fabric-tools:2.2.3
    tty: true
    environment:
      - GOPATH=/opt/gopath
      - CORE_VM_ENDPOINT=unix:///host/var/run/docker.sock
      - FABRIC_LOGGING_SPEC=info # Set logging level to debug for more verbose logging
      - CORE_PEER_ID=cli
      - CORE_CHAINCODE_KEEPALIVE=10
      - CORE_PEER_TLS_ENABLED=true
      - CORE_PEER_TLS_ROOTCERT_FILE=/opt/home/managedblockchain-tls-chain.pem
      - CORE_PEER_LOCALMSPID=MyMemberID
      - CORE_PEER_MSPCONFIGPATH=/opt/home/admin-msp
      - CORE_PEER_ADDRESS=MyPeerNodeEndpoint
    working_dir: /opt/home
    command: /bin/bash
    volumes:
        - /var/run/:/host/var/run/
        - /home/ec2-user/fabric-samples/chaincode:/opt/gopath/src/github.com/
        - /home/ec2-user:/opt/home

Run the following command to start the Hyperledger Fabric peer CLI container:

docker-compose -f docker-compose-cli.yaml up -d

If you restarted or logged out and back in after the usermod command in Step 4.1: Install Packages, you shouldn't need to run this command with sudo. If the command fails, you can log out and log back in. Alternatively, you can run the command using sudo, as shown in the following example:

sudo /usr/local/bin/docker-compose -f docker-compose-cli.yaml up -d