awscdk-minecraft 🧱

The goal of this project is to make a single pip-installable package that allows anyone to provision an entire, cheap, Minecraft-server-hosting Platform as a Service to their personal Amazon Web Services account.

Login

Start a server

Get the IP address

Connect

Play!

Usage

(1) Be sure to have the the following installed:

• Python 3.8 or higher
• NodeJS 14 or higher (a dependency of the AWS CDK CLI)
• AWS CDK CLI
• Docker (should be installed and running)

Note: This library makes use of some of AWS's public docker images. You will need to log into AWS's public docker registry (public.ecr.aws).

# get a temporary login session to public.ecr.aws
aws ecr-public get-login-password --region us-east-1 | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin public.ecr.aws

(2) Install the AWS CDK stack exposed by this package

pip install awscdk-minecraft

(3) Use it in your CDK app

# app.py
import os

from aws_cdk import App, Environment
from cdk_minecraft import MinecraftPaasStack

APP = App()

MinecraftPaasStack(
   APP,
   "awscdk-minecraft",
   # login_page_domain_name_prefix just needs to be unique across all AWS accounts
   login_page_domain_name_prefix="mlops-club-minecraft-login"
)

APP.synth()

Note: app.py is an AWS Cloud Development Kit concept. If you are not familiar with AWS CDK and what an app.py file is, you can read more about it in the AWS CDK docs.

(4) Create a Cognito User in the AWS Console

You will need to register a user in AWS Cognito UI so that you can log into the website deployed by the stack. A Cognito User Pool is created by the stack for this purpose. You can create a user in that user pool. It will be in whichever region you deployed the stack to.

(5) Play!

One of the stack outputs will be the URL of the Minecraft Platform frontend. Visit the site, log in, and start your server!

Share this link with friends and create Cognito users for them as well if you want them to be able to start and stop the server, too.

Otherwise, just share the IP address with any friends you'd like to be able to join the game.

Advanced Usage

📌 Note: For a complete, working example of the advanced usage, you can refer to this other repository.

Pretty domain name

You can add the components of your minecraft stack as subdomains of a custom domain name.

You will need to have a domain name registered with AWS Route53.

For example, for the domain mlops-club.org you can create these mappings:

• minecraft-paas.mlops-club.org -> the PaaS UI to start/stop the server
• server.minecraft-paas.mlops-club.org -> the minecraft server, whenever the EC2 instance is running

# app.py
import os

from aws_cdk import App, Environment
from cdk_minecraft import MinecraftPaasStack

APP = App()

MinecraftPaasStack(
   APP,
   "awscdk-minecraft",
   # login_page_domain_name_prefix just needs to be unique across all AWS accounts
   login_page_domain_name_prefix="mlops-club-minecraft-login"
)

APP.synth()

Connecting to the server over SSH

After starting a temporary EC2 instance with the minecraft server, you can connect to it over SSH if you set up a keypair.

1. Create a keypair, for example, using an existing SSH keypair.

   # create a new keypair from ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
   SSH_KEY_PAIR_NAME=eric-key
   aws ec2 import-key-pair --key-name $SSH_KEY_PAIR_NAME --public-key-material file://~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub --profile <your-aws-profile> --region <your-minecraft-aws-region>

   If you have trouble with this command, you can always create the key pair in the AWS Console.

2. Register the keypair with your stack.

   # app.py
   
   ...
   
   MinecraftPaasStack(
      APP,
      "awscdk-minecraft",
      ...
      ssh_key_pair_name="my-keypair",
   )
   
   ...

3. Connect to the instance when the server is running.

   ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa ec2-user@<instance-ip-address>

Customizing the server and running commands as admin

The Minecraft server runs on the EC2 instance using docker-compose.

The container is called itzg/docker-minecraft-server. Specifically, using an optimized Minecraft server JAR called Paper.

Paper is a fork of the popular Spigot server, which in turn is a fork of CraftBukkit. Spigot and Bukkit "plugins" (mods) like WorldEdit are supported by Paper.

