Virtual private setup for production grade Neo4J

VPS detail

Provider

www.ssdnodes.com

VPS capability testing

• • Its ubuntu based Linux

  • No snapshot support without additional purchase of backup plan

Troubleshoot help using ubuntu command

Reboot VPS command

Command:

$reboot

It correctly reboots the VPS and sometime after, VM is again accessible.

Check uptime of VPS

$uptime

It indicates if the VPS is rebooted which caused issue

Example for checking uptime

root@ranchimall4:~# uptime

04:57:49 up 9 min, 1 user, load average: 0.03, 0.14, 0.09

Avoid ssh hang in PC

Use ServerAliveInterval option for connecting to the VPS

$ssh -o ServerAliveInterval=30 root@172.93.48.214

Refer: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25084288/keep-ssh-session-alive and https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3026/what-options-serveraliveinterval-and-clientaliveinterval-in-sshd-config-exac

HTTP access is not working from the client machine

netstat command helps. Check if server is listening on the port

Checking if 7474 is up

$ sudo netstat -atpun | grep 7474

sudo: unable to resolve host ranchimall4

tcp6 0 0 :::7474 :::* LISTEN 1058/docker-proxy

Admin help

VM infra setup

• Set timezone (Refer here)

VM User account management

• For creating a new user

$adduser <username>

• Add sudo permission to existing user

#usermod -aG sudo <username>

Monitoring

VPS audit log monitoring via Syslog

• Configure /etc/rsyslog.conf with syslog server detail

• Ensure that /etc/hosts has the hostname entry for 127.0.0.1 (It is used as machine name while sending log)

• Restart service (service rsyslog restart)

• Verify the log in syslog server

Refer https://www.tecmint.com/install-rsyslog-centralized-logging-in-centos-ubuntu/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2zgMfxYTVc

Neo4J logging syslog

Refer here for the configuration

Running Neo4J server in secure mode

By default, neo4j starts at http. For https based config. please refer here

Running Neo4j server as non-root process

TBD for docker container (Need to find the approach for docker-compose)

By default, docker starts process as root.

Use --user option for this. Ensure, the user you provide should have the necessary read and write permissions to any mounted folders.

To change directory ownership, please use chown command (refer: below screenshot)

Refer: https://neo4j.com/docs/operations-manual/current/docker/introduction/#docker-user, https://github.com/neo4j/docker-neo4j/issues/232

Use Neo4j Browser to change password on first boot

Use :server change-password option. Refer https://passwordsgenerator.net for strong password generation

Configure periodic dump or incremental backup and restore

Incremental backup is paid. Periodic dump is free and steps are at here. It helps to recover DB to last snapshot. Per day backup can be considered.

If you really want to perform incremental backup, lease refer here for the setup

Create cron job for this (daily preferred). Refer https://www.guru99.com/crontab-in-linux-with-examples.html

Neo4J user management

This is needed for providing fine grained access to user. Role based permission is based on enterprise license (paid). Need to check other approach

Reference

https://passwordsgenerator.net