odbx.science

This repo contains some notes about the server running at odbx.science.

This implementation of an OPTIMADE server builds upon the reference server in the following way:

• Additional routes from odbx.science/<endpoint> that mimic optimade.odbx.science/<endpoint> but provides rich HTML displays of the data.

Hardware

As of 02/12/19, the server runs as an RCS OpenStack VM (quadcore Haswell, 8 GB RAM), with three virutal disks attached:

• /dev/vda, 80 GB, mounted at / contains OS and apps
• /dev/vdb, 1 TB, mounted at /data/sql, contains SQL database for OQMD
• /dev/vdc, 500 GB, mounted at /data/mongo, contains our MongoDB.

Services & security

The site now runs as 5 coupled docker containers, with shared /tmp/ volume, deployed and built with docker-compose:

• mongo runs a near-default MongoDB.
• odbx runs gunicorn that connects to the mongo via /tmp/mongodb-27017.sock and serves the HTML responses. (As of 26/04/20, this server also runs the JSON API temporarily at odbx.science/optimade.
• odbx_rest runs gunicorn that connects to the mongo via /tmp/mongodb-27017.sock and serves the REST API as JSON at optimade.odbx.science.
• nginx runs nginx that takes HTTP/HTTPS requests and forwards them onto gunicorn via the appropriate socket, as well as hosting static content from ./odbx/static/
• certbot calls certbot to attempt to renew SSL certificates every 12 hours.

Domains & SSL

• The domain odbx.science was purchased until 2023 from Namecheap, which currently redirects to the public IP of the VM.
• All *@odbx.science email addresses currently redirect to my personal account.
• The domain came with a 1 year SSL certificate (~£4 year after). Since 26/04/20 certbot has been used to get free SSL from Let's Encrypt. This should renew automatically (see notes about certbot).