The file structure of the server is like this:

/minecraft
├── docker-compose.yml
└── minecraft-data/     # mounted volume
    ├── ...
    └── server.properties

To issue commands on the server:

# connect to the instance
ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa ec2-user@<instance-ip-address>

# operate as root to have docker privileges
sudo su

# start an RCON session
docker exec -i minecraft rcon-cli

Much more detailed documentation for operating the minecraft server can be found in the itzg/docker-minecraft-server docs:

Image taken from itzg/docker-minecraft-server

Contributing

This project started as a December 2022 month-long Hackathon.

Contributors can expect to come away with an enviable amount of real-world cloud architecture experience :D

Architecture

The project has 5 components:

1. awscdk-minecraft/ the Python package. Uses AWS CDK to create the infrastructure. The other folders in this repository are artifacts that this package includes (and deploys!).
2. minecraft-platform-frontend/ a React/TypeScript website where users can start/stop a Minecraft server. The awscdk-minecraft package deploys this as a static website in an S3 bucket.
3. minecraft-platform-backend-api/ a REST API written with the FastAPI framework that facilitates the functionality exposed in the frontend. The awscdk-minecraft package deploys this API as in a serverless way using AWS Lambda, API Gateway, and Cognito.
4. minecraft-platform-backup-service a sidecar container that runs alongside the itzg/minecraft-server container (the Minecraft server) on the EC2 instance. It backs up the save files every N minutes, and restores from the most recent backup when the EC2 starts up.
5. awscdk-minecraft-server-deployer/ another AWS CDK package. This package is specifically responsible for creating and destroying an EC2 instance with the Minecraft server application running on it. This package itself is built into a Docker image. The awscdk-minecraft package builds the Docker image with this package inside. Then, when users ask the minecraft-platform-backend-api to create or destroy a Minecraft server. The REST API runs an instance of this Docker image which actually carries out the request.

The setup has only been tested for Linux and MacOS, not Windows :(. If you're on windows, you'll have the best contributor experience using the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2).

Useful links

💡 Click the images to go to each collaboration tool.

💡 Bookmark this repository so you can get quick access to these links.

Our virtual park (for remote collab)	Slack, in the #hackathon channel
Roadmap, tasks	Architecture
mlops-club AWS account login page	Similar project with reference code / resources

How do I run this project locally?

TL;DR, install node and just.

# install "just"; it's like "make", but less frustrating
brew install just

# install the project's python packages and pre-commit
just install

Alternatively, without brew:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://just.systems/install.sh | bash -s -- --to <DEST IN YOUR PATH>

where DEST IN YOUR PATH refers to a directory that is present in your $PATH environment variable. For example, you might have in your ~/.bashrc the line PATH=~/bin:$PATH to look for programs in ~/bin first, which would be the "DEST" supplied above.

You also need node to execute any code related to AWS CDK, which you can install with brew install nvm and nvm install 18.

How do I add code?

Branching strategy: trunk-based development with feature branches

We use pull requests. Create new branches based on trunk for experimentation, then open a PR for it. You don't have to wait until you want to merge code to open a PR. For this project, the main purpose of doing PRs is to share knowledge and get early feedback on your ideas.

Linting

Passing the pre-commit checks isn't a huge deal. They are mostly for your own benefit to prevent you committing things to the repo that you don't want. You can always override pre-commit by running

# run all of the quality checking tools against your code
just lint

# skip the quality checking tools locally
git commit -m "I really want to commit this large file" --no-verify

Git configuration

📌 Note: you may want to use a different email/username for this repository than you typically use on your development machine. You can set your git settings locally like so:

git config --local user.email [email protected]
git config --local user.user my-github-username

Notes on commits

DON'T COMMIT...

• credentials. Feel free to put them in a .env file, but make sure it's gitignored!
• large files (large CSV, ML model weights, C binaries, video, etc.) use git LFS rather than committing it directly.
• unformatted code

The pre-commit hooks setup for this repo when you ran just install will remind you about these each time you commit :)

Features

• Custom URL for site
• Custom URL for minecraft server
• Specify existing SSH key pair to look up
• Specify server version