BookCars

• In the Azure Portal, choose Create a resource and select the BookCars image.
• Pick your resource group, region and a size such as Standard_B2s.
• Under Networking, allow inbound 80, 8080 and 22.
• Create the VM and wait for it to boot. First boot provisions the database, generates the per-instance secrets and creates your administrator.

# Accept the Marketplace terms once per subscription (required before the first CLI deploy)
az vm image terms accept --urn sac1647283583153:bookcars-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest
az vm create \
  --resource-group my-bookcars-rg \
  --name bookcars \
  --image sac1647283583153:bookcars-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest \
  --size Standard_B2s \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --generate-ssh-keys \
  --public-ip-sku Standard
az vm open-port --resource-group my-bookcars-rg --name bookcars --port 80 --priority 900
az vm open-port --resource-group my-bookcars-rg --name bookcars --port 8080 --priority 910

ssh azureuser@<vm-ip>

MongoDB, the BookCars API and nginx start automatically after first boot. Confirm that they are active and listening:

sudo systemctl is-active mongod bookcars-api nginx ss -tln | grep -E ':27017 |:4002 |:80 |:8080 '

You should see all three services active. MongoDB listens on 127.0.0.1:27017 and the API on 127.0.0.1:4002. nginx serves the storefront on :80 and the admin panel on :8080.

The image ships no known credential. On first boot, BookCars' database is initialised fresh, a unique administrator is created, and the login is written to a root-only file. MongoDB runs as a replica set with key file internal authentication and authorization enabled, bound to loopback.

Read your administrator login:

sudo cat /root/bookcars-credentials.txt

The file holds your storefront and admin URLs, the administrator email and the administrator password, all unique to this VM.

Open the admin panel in your browser at http://<vm-ip>:8080/. The BookCars sign-in screen appears.

Sign in with the BOOKCARS_ADMIN_EMAIL and BOOKCARS_ADMIN_PASSWORD from the credentials file. You land on the administrator dashboard, where you manage bookings, cars, suppliers, locations and users.

You can also confirm the administrator credential from the command line. The API returns a signed JSON Web Token for the correct password and rejects a wrong one:

EMAIL=$(sudo grep '^BOOKCARS_ADMIN_EMAIL=' /root/bookcars-credentials.txt | cut -d= -f2-)
PASSWORD=$(sudo grep '^BOOKCARS_ADMIN_PASSWORD=' /root/bookcars-credentials.txt | cut -d= -f2-)
curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1/api/sign-in/admin \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d "{\"email\":\"$EMAIL\",\"password\":\"$PASSWORD\",\"mobile\":true}" | grep -o accessToken

An accessToken in the output confirms that the round trip succeeded.

Open the storefront at http://<vm-ip>/. This is your public car rental site, where customers search for cars by location and dates and complete a booking.

From the admin panel, populate your catalogue. Create suppliers (the rental companies), locations (pick-up and drop-off points), and cars with their specifications, pricing and availability.

The cars view provides rich filters across rating, range, seats, gearbox, fuel policy, mileage and deposit, so your customers can find the right vehicle.

Everything is reachable through nginx: the storefront on :80, the admin panel on :8080, and the API's /api and /cdn routes proxied to 127.0.0.1:4002.

The image is patched at build time and ships with unattended security upgrades enabled. The first-boot service disables itself after provisioning the per-instance state.

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'storefront :80 -> %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'admin :8080 -> %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1:8080/

Live checkout and transactional email are configured in the backend environment file. The front ends are rebuilt into the static bundles. The backend file is /opt/bookcars/backend/.env.

• Stripe or PayPal: set BC_STRIPE_SECRET_KEY (and the storefront's VITE_BC_STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY), or BC_PAYPAL_CLIENT_ID and BC_PAYPAL_CLIENT_SECRET. Then restart the API with sudo systemctl restart bookcars-api.
• SMTP email: set BC_SMTP_HOST, BC_SMTP_PORT, BC_SMTP_USER, BC_SMTP_PASS and BC_SMTP_FROM for booking confirmations and password resets.

The front-end payment keys are baked in at build time, so rebuild and redeploy the storefront after editing its .env:

cd /opt/bookcars/frontend && sudo npm run build && sudo cp -rf build/* /var/www/bookcars/frontend/

For production, put a domain and a TLS certificate in front of the appliance. Point your domain at the VM's public IP address, then use Certbot with the nginx plugin:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d your-domain.example.com

Certbot obtains a certificate, configures nginx to serve the storefront over HTTPS on port 443, and renews the certificate automatically.

