Installing GitHub Enterprise Server on AWS

Prerequisites

• You must have a GitHub Enterprise license file. To download an existing license file or request a trial license, visit enterprise.github.com. For more information, see "Managing your GitHub Enterprise license."
• You must have an AWS account capable of launching EC2 instances and creating EBS volumes. For more information, see the Amazon Web Services website.
• Most actions needed to launch your GitHub Enterprise Server instance may also be performed using the AWS management console. However, we recommend installing the AWS command line interface (CLI) for initial setup. Examples using the AWS CLI are included below. For more information, see Amazon's guides "Working with the AWS Management Console" and "What is the AWS Command Line Interface."

This guide assumes you are familiar with the following AWS concepts:

• Launching EC2 Instances
• Managing EBS Volumes
• Using Security Groups (For managing network access to your instance)
• Elastic IP Addresses (EIP) (Strongly recommended for production environments)
• EC2 and Virtual Private Cloud (If you plan to launch into a Virtual Private Cloud)

Hardware considerations

GitHub Enterprise Server requires a persistent data disk separate from the root disk. For more information, see "System overview." We recommend different hardware configurations based on the number of user licenses used in your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

These are minimum recommendations. More resources may be required depending on your usage, such as user activity and selected integrations. When increasing CPU resources, it's recommended to add at least 6.5 GB of memory for each CPU (up to 16 CPUs) added to your GitHub Enterprise Server instance. For more information, see "Increasing CPU or memory resources."

Determining the instance type

Before launching your GitHub Enterprise Server instance on AWS, you'll need to determine the type of virtual machine that best fits the needs of your organization.

Supported instance types

GitHub Enterprise Server is supported on the following EC2 instance types. For more information, see the AWS EC2 instance type overview page.

Recommended instance types

Based on your user license count, we recommend the following instance types.

Selecting the GitHub Enterprise Server AMI

You can select an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for GitHub Enterprise Server using the GitHub Enterprise Server portal or the AWS CLI.

AMIs for GitHub Enterprise Server are available in the AWS GovCloud (US-East and US-West) region. This allows US customers with specific regulatory requirements to run GitHub Enterprise Server in a federally compliant cloud environment. For more information on AWS's compliance with federal and other standards, see AWS's GovCloud (US) page and AWS's compliance page.

Using the GitHub Enterprise Server portal to select an AMI

1. Navigate to the GitHub Enterprise Server download page.
2. Click Get the latest release of GitHub Enterprise Server.
3. In the Select your platform drop-down menu, click Amazon Web Services.
4. In the Select your AWS region drop-down menu, choose your desired region.
5. Take note of the AMI ID that is displayed.

Using the AWS CLI to select an AMI

1. Using the AWS CLI, get a list of GitHub Enterprise Server images published by GitHub's AWS owner IDs (025577942450 for GovCloud, and 895557238572 for other regions). For more information, see "describe-images" in the AWS documentation.

   aws ec2 describe-images \
   --owners OWNER ID \
   --query 'sort_by(Images,&Name)[*].{Name:Name,ImageID:ImageId}' \
   --output=text

2. Take note of the AMI ID for the latest GitHub Enterprise Server image.

Creating a security group

If you're setting up your AMI for the first time, you will need to create a security group and add a new security group rule for each port in the table below. For more information, see the AWS guide "Using Security Groups."

1. Using the AWS CLI, create a new security group. For more information, see "create-security-group" in the AWS documentation.

   $ aws ec2 create-security-group --group-name SECURITY_GROUP_NAME --description "SECURITY GROUP DESCRIPTION"

2. Take note of the security group ID (sg-xxxxxxxx) of your newly created security group.

3. Create a security group rule for each of the ports in the table below. For more information, see "authorize-security-group-ingress" in the AWS documentation.

   $ aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-id SECURITY_GROUP_ID --protocol PROTOCOL --port PORT_NUMBER --cidr SOURCE IP RANGE

   This table identifies what each port is used for.

   Port	Service	Description
   22	SSH	Git over SSH access. Clone, fetch, and push operations to public/private repositories supported.
   25	SMTP	SMTP with encryption (STARTTLS) support.
   80	HTTP	Web application access. All requests are redirected to the HTTPS port when SSL is enabled.
   122	SSH	Instance shell access. The default SSH port (22) is dedicated to application git+ssh network traffic.
   161/UDP	SNMP	Required for network monitoring protocol operation.
   443	HTTPS	Web application and Git over HTTPS access.
   1194/UDP	VPN	Secure replication network tunnel in high availability configuration.
   8080	HTTP	Plain-text web based Management Console. Not required unless SSL is disabled manually.
   8443	HTTPS	Secure web based Management Console. Required for basic installation and configuration.
   9418	Git	Simple Git protocol port. Clone and fetch operations to public repositories only. Unencrypted network communication.

Creating the GitHub Enterprise Server instance

To create the instance, you'll need to launch an EC2 instance with your GitHub Enterprise Server AMI and attach an additional storage volume for your instance data. For more information, see "Hardware considerations."

Launching an EC2 instance

In the AWS CLI, launch an EC2 instance using your AMI and the security group you created. Attach a new block device to use as a storage volume for your instance data, and configure the size based on your user license count. For more information, see "run-instances" in the AWS documentation.

aws ec2 run-instances \
  --security-group-ids SECURITY_GROUP_ID \
  --instance-type INSTANCE_TYPE \
  --image-id AMI_ID \
  --block-device-mappings '[{"DeviceName":"/dev/xvdf","Ebs":{"VolumeSize":SIZE,"VolumeType":"TYPE"}}]' \
  --region REGION \
  --ebs-optimized

Allocating an Elastic IP and associating it with the instance

If this is a production instance, we strongly recommend allocating an Elastic IP (EIP) and associating it with the instance before proceeding to GitHub Enterprise Server configuration. Otherwise, the public IP address of the instance will not be retained after instance restarts. For more information, see "Allocating an Elastic IP Address" and "Associating an Elastic IP Address with a Running Instance" in the Amazon documentation.

Both primary and replica instances should be assigned separate EIPs in production High Availability configurations. For more information, see "Configuring GitHub Enterprise Server for High Availability."

Configuring the GitHub Enterprise Server instance

1. Copy the virtual machine's public DNS name, and paste it into a web browser.
2. At the prompt, upload your license file and set a management console password. For more information, see "Managing your GitHub Enterprise license."
3. In the Management Console, configure and save your desired settings. For more information, see "Configuring the GitHub Enterprise Server appliance."
4. The instance will restart automatically.
5. Click Visit your instance.

Further reading

• "System overview"