Getting Started

Getting Started

Before you begin

These are separate from redStackPRO itself; redStackPRO only generates the files that need them.

• Terraform installed, to apply the export.
• The AWS CLI or the gcloud CLI installed, for whichever cloud you target.
• A cloud account with credentials and billing set up, GCP or AWS (see Providers for GCP's project and API setup). You will authenticate to it when you deploy; see Deploying a Range.

The canvas itself only needs Docker, or Python and Node, below.

Run with Docker

The whole canvas in one container, the API and the web app on one port:

docker compose up                    # builds from the repo, http://127.0.0.1:8000

Or pull the published image:

docker run -p 8000:8000 -v redstackpro-data:/data \
  ghcr.io/devzero-security/redstackpro:0.9.0

The canvas listens on 8000 inside the container. To serve it on a different host port, change the left half of the mapping (-p 8787:8000), or set REDSTACKPRO_PORT for compose:

REDSTACKPRO_PORT=8787 docker compose up           # bash / Git Bash

$env:REDSTACKPRO_PORT=8787; docker compose up     # PowerShell

The image is the composition layer only. It carries no Terraform, Ansible, or cloud SDK, and never holds your credentials. You run the export it produces yourself.

For a shared deployment, Compose has an optional Postgres backend:

REDSTACKPRO_DATABASE_URL=postgresql+psycopg://redstackpro:redstackpro@db:5432/redstackpro \
  docker compose --profile postgres up

PowerShell:

$env:REDSTACKPRO_DATABASE_URL="postgresql+psycopg://redstackpro:redstackpro@db:5432/redstackpro"
docker compose --profile postgres up

Run from source

Python 3.11 or newer, and Node 24 for the canvas.

git clone <this repo> && cd redstackpro
python -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

The canvas is two processes, the API and the web app:

redstackpro serve                    # http://127.0.0.1:8000
cd frontend && npm install && npm run dev

redstackpro serve --port 8787 moves the API to a different port. Point the canvas dev server at it:

REDSTACKPRO_API=http://127.0.0.1:8787            # bash / Git Bash

$env:REDSTACKPRO_API="http://127.0.0.1:8787"      # PowerShell

Your first topology

1. Open the canvas and load a template from the library (for example goad-light).
2. Choose your cloud in the toolbar provider selector (GCP or AWS).
3. Edit it if you want. A shipped lab opens read-only so the baseline is safe.
4. Press Compile. The canvas validates first and lists any findings.
5. Press Download. You get a zip of a complete working directory.

Skip the canvas

Compile a shipped template from the command line with the same compiler:

redstackpro compile frontend/public/goad/goad-light.json -o export

What the export contains

A complete working directory you unzip and run:

• Terraform for the cloud (a root module and modules/, with populated tfvars)
• Ansible for everything that happens on the hosts
• deploy.sh
• RANGE-BRIEFING.md with the credentials and what is planted where

See Deploying a Range for the deploy flow.