Purpose

As of 01 Jun 2020 , the Jira Data Center Quick Start on AWS now allow you to deploy without a Bastion host.

This also means you can safely remove the Bastion host from existing deployments created through the AWS Quick Starts. In this article, we explain how you can do this.

Solution

This solution involves updating two stacks in AWS:

• The Jira Data Center stack, where you need to remove the application nodes' dependency on the Bastion node.
• The Atlassian Standard Infrastructure (ASI) stack, where you remove the Bastion host altogether. 

You can only remove the Bastion host from the ASI stack once you've updated the Jira Data Center stack.

Step 1: Identify your Atlassian Standard Infrastructure (ASI) stack

If your deployment's root stack has the description Atlassian Jira Data Center with VPC, then this will be your ASI stack as well. Once you've identified this, proceed to Step 2.

If your deployment's root stack has the description Atlassian Jira Data Center QS(0035), then your ASI stack is another deployment's root stack. This stack uses any of the following Descriptions:

Step 2: Update the templates used by your existing deployment

If you deployed directly from the original AWS Quick Start, your templates will already be updated. You can then move on to Step 3.

If you deployed from your own copy of the AWS Quick Start (as recommended in Launching the Quick Start from your own S3 bucket), then you'll need to re-upload the updated templates to your S3 bucket:

1. Clone the Quick Start templates (including all of its submodules) to your local machine. From the command line, run:
   

   git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/aws-quickstart/quickstart-atlassian-jira.git

2. (Optional) The Quick Start templates repository uses the directory structure required by the Quick Start interface. If needed (for example, to minimize storage costs), you can remove all other files except the following:

   quickstart-atlassian-jira 
├─ submodules 
│ └─ quickstart-atlassian-services 
│ └─ templates 
│ └── quickstart-vpc-for-atlassian-services.yaml 
└─ templates 
├── quickstart-jira-dc-with-vpc.template.yaml 
└── quickstart-jira-dc.template.yaml

3. Choose which Quick Start template your deployment is based on:

   • quickstart-jira-dc-with-vpc.template.yaml

   • quickstart-jira-dc.template.yaml

4. In the template you’ve chosen, the QSS3BucketName default value is set to aws-quickstart. Replace this default with the name of your S3 bucket.

5. On the S3 bucket where your templates are stored, rename the root directory of your Quick Start templates:

   aws s3 --recursive mv s3://<bucket-name>/quickstart-atlassian-jira s3://<bucket-name>/quickstart-atlassian-jira-old

   This will allow you to upload a new version of those templates later on. See AWS CLI Command Reference -mv for more details.

6. Go into the parent directory of your local clone of the Quick Start templates. From there, upload all the files in local clone to your S3 bucket:

   aws s3 cp quickstart-atlassian-jira s3://<bucket-name> --recursive --acl public-read

Step 3: Unlink the Jira Data Center stack nodes from the Bastion host

Right now, some nodes in your deployment are dependent on the Bastion host. You need to remove this dependency before removing the Bastion host.

To do that, you'll need to first find your deployment's product stack. This stack should have the same Stack name as your deployment, and its Description will be  Atlassian Jira Data Center QS(0035). Once you find it, update it accordingly:

1. In the AWS console, go to Services > CloudFormation.
2. Toggle the View nested option to include all nested (as in, non-root) stacks.
3. Find your deployment's product stack. 

4. Select your product stack. When its stack information screen appears, click Update.

   If you're prompted by a recommendation to update through the root stack, it's because your product stack is nested. Select Update nested stack and click through to the next screen.

5. From the Select Template screen, select Use current template and click Next.

6. Set the new Use Bastion host parameter to false.

7. Click Next. Click through the next pages, and then to apply the change using the Update button.

At this point, the Jira Data Center stack nodes can no longer be accessed through the Bastion host. You can now safely remove it.

Step 4: Remove the Bastion host 

Now that the Jira nodes are no longer dependent on the Bastion host, you can remove the latter. You'll need to remove it from the ASI stack you identified in Step 1.

1. In the AWS console, go to Services > CloudFormation.
2. Select your ASI stack.

3. In the Stack Details screen, click Update Stack.

4. From the Select Template screen, select Use current template and click Next.

5. Set the new Deploy Bastion host parameter to false.

6. Click Next. Click through the next pages, and then to apply the change using the Update button.