Connecting Survey Solutions to demo server

Deployment
#1

Hi Sergey,

I am trying to connect a demo server I have set up in AWS to Survey Solutions, but when I do, I get the following error message: Error message HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.

Do you have any idea what could be causing this? The db instance is rajasthandb

Many thanks in advance,
Adam

#2

If anyone knows what rajasthandb is, where it is, or how to connect to it, please help.

#3

Hi Sergiy,

I am having the same issue as this poster here: Personal demo server: service unavailable

From the exchange, it looks as though it was an issue on the Survey Solutions side that led to the same error message. Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated.

Adam

#4

There are two parts of the question, error code (in this case 503) and which application/service is issuing that error.

In the topic you linked there was a problem with the application hosted/managed by us (the personal demo server) and that is why we were able to fix it ourselves.

But in your case you host your server yourself so this is definitely not the same problem.

So let’s try to figure out what else is wrong: where exactly do you see error 503? in response to what action? Let me give you examples of information you could provide that would help us help you:

  • You’re trying to open the Survey Solutions application you just installed and in your browser you’re getting the error 503: There must be something else between your browser and Survey Solutions application (firewall, reverse proxy, etc etc), possibly setup by you as part of aws that gives you the error.
  • You’re successfully able to see Survey Solutions login page, get into it and when trying to do some actions inside (import questionnaire, generate export etc) you get the error. Similar to above, something is preventing communications of the app with the designer or internal export service, our question would be, how did you install the app, are you running any firewall, proxy etc etc?
#5

Hi zurab & Sergiy,

Apologies for the late reply and unclear question. I was asking on behalf of our IT department who are setting the server up for us, and should have asked for more detail before posting. You are right zurab that the issue was on our end, which our IT team have now informed me has been sorted. I’ve been testing our server this morning and it seems to be connecting to Survey Solutions without issue.

Thanks again for your reply and sorry for the imprecise question.

Adam

#6

I am glad that the issue has been resolved. But now that you know what the issue really was and how it was fixed, could you please share a recipe summarizing your experience for the others, that may find themselves in the same situation?

#7

Hi Sergiy,

From my colleague who fixed the issue: I had to allow survey solution security group inbound connection to postgresql ( which I missed out in the initial setup) also had to set a routes 53 record so the domain name points to the EC2 instance IP address

Many thanks,

Adam

#8

Hello Adam,

thank you for the clarification. The need to allow Survey Solutions to talk to PostgreSQL server is indeed mentioned in the AWS setup instructions.

And without route 53 pointing to the Survey Solutions server something else will be responding to the queries and the error messages you receive will come from another program or system. So yes, the record needs to be pointed to the correct server in route 53.

Wishing you smooth sailing now!

Best, Sergiy