• Subscribe to the BookCars listing in AWS Marketplace and choose Launch.
• Pick an instance type with at least 2 vCPUs and 8 GB RAM. The recommended type is m5.large.
• In the security group, allow inbound 80 (storefront), 8080 (admin panel) and 22 (SSH) from the addresses you will manage the instance from. Add 443 if you enable HTTPS.
• Launch, then wait for the instance to reach the running state. First boot provisions the database, generates the per-instance secrets and creates your administrator.

You can also launch from the CLI:

aws ec2 run-instances \
  --image-id <bookcars-ami-id> \
  --instance-type m5.large \
  --key-name <your-key> \
  --security-group-ids <sg-with-22-80-8080> \
  --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=instance,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=bookcars}]'

MongoDB, the BookCars API and nginx start automatically after first boot. Confirm that they are active and listening:

sudo systemctl is-active mongod bookcars-api nginx ss -tln | grep -E ':27017 |:4002 |:80 |:8080 '

You should see all three services active. MongoDB listens on 127.0.0.1:27017 and the API on 127.0.0.1:4002. nginx serves the storefront on :80 and the admin panel on :8080.

The image ships no known credential. On first boot, BookCars' database is initialised fresh, a unique administrator is created, and the login is written to a root-only file. MongoDB runs as a replica set with key file internal authentication and authorization enabled, bound to loopback.

Read your administrator login:

sudo cat /root/bookcars-credentials.txt

The file holds your storefront and admin URLs, the administrator email and the administrator password, all unique to this instance.

Open the admin panel in your browser at http://<public-ip>:8080/. The BookCars sign-in screen appears. There is no default account. You sign in with the unique administrator generated on this instance.

Sign in with the BOOKCARS_ADMIN_EMAIL and BOOKCARS_ADMIN_PASSWORD from the credentials file. You land on the administrator dashboard, where you manage bookings, cars, suppliers, locations and users.

You can also confirm the administrator credential from the command line. The API returns a signed JSON Web Token for the correct password and rejects a wrong one:

EMAIL=$(sudo grep '^BOOKCARS_ADMIN_EMAIL=' /root/bookcars-credentials.txt | cut -d= -f2-)
PASSWORD=$(sudo grep '^BOOKCARS_ADMIN_PASSWORD=' /root/bookcars-credentials.txt | cut -d= -f2-)
curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1/api/sign-in/admin \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d "{\"email\":\"$EMAIL\",\"password\":\"$PASSWORD\",\"mobile\":true}" | grep -o accessToken

An accessToken in the output confirms that the round trip succeeded.

Open the storefront at http://<public-ip>/. This is your public car rental site, where customers search for cars by location and dates and complete a booking.

From the admin panel, populate your catalogue. Create suppliers (the rental companies), locations (pick-up and drop-off points), and cars with their specifications, pricing and availability.

The cars view provides rich filters across rating, range, seats, gearbox, fuel policy, mileage and deposit, so your customers can find the right vehicle.

Everything is reachable through nginx: the storefront on :80, the admin panel on :8080, and the API's /api and /cdn routes proxied to 127.0.0.1:4002.

The image is fully patched with unattended security upgrades enabled. The first-boot service disables itself after provisioning the per-instance state.

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'storefront :80 -> %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'admin :8080 -> %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1:8080/

Both endpoints return HTTP 200 once first boot has completed.

Live checkout and transactional email are configured in the backend environment file. The front ends are rebuilt into the static bundles. The backend file is /opt/bookcars/backend/.env.

• Stripe or PayPal: set BC_STRIPE_SECRET_KEY (and the storefront's VITE_BC_STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY), or BC_PAYPAL_CLIENT_ID and BC_PAYPAL_CLIENT_SECRET. Then restart the API with sudo systemctl restart bookcars-api.
• SMTP email: set BC_SMTP_HOST, BC_SMTP_PORT, BC_SMTP_USER, BC_SMTP_PASS and BC_SMTP_FROM for booking confirmations and password resets.

The front-end payment keys are baked in at build time, so rebuild and redeploy the storefront after editing its .env:

cd /opt/bookcars/frontend && sudo npm run build && sudo cp -rf build/* /var/www/bookcars/frontend/

For production, put a domain and a TLS certificate in front of the appliance. Point your domain at the instance's public IP address, then use Certbot with the nginx plugin:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d your-domain.example.com

Certbot obtains a certificate, configures nginx to serve the storefront over HTTPS on port 443, and renews the certificate automatically.