Marcus Cake

I met with a friend/mentor last week. We discussed a specific business problem and he asked me to evaluate alternatives and implement a solution. I chose to implement SugarCRM and use it to manage contacts, segment the customer base, and conduct campaigns. This provided a platform to restructure the marketing function of the business to be less reliant on redundant Web 1.0 distribution and more Web 2.0 (participation) and Web 3.0 (contribution). SugarCRM has been named best open source technology by CRM magazine.

In three hours on the weekend, I started an Amazon’s web server, waited for an hour to download and upload a file, and installed/configured the CRM and informed the team of their access credentials. I shared the event by sending a Twitter announcing this rapid deployment CRM and @sugarcrmatlanta asked “Do you have any links with more information?”

I have been building a public online industry network, or Facebook, for the financial market. I have extracted a few paragraphs from my “How to build an online network in 90 days with $25k” guide (currently in draft) to provide a mini-guide for @sugarcrmatlanta and the web community.

This article discusses how to create a virtual web server on the Amazon cloud and install/configure SugarCRM in less than an hour. It should actually take 30 minutes if you already have an Amazon account and Elasticfox installed. This is intended as a hackers technical general guide, rather than something a novice could do.

Objective - create a web server and implement an open source CRM in less than an hour
The key steps are outlined below.

1. Learn about SugarCRM
Why SugarCRM? I recommend that your review the five “Recorded role based demos” (sales, marketing, support, executive, admin) at http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/demo/sugar-suite.html

2. Learn about Amazon Web Services and open an account
Please read Why use Amazon Web Services?, Build an ebusiness on your desktop and drag it onto Amazon’s elastic cloud and category:Internet applications and hosting. You can open an account with Amazon web services here. Amazon offers different sized servers (or instances). Please read about pricing and instance types here.

3. Install Elasticfox into Firefox
Amazon Web Services is usually managed by a command prompt. Elasticfox is a firefox extension that provides a graphical interface that allows you to manage your virtual machines on Amazon’s cloud computing service. You can learn more about and download Elasticfox from here.

3. Learn about Webmin - an open source server management system
Typically, the management of a web server is complex and takes years of experience. Webmin is an open source software system that reduces the complexity signifcantly. We are going to use Webmin to manage our new server and avoid the text based instructions on the Virtualmin GPL AMI on EC2 configuration page. Virtualmin is a part of the Webmin system. I recommend you also review the Virtualmin vs. the rest page for a comparison of commercial and open source server management packages.
4. Use Elasticfox “KeyPairs” tab to create a new keypair
A keypair is a security device to control access to a web server. In Elasticfox, press the green button on the “keypairs” tab to create a new keypair. Type a name for the keypair and download the PEM file. We will need this PEM file later.

5. Use Elasticfox “Security groups” tab to define access to our server
A web server connects with other computers on the internet to exchange mail and server web pages. A web server listens on ports. For example, mail is typically exchange on ports 25 and 110. Web pages are delivered by Port 80. A web server starts life (typically) with all ports open. A port is like an open window on a house. If it is open, someone may climb in. We need to close the ports (or windows on our house) and just let in and out what we need to. This is called a firewall. A firewall simply prevents access through all ports (except the ports we want to). Amazon Security groups simply list the ports that should remain open. Use the green plus sign to “Create Security Group” called “webmin”. Highlight the “Webmin” security group. In the box on the lower half of the screen, please “Grant a new permission on the selected group”. Please add all the port numbers listed on the Virtualmin GPL AMI on EC2 configuration page. We can use this “security group” for any other Webmin server we launch in the future.

I had setup all the items above before. It is from this point that I started this project. This is when the clock started.

6. Use Elasticfox “AMIs and Instances tab” to Launch a Webmin web server “instance”
In Elasticfox, type “ami-c442a7ad” into the search box. This will list “virtualmin-gpl-3.56/image.manifest.xml”. Right click on AMI-c442a7ad and select “Launch instance of this AMI”. Please select the Instance type as small (or another size depending on your requirements), select the keypair you created above and make sure the “webmin” and “default” security groups are listed in the “Launch in” box. Press the launch button.

7. Wait for five minutes and take note of the Public DNS address
It will take approximately five minutes for Amazon to create the server and for it to be publicly available. Please refresh the Elasticfox interface. Eventually, a “Public DNS” will appear and State will be “running”. The “Public DNS” is the internet address of your web server. The four digits in the Public DNS are also the IP address of your server. This web server is now costing you money.

8. Setup Webmin to access through your browser
Type https://[enter public dns here]:10000 into your browser. The Webmin login screen should appear. The initial login is root and changeme.

Extract from Webmin documentation

• Click on the Webmin link in the top-left, open the Webmin category, click on Change Language and Theme, and enter a new password!
• To ensure that all packages are up to date, click on System Information at the bottom of the left frame. If you are prompted to install any packages on the information page that appears on the right, do so.
• Click back on the Virtualmin link on the top-left, and click on Create Virtual Server to create your first domain.

9. Setup DNS entries - let’s just assume this has been done
DNS is important and complex. It is difficult. This will not discuss the complexities of DNS server entries.

