rustdesk-server

Self-hosted RustDesk Server Pro (remote-desktop relay + rendezvous) for Sea Haven Industries, deployed to AWS via CDK.

Status: scaffold — not yet deployed. See First deploy.

Architecture

A single ARM64 EC2 instance runs RustDesk Server Pro (hbbs rendezvous/ID + hbbr relay) in Docker. Clients connect from anywhere over the public internet to a stable Elastic IP fronted by rustdesk.seahaven.com.

RustDesk clients (anywhere)
        │  TCP 21114-21119 / UDP 21116
        ▼
   Elastic IP ──► EC2 t4g.small (AL2023 arm64, SSM-managed)
                    │  Docker: hbbs + hbbr (network_mode: host)
                    ├─ /dev/xvda  20 GiB root (OS only, ephemeral)
                    └─ /var/lib/rustdesk ◄── standalone EBS 20 GiB (RETAIN)
                                              key pair + sled DB
   Nightly DLM snapshots (retain 30, tag rustdesk-backup=true)

All durable state (the id_ed25519 server key pair and the sled database) lives on a standalone, RETAINed EBS data volume, never an inline block device, so it survives instance replacement and stack deletion. See RUNBOOK.md.

CDK app

This repository is an AWS CDK v2 app written in TypeScript. It defines a single rustdesk-server CloudFormation stack — everything under Resources is declared as infrastructure-as-code here rather than provisioned by hand.

Path	Role
cdk.json	CDK app manifest. Its app command (npx tsx bin/app.ts) tells the CDK CLI how to synthesize the app — tsx executes the TypeScript entry point directly, with no separate compile step. Also holds the watch globs for cdk watch and the CDK feature-flag context.
bin/app.ts	App entry point. Instantiates one RustdeskServerStack with an explicit stackName: "rustdesk-server" (kebab-case, matching the repo) pinned to account 328440206208 / us-east-1.
lib/rustdesk-server-stack.ts	The stack definition — EC2 instance, standalone EBS data volume, Elastic IP, security group, IAM role, DLM policy, and Route 53 records. Deploy-time tunables (pinned image tag, VPC/subnet IDs, the RUSTDESK_PORTS map) are constants at the top of the file.
cdk.context.json	Cached context lookups (VPC / subnet / AZ metadata) written by the CDK CLI; committed so synth is deterministic.
tsconfig.json, package.json	TypeScript config and dependencies. aws-cdk-lib is pinned to an exact version and kept current by Dependabot; npm run synth / diff / deploy wrap the CDK CLI.

Synthesized CloudFormation templates land in cdk.out/ (git-ignored). See Deployment for the synth/deploy commands.

Documentation

The canonical map of Sea Haven's AWS infrastructure lives in Confluence. This project's rustdesk-server stack is represented there as a Mermaid subgraph.

• AWS Architecture Map (Confluence, IT space, page 1540098)

Ports

Port	Proto	Purpose	Exposure
21114	TCP	Pro web console / API	VPN/VPC only (10.10.0.0/16, 10.20.0.0/16)
21115	TCP	hbbs NAT type test	public
21116	TCP + UDP	hbbs registration / hole punch / heartbeat	public
21117	TCP	hbbr relay	public
21118	TCP	hbbs web client (websocket)	public
21119	TCP	hbbr web client (websocket)	public

Relay/rendezvous ports are public so clients connect from anywhere. The Pro admin console (21114) is restricted to the office VPN + VPC, so you administer the server and activate the Pro license over VPN. To take the relay VPN-only later, flip the public flags in RUSTDESK_PORTS in the stack.

Resources

• EC2 rustdesk-server — AL2023 arm64, t4g.small, SSM-managed (no inbound SSH)
• EBS data volume rustdesk-data — 20 GiB GP3, encrypted, RemovalPolicy.RETAIN, attached at /dev/xvdf
• Elastic IP — stable public address, associated to the instance
• Security group rustdesk-server — RustDesk ports above
• IAM role rustdesk-server-instance — AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore + secretsmanager:GetSecretValue on rustdesk/*
• DLM rustdesk-server-dlm — nightly instance snapshots, retain 30
• Route 53 A record rustdesk.seahaven.com → EIP

Configuration

Secrets (Secrets Manager) — created out of band

Secret	Contents
rustdesk/server-key-pair	id_ed25519 private + .pub public key generated by hbbs on first boot (mirror up post-deploy so a replacement host keeps the same key)
rustdesk/pro-license	RustDesk Server Pro license key

SSM parameters (non-secret)

Parameter	Purpose
/rustdesk-server/relay-host	Public hostname clients use (rustdesk.seahaven.com)

The pinned Docker image tag lives in lib/rustdesk-server-stack.ts (RUSTDESK_IMAGE_TAG).

Deployment

CI/CD runs through the reusable org workflows (ci-typescript-cdk.yaml, cd-cdk.yaml). Pushes to main deploy automatically.

npm ci
npx cdk diff
npx cdk deploy

First deploy

1. Confirm a public subnet ID in us-east-1a and set PUBLIC_SUBNET_ID in lib/rustdesk-server-stack.ts (replace subnet-REPLACE_ME).
2. Verify/pin RUSTDESK_IMAGE_TAG.
3. Create the OIDC deploy role githubdeploy-rustdesk-server and the repo secret AWS_DEPLOY_ROLE_ARN.
4. cdk deploy (or push to main). The instance boots, pulls the images, and hbbs generates the key pair on the empty data volume.
5. SSM in, read /var/lib/rustdesk/id_ed25519{,.pub}, store into rustdesk/server-key-pair.
6. Over the office VPN, open http://rustdesk.seahaven.com:21114, activate the Pro license, create users (the console is not reachable off-VPN).
7. Point a test client at rustdesk.seahaven.com + the public key; confirm a session relays.

Operations

See RUNBOOK.md for key rotation, restore-from-snapshot, and instance replacement.