TL;DR - Here’s a fancy one command script to build your own JupyterHub in the (AWS) cloud: (click)

The need

I occasionally need a reliable, secure and sharable jupyter(hub) installation. The combination of the three requires a bit of thought and sysadmin maintenance later on. My wish list is usually: https connection, authentication for multiple users and maintainable Python virtual environments.

The implementation

  • As I do this just enough to forget what I did the last time I wanted the whole process scripted. I chose Cloudformation due to the fact deployments can easily be deleted with another command.
  • The script implements a JupyterHub installation on EC2 machine. Supervisord restarts JupyterHub on machine restart.
  • TODO: kernels other than python3 in separate virtualenvs.
  • TODO: easy user management.

The How-To

  • Pre-requirement: have AWS CLI installed and configured on your system.
  • Download the script and store it to a file, e.g.: jh.yml
  • Run the following to create the EC2 machine (takes a couple of minutes, even when the machine is up it is not necessarily ready yet): 
    aws cloudformation create-stack \
--template-body file://jh.yml \
--profile <YOUR_USER_PROFILE> \
--stack-name jupyterhub \
--parameters ParameterKey=KeyName,ParameterValue=<YOUR_KEYPAIR_NAME> \
             ParameterKey=InstanceType,ParameterValue=t2.micro
  • Log into your EC2 machine ssh ubuntu@<YOUR_EC2_MACHINE_IP> and create password for ubuntu (sudo passwd ubuntu). Create more users if you want them (e.g. sudo adduser bob).
  • To access the machine open https://<YOUR_EC2_MACHINE_IP> and use one of the users credentials (ubuntu will be the admin user).
  • Run the following to destroy the EC2 machine: 
    aws cloudformation delete-stack --profile rok --stack-name jupyterhub

The code