In this tutorial, we will deploy OpenDAX3 - an open-source cloud-native cryptocurrency exchange software platform on the Digital Ocean cloud.

OpenDAX™ stands for Open-Source Digital Assets Exchange is an open-source software which allows users to build a fully featured exchange service to facilitate trading of digital assets and cryptocurrencies.

Digital Ocean is a cloud infrastructure provider which will host the OpenDAX platform on its servers.

Sign up on Digital Ocean with your email or with Google or Github.

After signing in, set up the payment methods. Digital Ocean only allows credit cards or Paypal for now.

After providing the necessary details, you might have to top up with at least $5 dollars to proceed forward. There is also a free 100 dollar credit offer(https://try.digitalocean.com/freetrialoffer) from which you can sign up using your email.

Once you are set up with payments. Digital Ocean redirects to their dashboard, where you can create a new OpenDAX project. On the left-hand side, you will see a (+)new project button. Click on it, and you will see the following window

Fill up the fields and click on the green Create Project button, which will bring you to move the resources panel. Since we are

using the Digital ocean from scratch, there are no existing computing resources. We will click on the skip for now option.

4. Creating a droplet/Virtual Machine(VM)

After clicking skip for now, there is an option to get started with a new droplet for hosting your OpenDAX platform. Click on it

We have chosen 4GB, 80GB, 2CPU's for this tutorial, but the recommended requirements for OpenDAX are 12GB,8 CPU's, 300GB SSD disk space.

We are attaching block storage of 100GB to the VM for handling large OpenDAX project files.

Authentication will be done using SSH keys. I have already created my own key named hmehndiratta, but you can click on add a new SSH key and follow these digital Ocean instructions on How to Add SSH Keys to Droplets

Assign Resources to Project and Create droplet

Leave other options to default and scroll down to select a project as OpenDAX3, and click on the green create droplet button.

Now the Droplet/VM would become ready and would have a public IP assigned(This one has 64.227.103.148)

Connecting a domain to a DigitalOcean Droplet

To make the OpenDAX platform available to users. The Digital Ocean droplet has to be mapped to domain (www.example.com) which users will reach. There are many domain registrars available like GoDaddy, NameCheap, Hostgator, which provide domain names at easy rates. We are choosing Namecheap for this tutorial.

Setting up a domain is easy with NameCheap search for the desired domain name and buy. The domain will be activated just after the payment is made.

We have bought an OpenDAX testing domain called www.testopendax.xyz, which is active and running.

2. Connect it with Digital Ocean Name Servers

For connecting the domain to the digital ocean droplet, we have to add digital ocean name servers as a custom DNS*. For more detailed instructions, follow this guide from Namecheap

*Changes might take 24-48 hrs to reflect.

In your OpenDAX3 Digital ocean project, Click on the upper right create button and choose Domains/DNS.

Enter the domain, specify the OpenDAX3 project and click on add domain button

Now the domain (testopendax.xyz) redirects to nameservers mentioned in the Namecheap DNS settings.

Create a Manual DNS Record for connecting Droplet and Domain

Enter a hostname. In this case, we have entered "www" which will automatically add testopendax.xyz at the end of it, as shown in the screenshot.  Choose the recently created droplet for redirection, leave TTL to default(3600) and click create a record.

Now the droplet is connected to the Namecheap Domain and directs to Droplet IP as shown in the DNS records list.

Check Connection between Domain and Droplet

To check the connection between the domain and droplet IP, open https://whatismyipaddress.com/hostname-ip and enter your domain name. It should show your droplet IP.

Once the droplet is setup and the domain is connected to the droplet. We have to start the deployment of OpenDAX on droplet.

Open Terminal/Command Prompt on your local computer and ssh as an administrator into the droplet using this command

It will ask you to continue connecting say Yes, and you will see the following result.

We highly recommend installing using docker and docker-compose from the below links if you are using a different Linux distribution.

But If you are using Debian, execute these commands in order.

1. Update the apt package index and install packages to allow apt to use a repository over HTTPS:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install \
    apt-transport-https \
    ca-certificates \
    curl \
    gnupg \
    lsb-release

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg

3. Command to set up the stable repository.

echo \
    "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
    $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

4.Update the apt package index, and install the latest version of Docker Engine and containerd,

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Once all the above commands are executed. Run this command to check docker is installed.

1. Run this command to download the current stable release of Docker Compose:

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.28.5/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

How To Deploy OpenDAX3 On Digital Ocean

OpenDAX™ stands for Open-Source Digital Assets Exchange is open-source software that allows users to build a fully-featured exchange service to facilitate the trading of digital assets and cryptocurrencies.

Amazon Web Services(AWS) is a cloud infrastructure provider which will host the OpenDAX platform on its servers.

If you already have an account, sign in with your email as a root user.

