COP Conference Lecture - Student Server Infrastructure

This project uses Pulumi to provision AWS EC2 instances for educational purposes, automatically creating student user accounts with comprehensive logging via CloudWatch.

🎯 Features

• Multi-Stack Support: Separate configurations for different classes (class-a, class-b...)
• Automated Student Account Creation: Creates Linux users with password authentication
• SSH Key Management: Uses your local SSH public key for access
• Real-time Logging: All student shell activity logged to CloudWatch
• Security Group Configuration: SSH access with proper firewall rules
• CloudWatch Integration: Centralized log monitoring and retention

📋 Prerequisites

• Node.js (v14 or later)
• Pulumi CLI
• AWS CLI configured with appropriate credentials

🚀 Quick Start

1. Clone and install dependencies:

   npm install

2. Configure AWS credentials:

   aws configure

3. Select a stack (class):

   # For class-a
   pulumi stack select class-a
   
   # For class-b
   pulumi stack select class-b

4. Configure students (optional):

   Each stack is configured with specific students in the respective Pulumi.<stack>.yaml files. To modify students, edit the appropriate configuration file:

   config:
     aws:region: us-east-1
     cop-conference-lecture:students: '[ "student1", "student2", "student3" ]'

5. Deploy the infrastructure:

   pulumi up

6. Get connection details:

   pulumi stack output publicIp
   pulumi stack output publicDns

🔐 Access Methods

Student Access

Students can connect via SSH using password authentication:

• Username: Their assigned student name (e.g., student1)
• Password: Same as username (e.g., student1)

ssh student1@<public-ip>
# Password: student1

Note: Password authentication is enabled for educational purposes in this lab environment. This is not recommended for production systems due to security concerns.

Admin Access

Administrators can connect using SSH key authentication:

• Username: ec2-user (default AWS user)
• Authentication: SSH public key (eg. ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)

ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa ec2-user@<public-ip>

📊 Monitoring & Logging

• CloudWatch Logs: All student shell activity is captured
• Log Group: <stack-name>-logs
• Log Retention: 7 days
• Log Files:
  • /var/log/cloud-init-output.log - Instance initialization
  • /var/log/student-logs.log - Student shell activity

🔧 Customization

You can customize the deployment by modifying the StudentServer constructor in index.ts:

const studentServer = new StudentServer(pulumi.getStack(), {
  pubKey,
  students,
  instanceType,
  amiId,
});

Purpose: Educational infrastructure for coding workshops