📅 May 2, 2022

Running Blazor Server on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)

I recently worked on a side project (dotnetnewjob.com) using Blazor Server and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This was new territory for me. I was able to get my hands dirty setting up an Ubuntu server on a VM running in the cloud. My day job involves a lot of on-prem hosting so this involved a lot of trial and error.

OCI has some extremely generous free offerings:

Always Free cloud services

Services you can use for an unlimited time.

• Two Oracle Autonomous Databases with powerful tools like Oracle APEX and Oracle SQL Developer
• Two AMD Compute VMs
• Up to 4 instances of ARM Ampere A1 Compute with 3,000 OCPU hours and 18,000 GB hours per month
• Block, Object, and Archive Storage; Load Balancer and data egress; Monitoring and Notifications
• 2 AMD based Compute VMs with 1/8 OCPU** and 1 GB memory each
• Arm-based Ampere A1 cores and 24 GB of memory usable as 1 VM or up to 4 VMs with 3,000 OCPU hours and - 18,000 GB hours per month
• 2 Block Volumes Storage, 200 GB total
• 10 GB Object Storage – Standard
• 10 GB Object Storage – Infrequent Access
• 10 GB Archive Storage
• Resource Manager: managed Terraform
• 5 OCI Bastions

I'm able to run my Blazor Server app on a cloud hosted VM with 4 cores and 24 GB of RAM for free. Nice.

I documented my steps as I went through configuring Ubuntu to work with Blazor Server. Below are some of the steps.

Connect SSH

• You need to remove inherited permissions on the private key
• Set the current user to be the only user with permissions
• Backup your keys

{
    "name": "foo ssh profile",
    "acrylicOpacity": 0.8,
    "colorScheme": "One Half Dark",
    "commandline": "ssh -i C:\\keys\\foo.key ubuntu@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx",
    "experimental.retroTerminalEffect": false,
    "fontFace": "Cascadia Code PL",
    "fontSize": 11,
    "fontWeight": "normal",
    "icon": "ms-appx:///ProfileIcons/pwsh.png",
    "useAcrylic": true
}

Install Dotnet

AMD

wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/20.04/packages-microsoft-prod.deb -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo apt update
sudo apt install apt-transport-https
sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-sdk-6.0

Arm64

curl -SL -o dotnet.tar.gz https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet
sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/dotnet
sudo tar -zxf dotnet.tar.gz -C /usr/share/dotnet
sudo ln -s /usr/share/dotnet/dotnet /usr/bin/dotnet
dotnet --version

run dotnet --version to verify

Install Nginx

sudo apt update

sudo apt install nginx

sudo systemctl enable nginx

sudo systemctl start nginx

Configure Nginx

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

Initial Nginx config

server
{
        listen       80;
        server_name  xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx;
        root         /usr/share/nginx/html;
        index index.html;

        location /
        {
        }
}

Configure Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW)

sudo ufw enable

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'

Reboot

sudo reboot

Verify setup/Nginx so far

Navigate to public IP and you should see the Welcome to nginx! page.

Setup ssh profile for scp

• Navigate to C:\Users\<username>\.ssh\config

• Add the following profile

Host foo-profile
    HostName xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
    User ubuntu
    IdentityFile "C:\\keys\\foo.key"
    IdentitiesOnly yes
    Port 22
    ServerAliveInterval 60

Publish dotnet files to server

sudo mkdir /srv/FooProject

sudo chown ubuntu /srv/FooProject

dotnet publish -r linux-x64 --self-contained false

rm -r * for deleting all files, directories, and sub-directories in current directory

scp -r C:\dev\FooProject\publish\* foo-profile:/srv/FooProject

Create/register the service for the Blazor app

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/FooProject.service

[Unit]
Description=FooProject app

[Service]
Type=notify
ExecStart=dotnet /srv/FooProject/FooProject.dll
WorkingDirectory=/srv/FooProject
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
Environment=ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable FooProject.service

sudo systemctl start projectname.service

Reload service with sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Configure Nginx for Blazor Server

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

map $http_connection $connection_upgrade {
 "~*Upgrade" $http_connection;
 default keep-alive;
}

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx;
        root /srv/www/var/www;

        location /
        {
                proxy_pass http://localhost:5000/;
                proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
                proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
                proxy_cache off;
                proxy_http_version 1.1;
                proxy_read_timeout 100s;
                proxy_set_header Host $host;
                proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
         }
}

# development | dotnet | blazor