We need a memorable domain name for our CRM system, rather than the public DNS. Let’s assume we want www.domain.com/crm to be the internet address for our CRM. We need to tell the internet’s domain name system. We will assume the domain name domain.com is registered. We will assume this domain name has two name servers. We will assume that there is an A record for this domain name that points to the IP address of our Amazon server. I use www.dnsmadeeasy.com .

10. Setup our first virtual server or domain
Please learn more about Webmin by watching the video available here. Please setup www.domain.com in Webmin. The database name will be domain, the database username will be domain and the database password will be the virtual server administration password. You may get an error that mailman has not been installed. I recommend unchecking the “mailman” option for your new virtual server. The files for your web site will be stored under the /home directory on the web server. It will actually be something like /home/domain (without the .com) following. These are all created for you as part of the process. The /home/domain directory is where your web site can be copied.

You now have your own web server! How will you distribute (Web 1.0), participate (Web 2.0), contribute (Web 3.0) and transform (Web 4.0).

11. Upload and extract the SugarCRM files to your web server
Go to the www.sugarcrm web site, download the latest stable version of the Community (or free) edition. SugarCRM makes ZIP files available. I extracted the files from the ZIP archive on your desktop, rename the base directory to CRM and put the folder into a TAR files Portableapps 7-Zip Portable . The download from SugarCRM and upload to our new server can take time? Do I have to include upload/download time in my 30 minutes. You can use the Webmin / Others / Upload and Download / Upload to server function to upload your TAR file.

There is a much faster way to upload the files to the web server using the shell. You can use the “wget http://www.sugarcrm.com/….[sugar download]” command to transfer the file directly from the Sugar download location to your server. You can use the Linux command unzip to extract the files from the ZIP file to a location on your server. Type “unzip –help” for instructions on how to use the unzip command.

Whichever method you use, we want the SugarCRM files to be located in the /home/domain/public_html/crm directory on the server (which is www.domain.com/crm on the internet).

NOTE: I am not sure if this is a bug. The public_html directory is owned by domain:domain (being [server user]:[server group] when the virtual server is set up. This allows FTP access, but not web/internet access. I changed ownership of the public_html directory by executing the following command “chown -R apache:apache /home/domain/public_html” and “chmod -R 766 /home/domain/public_html”. Unfortunately, changing ownership to apache:apache means FTP access no longer works. This is inconvenient. I will do some research on this.

12. Install and configure SugarCRM
Type http://www.domain.com/install.php into your browser. This starts the SugarCRM installation process. It will check to make sure the server has all the software and file permissions to run. This is an easy process. Webmin comes with everything SugarCRM needs except three modifications.

You will need to change the PHP configuration at Webmin / PHP configuration / Manage / Resource limits. Maximum memory allocation needs to be set to at least 40M and Maximum file upload size need to be set to 6M. You will need the database name, database user and database user passwords (outlined above). You will also need to change the file permissions using the chown and chmod on the /home/domain/public_html directory as outlined above.

13. Login to SugarCRM as admin, add some new users and configure the system
Please type www.domain.com/crm into your browser. Login as Admin. Add some users. You can also review the “Admin” section, but I didn’t see anything I needed to change. You can turn off menu access to the features within the system if you want to keep it simple for your users.

14. Inform the team
You can now inform the team that a CRM is available at www.domain.com/crm. You would also include details of their access credentials and recommend they review the “Recorded role based demos” (above) and other online tutorials.

15. Explore new marketing strategies, campaigns and measure results
A CRM can delivers significant value. The SugarCRM presents new opportunities and efficiencies the marketing process. I am looking forward to using SugarCRM in “battle” and devising marketing strategies, implementing campaigns and measuring results. I plan to use multiple installations for different businesses.

16. Other things to do

Setup Putty for Shell access
We may need shell or command prompt access to the new server. If the server does not respond, we will need to do this. I use Putty Portable. Unfortunately, the PEM file that Amazon gives us can not be used directly by Putty. We need to convert it. Get Puttygen.exe from here and convert the PEM file to a PPK file required by Putty. Do not lose these files.

Open Putty. Type your Public DNS into the Hostname field. Under Connection / SSH / Auth, select your “Private key file for authentication” (ie; PPK file). On the Session screen, click on Open. Putty should open terminal access to your server. You do not need a password, the private key file is your password.

Other features of Webmin
Webmin can backup the virtual server (ie; domain.com) or databases on demand or on schedule. It is a comprehensive web server that can add new software packages on demand. A file viewer is at Web / Others / Filemanager. A command shell is at Webmin / Others / Command shell.

Amazon SugarCRM images
You should also know that you can start an Amazon Virtual Machine with a “turnkey” SugarCRM installation. Please search for Sugar in the “AMIs and Instances” tab. At the time of writing, there were only Version 4.5 images available. Webmin provides an easy way to manage the server and I recommend installing that rather than starting a Sugar image.

Webmin professional may install Sugar automatically
The paid version of Webmin/Virtualmin provides “81 easily installable applications” that can be installed under your domains at the click of a button. I am not sure if Sugar is included.
I hope this helps … I welcome feedback or suggested revisions if I have omitted a material step. I will try to release my “How to build an online network in 90 days for $25k” guide as soon as possible.

I also recommend you review the Category: Internet applications and hosting ,Can you put your life on an IPod (or USB key) and discard the laptop? and Syncronising and backing up files amongst teams and across the world.