Mayroong maraming paraan kung saan maaari mong i-deploy ang iyong Nodejs app, ito man ay On-Cloud o On-Premises. Gayunpaman, ito ay hindi lamang tungkol sa pag-deploy ng iyong application ngunit pag-deploy nito sa tamang paraan. Ang seguridad ay isa ring mahalagang aspeto na hindi dapat balewalain, at kung gagawin mo ito ang application ay hindi magtatagal at may mataas na posibilidad na ito ay makompromiso. Kaya, narito kami upang tulungan ka sa mga hakbang upang i-deploy ang Nodejs app sa AWS. Ipapakita namin sa iyo nang eksakto kung paano i-deploy ang Nodejs app sa server gamit ang mga Docker container, RDS Amazon Aurora, Nginx na may HTTPS, at i-access ito gamit ang Domain Name

 Talaan ng mga Nilalaman
Salansan ng Tool
- Arkitektura: I-deploy ang Nodejs app sa ec2 server gamit ang Docker container, RDS Amazon Aurora, Nginx na may HTTPS, at i-access ito gamit ang Domain Name
- Mga kinakailangan
- Gumawa ng Ubuntu 20.04 LTS EC2 Instance sa AWS
- Gumawa ng RDS Aurora gamit ang MySql Instance sa AWS
- Mag-install ng mga dependency sa EC2 Instance
- I-deploy ang Nodejs app sa AWS EC2 instance gamit ang isang Docker container, RDS Amazon Aurora, Nginx na may HTTPS, at i-access ito gamit ang Domain Name
- Ano ang susunod sa kung paano i-deploy ang Nodejs app sa AWS?
- Konklusyon
- Mga FAQ
== Tool Stack ==
**Nodejs Sample App**
Isang sample na Nodejs app na may 3 API viz, status, insert at listahan. Gagamitin ang mga API na ito para suriin ang status ng app, magpasok ng data sa database at makuha& ipakita ang data mula sa database

**AWS EC2 Instance**
Isang Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance ang gagamitin para i-deploy ang containerized na Nodejs App. I-install namin ang Docker sa pagkakataong ito sa itaas kung aling mga container ang gagawin. I-install din namin ang MySql Client sa pagkakataon. Kinakailangan ang MySql client na kumonekta sa Aurora Instance para gumawa ng kinakailangang table

**AWS RDS Amazon Aurora**
Ang aming data ay iimbak sa AWS RDS Amazon Aurora. Mag-iimbak kami ng mga simpleng field tulad ng username, email-id at iimbak ang edad sa AWS RDS Amazon Aurora Instance

Ang Amazon Aurora ay isang MySQL at PostgreSQL compatible relational database na available sa AWS

**Docker**
Ang Docker ay isang containerization platform upang bumuo ng Docker Images at i-deploy ang mga ito gamit ang mga container. Ide-deploy namin ang Nodejs app sa server, Nginx, at Certbot bilang Docker Container

**Docker-Compose**
Upang paikutin ang mga lalagyan ng Nodejs, Nginx, Certbot, gagamitin namin ang Docker-Compose. Tumutulong ang Docker Compose na bawasan ang pag-deploy ng container at oras ng pamamahala

**Nginx**
Gagamitin ito para paganahin ang HTTPS para sa sample na Nodejs app at i-redirect ang lahat ng kahilingan ng user sa Nodejs App. Ito ay magsisilbing reverse proxy upang i-redirect ang mga kahilingan ng user sa application at makakatulong din sa pag-secure ng koneksyon sa pamamagitan ng pagbibigay ng configuration upang paganahin ang SSL/HTTPS

**Certbot**
Ito ay magbibigay-daan sa amin na awtomatikong gamitin ang LetâÃÂÃÂs Encrypt para sa Domain Validation at pag-isyu ng mga SSL certificate

**Domain**
Sa dulo ng doc, maa-access mo ang sample na Nodejs Application gamit ang iyong Domain name sa HTTPS, ibig sabihin, ang iyong sample na Nodejs ay mase-secure sa internet

