Training Workspace Creation

This CDK Project allows automatic creation of all resources required for a training lab environment using AWS workspaces.

Prerequisite:

• An existing VPC with private subnets needs to exist. Those private subnets require access to AWS API Endpoints (e.g. via NAT Gateway)
• NPM and CDK need to be installed on your local machine
• obtain AWS authorizations via CLI (e.g. via awsume)

How to deploy

1. Copy the example.env file to .env and modify the required parameters

AWS_USER_AMOUNT=4
AWS_BUNDLEID=wsb-8vbljg4r6

AWS_USER_AMOUNT refers to the amount of users to create. They will be called training01 - training 0n (password for each is username + !).

AWS_BUNDLEID refers to a AWS Workspaces Bundle that needs to be provided. Check the AWS documentation to find out more.

2. install dependencies and create transpile ts to js files

   I provided a script that performs those steps on linux. It might show tsc errors for some aws-sdk modules. Those can be ignored.

chmod a+x prepareRepoForDeployment.sh
./prepareRepoForDeployment.sh

3. to deploy run

cdk deploy

4. approve deployment

Do you wish to deploy these changes (y/n)?

Verify Deployment

Deployment will take some time (5 - 10 minutes). Afterwards you can verify it by checking the following in AWS Console:

1. If Directory Registration was successful

   https://eu-west-1.console.aws.amazon.com/workspaces/home?region=eu-west-1#directories:directories

2. Make sure that web access is possible (expand directory to view )

   Unfortunately, there is a bug in the Workspaces API. Therefore it is currently required to perform a manual activity after deployment. The bug is already addressed to AWS support.

   1. Access Settings on Directories Page
   2. Open Access Control Options
   3. Uncheck Web Access and Save/Update
   4. Check Web Access again and Save/Update
   5. Verify that web access is active now on overview page
   6. You might need to

3. Check if Workspaces were created

   https://eu-west-1.console.aws.amazon.com/workspaces/home?region=eu-west-1#listworkspaces

   Workspaces stay in pending state until they are finally accessible. Here, you also find the Registration Code, that the users require to log in.

   

   Default Password of the users are username + "!"

   Web Access is possible via the following Link: https://clients.amazonworkspaces.com/webclient

Delete Stack

To delete stack, run

cdk destroy

-> Currently I am still facing an error that the VPC that gets created fails to delete... It currently has to be deleted manually after the delete job runs into a timeout. Probably some stupid dependency issue. Will look for a solution ASAP.

Open Bugs

• Stack Deletion fails due to some dependency of the VPC
• Bugs in AWS API:
• 1. Web Access is not allowed automatically (described above)
• 2. Workspaces occasionally get launched into a public subnet. There is not explaination but it being a bug in AWS as well.