On an EC2 server running Ubuntu 20.04, follow the instructions at https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-configure-neo4j-on-ubuntu-20-04 and do
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common
curl -fsSL https://debian.neo4j.com/neotechnology.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://debian.neo4j.com stable 4.4"
sudo apt-get install neo4j
In the config file, update the following lines: Set the default database to indra:
dbms.default_database=indra
EC2 instances have small default root volumes so it makes sense to move neo4j's data folder to some other mounted volume e.g.,
dbms.directories.data=/data/neo4j/data
To accept non-local connections, set
dbms.default_listen_address=0.0.0.0
Now run import.sh to fill up the database with content and then start
the service with
sudo neo4j start
Once the service has started and accepts connections, indexes can be built
by running build_extra_indexes.sh.
In terms of authentication, one simple way to set up a custom password initially is to connect to the neo4j browser and do it via the web UI.
To communicate with neo4j directly from outside, the 7687 port (by default) needs to be exposed for bolt protocol connections. To avoid exposing the instance to the outside world directly, it makes sense to set up a load balancer. Only network load balancers support bolt so that has to be used, ideally with an IP-based target group that points to the private IP of the given EC2 instance. The instance's security group can then just allow incoming connections on port 7687 to the private IP (range) of the load balancer.