If you don’t already have an Amazon Web Services account, you will need to register for one and set up your credentials. Visit the EC2 homepage and follow the “Sign Up Now” link.
Note
Although every effort has been made to make this process as streamlined as possible, if you’ve never set up a server before, you may find it rather daunting. In this case we suggest pairing up with an engineer until you are through the setup process.
Before setting up your PANDA server, you will need to configure your security group so that web requests will be able to reach it.
To do this, visit the Security Groups tab of the EC2 Management Console. Select the “default” security group from the list, and then click the “Inbound” tab in the bottom pane of the window. Add rules for HTTP, HTTPS and SSH. If you don’t mind your PANDA being accessible to anyone on the internet, you can enter 0.0.0.0/0 in the Source field for each. More discerning users may wish to enter a private IP or subnet assigned to their organization.
Note
If you’re not sure what to enter for the Source field it would be wise to consult with your IT department to find out if your organization has a private subnet.
This is the absolute simplest way to make a PANDA. Visit the Instances tab and click “Launch Instance”. Select “Launch Class Wizard” and click “Continue”. Click the “Community AMIs” tab and search for ami-fcf32095. It may take a moment to return a result. When it does, click “Select”.
On the next page you’ll need to select an Instance Type. You are welcome to use (and pay for) a more powerful server, but PANDA has been optimized with the expectation that most organizations will run it on an m1.small instance. (At a cost of roughly $70 per month.) This should provide adequate capacity for small- to medium-sized groups. We don’t recommend trying to run it on a t1.micro unless you will only be using it for testing.
Once you’ve selected your instance type, click “Continue”. Keep clicking “Continue” and accepting all the default options until the “Continue” button becomes a “Launch” button. Click “Launch”.
This method is slightly more complex, but also provides greater feedback for users who want to understand more about how PANDA works.
Visit the Instances tab and click “Launch Instance”. Select “Launch Class Wizard” and click “Continue”. Click the “Community AMIs” tab and search for ami-1af12273. This is the official Ubuntu 11.10 AMI. It may take a moment to return a result. When it does, click “Select”.
On the next page you’ll need to select an Instance Type. See the notes above regarding instance types. We recommend you select m1.small.
Click “Continue” and keep clicking “Continue” and accepting all the default options until the “Continue” button becomes a “Launch” button. Click “Launch”.
Once your new server is available, SSH into it and execute the following commands:
wget https://raw.github.com/pandaproject/panda/master/setup_panda.sh
sudo bash setup_panda.sh
The disadvantage of this method is that you will need to wait while the setup script is run. This normally takes 15-20 minutes.
Note
An installation log will be created at /var/log/panda-install.log in case you need to review any part of the process.
Once you’ve completed your selected installation method you’ll want to verify that your new PANDA is available. You can browse directly using to your instance using its “Public DNS Name”. Navigate to the EC2 Instances tab and select your instance. The public DNS name will be listed among the instance details in the bottom pane. It will look something like this: ec2-50-16-157-39.compute-1.amazonaws.com. Visit this in your browser, like so:
http://ec2-50-16-157-39.compute-1.amazonaws.com/
Once you have verified that your instance is online you may wish to configure DNS, E-mail and/or Secure connections (SSL).