After signing up, set up the payment methods. Amazon will charge your credit/debit card for a small amount(for security purposes). After providing the necessary details, your account will be activated and automatically qualify for a free tier to gain free, hands-on experience with the AWS products and services. Know more about AWS free tier here

After activation, to create a project. AWS provide a management console to use AWS services .Here we will create a new VM for the OpenDAX project using AWS EC2 service. In all services pane, you will see EC2.  Click on it.

You will see a dialog box to create a new instance. Click on the orange launch instance button, which will bring you to the configuration page for VM's

4. Creating a instance/Virtual Machine(VM)

After clicking on the launch instance, there is an option to search for a distribution/AMI for your OpenDAX platform.

We are using Debian 10 Linux distro for this tutorial.

Choose CPU,and RAM based on AWS Instance type

We have chosen the c4 family instance type for this tutorial which has 4vCPU's,7.5GiB ram, but the recommended requirements for OpenDAX are 12GiB and 8 vCPU's,

We don't need any advanced VM configuration, so leave it to default and move to the next step

We are attaching 200GB standard storage to the VM for handling large OpenDAX project files.

Leave steps 5 and 6 to default for right now and review VM configuration for launching.

Authentication will be done using SSH key pairs. Users who have already used AWS services already have a key pair. New users have to create a new one.

We are creating a new pair named opendax for this tutorial. Download the key pair; it will be in the format .pem.

Save the pair on the local computer project folder and click on launch instances.

Now the Instance/VM would be running and would have a public IP assigned(This one has 3.133.134.172)

To make the OpenDAX platform available to users. The AWS EC2 instance has to be mapped to a domain (www.example.com) which users will reach. There are many domain registrars available like GoDaddy, NameCheap, Hostgator, which provide domain names at easy rates. We are choosing Namecheap for this tutorial.

For connecting the domain to AWS, we have to create elastic IPs and hosted zone.

Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/. In the navigation pane, choose Network & Security, Elastic IPs.

For Public IPv4 address pool, choose Amazon's pool of IPv4 addresses  and click allocate



Now associate the allocated Elastic IP with the EC2 Instance by navigating on the Actions Pane and clicking on associate elastic IP address.


Enter the created EC2 instance and click associate.



Creating a Hosted Zone
Open the Route 53 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/route53/ with your signed-in AWS account, and in the navigation pane, choose Hosted zones and create a hosted zone.

It will redirect to a dialog where it will require a registered domain name and type. We will enter the domain we bought, and the public hosted zone as a type.

Once the hosted zone is created, AWS will automatically create NS(Nameservers) and SOA records by default. In the below screenshot NS record in the value pane contains four nameservers which we will add to Namecheap Domain settings for routing. But before that, we have to add an A-type DNS record for connecting the Namecheap Domain to Elastic IP associated with the EC2 instance.

To create a new A-type DNS record, click on the orange create record button on the upper right. See the screenshot below.

Clicking the create record button will require you to enter the record name here; we are adding www to the existing domain name. For value, we will be entering the Elastic IP associated with the EC2 instance. All other settings stay default.

For connecting the domain to the AWS, we have to add the AWS name servers as a custom DNS* in the Namecheap domain settings. For instructions, follow this guide from Namecheap.

Here is a screenshot of adding AWS nameservers in Namecheap domain settings.

Once the droplet is set up, and the domain is connected to the instance. We have to start the deployment of OpenDAX on the instance.

For accessing the Amazon EC2 instance, we are using an SSH tool called Putty client. Download the latest version here and follow this guide to securely SSH into AWS EC2 instance. Once you are successfully done connecting SSH keys and open an SSH client session using Putty

You will see a console window asking you to login with a Debian user name. By default, the user name is determined by the AMI that was specified when you launched the instance.

For Amazon Linux 2 or the Amazon Linux AMI, the user name is ec2-user.

For a CentOS AMI, the user name is centos.

For a Debian AMI, the user name is admin.

For a Fedora AMI, the user name is ec2-user or fedora.

For a RHEL AMI, the user name is ec2-user or root

For a SUSE AMI, the user name is ec2-user or root.

For an Ubuntu AMI, the user name is ubuntu.

Since we are using Debian, we will log in as admin

For installing OpenDAX components on the Debian distribution, we require root access.AWS does not allow

root access by default, as shown in the screenshot below.

We will first login as admin and enable SSH as root on AWS Debian using this small guide here. The guide works on all Linux distributions.

Once you have successfully logged in to the EC2 instance with the root user directly, you will see a console window indicating root access like the below screenshot.

1. Update the `apt` package index and install packages to allow `apt` to use a repository over HTTPS:

Hello, everyone! In this tutorial, we will deploy OpenDAX3 - an open-source cloud-native platform on the AWS cloud.

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