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Deploy NATS through the Linode Marketplace

Updated

Quickly deploy a Compute Instance with many various software applications pre-installed and ready to use.

Create a Linode account to try this guide with a $ credit.
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NATS is a connective technology built for the hyper-connected world. It is a single technology that enables applications to securely communicate across any combination of cloud vendors, on-premise, edge, web and mobile, and devices. NATS consists of a family of open-source products that are tightly integrated but can be deployed easily and independently. NATS is being used globally by thousands of companies, spanning use-cases including microservices, edge computing, mobile, and IoT.

Deploying a Marketplace App

The Linode Marketplace lets you easily deploy software on a Compute Instance using Cloud Manager. See Get Started with Marketplace Apps for complete steps.

  1. Log in to Cloud Manager and select the Marketplace link from the left navigation menu. This displays the Linode Create page with the Marketplace tab pre-selected.

  2. Under the Select App section, select the app you would like to deploy.

  3. Complete the form by following the steps and advice within the Creating a Compute Instance guide. Depending on the Marketplace App you selected, there may be additional configuration options available. See the Configuration Options section below for compatible distributions, recommended plans, and any additional configuration options available for this Marketplace App.

  4. Click the Create Linode button. Once the Compute Instance has been provisioned and has fully powered on, wait for the software installation to complete. If the instance is powered off or restarted before this time, the software installation will likely fail.

To verify that the app has been fully installed, see Get Started with Marketplace Apps > Verify Installation. Once installed, follow the instructions within the Getting Started After Deployment section to access the application and start using it.

Note
Estimated deployment time: NATS should be fully installed within 2-5 minutes after the Compute Instance has finished provisioning.

Configuration Options

  • Supported distributions: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
  • Recommended plan: All plan types and sizes can be used.

NATS Server Options

  • NATS Server Name: The name for the NATS server. Default is “Test”.
  • Version: NATS server software version. Default is 2.10.1.
  • Email address (required): Enter the email address to use for generating the SSL certificates.
  • NATS Server Port: NATS server port for clients to connect. Default is 4222.
  • NATS Websocket Port: To setup the NATS server Websocket port. Default is 8888.
  • NATS MQTT Port: To setup the NATS server MQTT port. Default is 1883.

Limited Sudo User

You need to fill out the following fields to automatically create a limited sudo user, with a strong generated password for your new Compute Instance. This account will be assigned to the sudo group, which provides elevated permissions when running commands with the sudo prefix.

  • Limited sudo user: Enter your preferred username for the limited user. No Capital Letters, Spaces, or Special Characters.

    Locating The Generated Sudo Password

    A password is generated for the limited user and stored in a .credentials file in their home directory, along with application specific passwords. This can be viewed by running: cat /home/$USERNAME/.credentials

    For best results, add an account SSH key for the Cloud Manager user that is deploying the instance, and select that user as an authorized_user in the API or by selecting that option in Cloud Manager. Their SSH pubkey will be assigned to both root and the limited user.

  • Disable root access over SSH: To block the root user from logging in over SSH, select Yes. You can still switch to the root user once logged in, and you can also log in as root through Lish.

    Accessing The Instance Without SSH
    If you disable root access for your deployment and do not provide a valid Account SSH Key assigned to the authorized_user, you will need to login as the root user via the Lish console and run cat /home/$USERNAME/.credentials to view the generated password for the limited user.

Custom Domain (Optional)

If you wish to automatically configure a custom domain, you first need to configure your domain to use Linode’s name servers. This is typically accomplished directly through your registrar. See Use Linode’s Name Servers with Your Domain. Once that is finished, you can fill out the following fields for the Marketplace App:

  • Linode API Token: If you wish to use the Linode’s DNS Manager to manage DNS records for your custom domain, create a Linode API Personal Access Token on your account with Read/Write access to Domains. If this is provided along with the subdomain and domain fields (outlined below), the installation attempts to create DNS records via the Linode API. See Get an API Access Token. If you do not provide this field, you need to manually configure your DNS records through your DNS provider and point them to the IP address of the new instance.
  • Subdomain: The subdomain you wish to use, such as www for www.example.com.
  • Domain: The domain name you wish to use, such as example.com.

Warning
Do not use a double quotation mark character (") within any of the App-specific configuration fields, including user and database password fields. This special character may cause issues during deployment.

Getting Started after Deployment

Accessing the NATS Monitoring UI

To monitor the NATS messaging system, nats-server provides a lightweight HTTP server on a dedicated monitoring port. The monitoring server provides several endpoints, providing statistics and other information.

Open your web browser and go to the custom domain you specified during deployment or the rDNS domain of your Compute Instance (e.g., 192-0-2-1.ip.linodeusercontent.com). This will take you to the NATS monitoring page. Refer to the Monitoring NATS guide for details on the different endpoints, statistics and other info you have access to.

Obtaining the NATS users passwords.

By default, this NATS deployment creates 2 users, one named “example” and another system user named “system”. The passwords for these users are generated during the initial install process. To obtain these password, log in to your Compute Instance either through the LISH Console or via SSH, then just read the /home/$USERNAME/.credentials file, ie:

cat /home/$USERNAME/.credentials

This file will contain the two credentials needed for those users.

For details, see NATS Authorization.

More Information

For more information, refer to these resources. Note that we can’t confirm the authenticity of externally hosted materials.

Note
Currently, Linode does not manage software and systems updates for Marketplace Apps. It is up to the user to perform routine maintenance on software deployed in this fashion.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

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