Using aws gamelift with acmpca

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

AWS GameLift is a managed service for hosting dedicated game servers. It abstracts away the complexity of scaling and managing servers for multiplayer games. AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority (ACM PCA) is a private certificate service that helps you manage the lifecycle of your private certificates.

The common use case for combining GameLift with ACM PCA would be to secure the game client to server communication using TLS certificates. Game servers would use certificates issued by ACM PCA to provide a secure and trusted connection for game clients.

To set this up, you would need to:

1. Create a private certificate authority (PCA) with AWS Certificate Manager.
2. Issue a certificate that GameLift can use.
3. Create a GameLift build or script that includes your game server code.
4. Configure a GameLift fleet using the issued certificate for secure communication.

Below is a Pulumi TypeScript program that demonstrates how you can use Pulumi to provision GameLift resources and a certificate from ACM PCA for securing game server communication.

```typescript
import * as aws from "@pulumi/aws";
import * as pulumi from "@pulumi/pulumi";

// Create an AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority (ACM PCA)
const certificateAuthority = new aws.acmpca.CertificateAuthority("exampleCA", {
    type: "SUBORDINATE",
    certificateAuthorityConfiguration: {
        keyAlgorithm: "RSA_4096",
        signingAlgorithm: "SHA512WITHRSA",
        subject: {
            commonName: "example.com",
        },
    },
    permanentDeletionTimeInDays: 7,
    revocationConfiguration: {
        crlConfiguration: {
            enabled: true,
            expirationInDays: 365,
            customCname: "crl.example.com",
            s3BucketName: "my-bucket",
        },
    },
});

// Issue a certificate that GameLift can use (Note: Signing a CSR would normally happen outside of Pulumi)
const gameServerCertificate = new aws.acmpca.Certificate("gameServerCertificate", {
    certificateAuthorityArn: certificateAuthority.arn,
    certificateSigningRequest: "MY_CSR", // Replace with your actual CSR
    signingAlgorithm: "SHA256WITHRSA",
    templateArn: "arn:aws:acmpca:::template/EndEntityCertificate/V1",
    validity: {
        type: "DAYS",
        value: 365,
    },
});

// Create a GameLift build or script (assuming you've got the build and script ready)
const gameBuild = new aws.gamelift.Build("exampleBuild", {
    // Insert your game build configurations here, e.g., storageLocation and operatingSystem
});

// Creating a game fleet using the issued certificate for secure communication
const gameFleet = new aws.gamelift.Fleet("exampleFleet", {
    buildId: gameBuild.id,
    ec2InstanceType: "c5.large", // Instance type for your game servers
    ec2InboundPermissions: [{ // Example permissions, adjust according to your game's requirements
        fromPort: 7777,
        toPort: 7777,
        ipRange: "0.0.0.0/0",
        protocol: "TCP",
    }],
    certificateConfiguration: {
        certificateType: "DISABLED", // Update this when you have the certificate ready to use
    },
    // Additional configurations as required for your fleet
});

// Exporting the fleet and certificate ARNs to access them outside of Pulumi
export const fleetArn = gameFleet.arn;
export const certificateArn = gameServerCertificate.arn;
```

The program starts by importing the necessary AWS and Pulumi modules. We then define and provision a Certificate Authority and a GameLift build, which refers to your game's code and assets. Afterwards, we create a GameLift fleet, which is the group of servers that will run your game sessions.

Remember, for the certificate signing request (CSR), you would normally generate this outside of your infrastructure code. The CSR is part of the process for creating a certificate issued by your private CA, which your game clients can trust. The placeholder "MY_CSR" should be replaced with your actual CSR in production.

Please note that Pulumi programs execute asynchronously, and the resource properties such as ARNs are Output values, which are not directly accessible until the promises have resolved. This is why we're exporting them, so you can use the values in other parts of your program or reference them in the Pulumi stack outputs.

For complete instructions on setting up and managing your AWS resources for GameLift and ACM PCA, refer to the [AWS GameLift Documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/gamelift/latest/developerguide/) and [AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority Documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm-pca/latest/userguide/PcaWelcome.html).

Remember to replace placeholders (like "MY_CSR" or the storage location for the game build) with actual values from your environment and adjust the fleet and build configurations to match your game's requirements. Additionally, error handling and resource dependency management (like awaiting the issuance of certificates before creating the fleet) should be considered for production environments.