The Bridgehead is a secure, low-effort solution to connect your research institution to a federated research network. It bundles interoperable, open-source software components into a turnkey package for installation on one of your secure servers. The Bridgehead is pre-configured with sane defaults, centrally monitored and with an absolute minimum of "moving parts" on your side, making it an extremely low-maintenance gateway to data sharing.
This repository is the starting point for any information and tools you will need to deploy a Bridgehead. If you have questions, please [contact us](mailto:verbis-support@dkfz-heidelberg.de).
Hardware requirements strongly depend on the specific use-cases of your network as well as on the data it is going to serve. Most use-cases are well-served with the following configuration:
You are strongly recommended to install the Bridgehead under a Linux operating system (but see the section [Non-Linux OS](#non-linux-os)). You will need root (administrator) priveleges on this machine in order to perform the deployment. We recommend the newest Ubuntu LTS server release.
Since it needs to carry sensitive patient data, Bridgeheads are intended to be deployed within your institution's secure network and behave well even in networks in strict security settings, e.g. firewall rules. The only connectivity required is an outgoing HTTPS proxy. TLS termination is supported, too (see [below](#tls-terminating-proxies))
Many Bridgehead services rely on the secure, performant and flexible messaging middleware called [Samply.Beam](https://github.com/samply/beam). You will need to register ("enroll") with Samply.Beam by creating a cryptographic key pair for your bridgehead:
Even within your internal network, the Bridgehead enforces HTTPS for all services. During the installation, a self-signed, long-lived certificate was created for you. To increase security, you can simply replace the files under `/etc/bridgehead/traefik-tls` with ones from established certification authorities such as [Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org) or [DFN-AAI](https://www.aai.dfn.de).
All of the Bridgehead's outgoing connections are secured by transport encryption (TLS) and a Bridgehead will refuse to connect if certificate verification fails. If your local forward proxy server performs TLS termination, please place its CA certificate in `/etc/bridgehead/trusted-ca-certs` as a `.pem` file, e.g. `/etc/bridgehead/trusted-ca-certs/mylocalca.pem`. Then, all Bridgehead components will pick up this certificate and trust it for outgoing connections.
### File structure
-`/srv/docker/bridgehead` contains this git repository with the shell scripts and *project-specific configuration*. In here, all files are identical for all sites. You should not make any changes here.
-`/etc/bridgehead` contains your *site-specific configuration* synchronized from your site-specific git repository as part of the [base installation](#base-installation). To change anything here, please consult your git repository (find out its URL via `git -C /etc/bridgehead remote -v`).
-`/etc/bridgehead/<PROJECT>.conf` is your main site-specific configuration, all bundled into one concise config file. Do not change it here but via the central git repository.
-`/etc/bridgehead/<PROJECT>.local.conf` contains site-specific parameters to be known to your Bridgehead only, e.g. local access credentials. The file is ignored via git, and you may edit it here via a text editor.
-`/etc/bridgehead/traefik-tls` contains your Bridgehead's reverse proxies TLS certificates for [HTTPS access](#https-access).
-`/etc/bridgehead/pki` contains your Bridgehead's private key (e.g., but not limited to Samply.Beam), generated as part of the [Samply.Beam enrollment](#register-with-samplybeam).
-`/etc/bridgehead/trusted-ca-certs` contains third-party certificates to be trusted by the Bridgehead. For example, you want to place the certificates of your [TLS-terminating proxy](#network) here.
Your Bridgehead's actual data is not stored in the above directories, but in named docker volumes, see `docker volume ls` and `docker volume inspect <volume_name>`.
This is an optional feature for bbmri projects. It keeps the [BBMRI Directory](https://directory.bbmri-eric.eu/) up to date with the number of samples, etc. kept in your biobank. It also updates the local FHIR store with the latest contact details etc. from the Directory. You must explicitly enable this feature if you want to make use of it.
Full details can be found in [directory_sync_service](https://github.com/samply/directory_sync_service).
You must contact the Directory for your national node to find the URL, and to register as a user.
Additionally, you should choose when you want Directory sync to run. In the example above, this is set to happen at 10 pm every evening. You can modify this to suit your requirements. The timer specification should follow the cron convention.
Once you have made the changes, update your local configuration:
```shell
cd /etc/bridgehead
sudo git pull
sudo chown -R bridgehead * .git*
```
Then restart the Bridgehead:
```shell
sudo systemctl restart bridgehead@bbmri.service
```
There will be a delay before the effects of Directory sync become visible. First, you will need to wait until the time you have specified in ```TIMER_CRON```. Second, the information will then be synchronized from your national node with the central European Directory. This can take up to 24 hours.
Your Bridgehead will automatically and regularly check for updates. Whenever something has been updates (e.g., one of the git repositories or one of the docker images), your Bridgehead is automatically restarted. This should happen automatically and does not need any configuration.
If you would like to understand what happens exactly and when, please check the systemd units deployed during the [installation](#base-installation) via `systemctl cat bridgehead-update@<PROJECT>.service` and `systemctl cat bridgehead-update@<PROJECT.timer`.
### Monitoring
To keep all Bridgeheads up and working and detect any errors before a user does, a central monitoring
- Your Bridgehead itself will report relevant system events, such as successful/failed updates, restarts, performance metrics or version numbers.
- Your Bridgehead is also monitored from the outside by your network's central components. For example, the federated search will regularly perform a black-box test by sending an empty query to your Bridgehead and checking if the results make sense.
In all monitoring cases, obviously no sensitive information is transmitted, in particular not any patient-related data. Aggregated data, e.g. total amount of datasets, may be transmitted for diagnostic purposes.
Docker has a background daemon, responsible for downloading images and starting them. Sometimes, proxy configuration from your system won't carry over and it will fail to download images. In that case, configure the proxy for this daemon as described in the [official documentation](https://docs.docker.com).
Below are some suggestions for getting the installation to work on other operating systems. Note that we are not able to provide support for these routes!
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