**PostMan**
Gagamitin namin ang Postman upang subukan ang aming mga API, ibig sabihin, upang suriin ang katayuan, magpasok ng data, at maglista ng data mula sa database

Gaya ng sinabi ko, âÃÂÃÂi-deploy namin ang Nodejs app sa server gamit ang mga Docker container, RDS Amazon Aurora, Nginx na may HTTPS, at i-access ito gamit ang Domain Name. Â, unawain muna natin ang arkitektura bago natin makuha ang ating mga kamay

== Arkitektura: I-deploy ang Nodejs app sa ec2 server gamit ang Docker container, RDS Amazon Aurora, Nginx na may HTTPS, at i-access ito gamit ang Domain Name ==
I-deploy ang Nodejs app sa ec2 instance gamit ang Docker ay magiging available sa port 3000. Ang sample na Nodejs app na ito ay kumukuha ng data mula sa RDS Amazon Aurora instance na ginawa sa parehong VPC gaya ng sa EC2 instance. Magiging pribado ang isang instance ng Amazon Aurora DB at samakatuwid ay maa-access sa loob ng parehong VPC. Ang application na Nodejs na naka-deploy sa EC2 instance ay maaaring ma-access gamit ang pampublikong IP nito sa port 3000, ngunit hindi kami mananalo.

Ang pag-access sa mga application sa mga hindi karaniwang port ay hindi inirerekomenda, kaya magkakaroon tayo ng Nginx na magsisilbing Reverse Proxy at magpapagana ng SSL Termination. Susubukan ng mga user na i-access ang Application gamit ang Domain Name at ang mga kahilingang ito ay ipapasa sa Nginx. Susuriin ng Nginx ang kahilingan at batay sa API, ire-redirect nito ang kahilingang iyon sa Nodejs app. Tatapusin din ang application gamit ang SSL, bilang resulta ang komunikasyon sa pagitan ng kliyente at server ay mase-secure at mapoprotektahan

Narito ang diagram ng arkitektura na nagbibigay ng kalinawan ng pag-deploy ng Nodejs app sa AWS
== Mga Kinakailangan ==
Bago tayo magpatuloy sa pag-deploy ng Nodejs app sa AWS, ipinapalagay na mayroon ka na ng mga sumusunod na Prerequisite

- AWS Account
- PostMan o anumang iba pang alternatibo sa iyong Machine upang subukan ang mga API
- Isang rehistradong Domain sa iyong AWS Account

== Lumikha ng Ubuntu 20.04 LTS EC2 Instance sa AWS ==
Pumunta sa httpsAWS.amazon.com/console/ at mag-log in sa iyong account

Pagkatapos mong matagumpay na mag-log in sa iyong account, mag-click sa search bar at hanapin ang EC2. Mag-click sa resulta upang bisitahin ang EC2 dashboard upang lumikha ng isang EC2 instance


Dito, mag-click sa âÃÂÃÂLaunch instanceâÃÂàupang i-configure at lumikha ng EC2 instance

Piliin ang âÃÂÃÂUbuntu Server 20.04 LTSâÃÂàAMI

Inirerekumenda kong piliin mo ang t3.small para lamang sa mga layunin ng pagsubok, magkakaroon ito ng 2 CPU at 2GB RAM. Maaari mong piliin ang uri ng instance ayon sa iyong pangangailangan at pagpili

Maaari mong panatilihin ang mga default na setting at magpatuloy. Dito, pinili ko ang default na VPC, kung gusto mo ay maaari mong piliin ang iyong VPC. Tandaan na, dito ako gagawa ng isang instance sa Public Subnet

Mas mahusay na maglagay ng mas malaking puwang sa disk sa 30GB. Ang natitira ay maaaring maging default

Magtalaga ng "Pangalan"i-tag ang anumang mga halaga na iyong pinili. Maaari mo ring laktawan ang hakbang na ito

Payagan ang koneksyon sa port 22 lamang mula sa iyong IP. Kung papayagan mo ito mula sa 0.0.0.0/0, papayagan ng iyong instance ang sinuman sa port 22

Suriin ang configuration nang isang beses, at mag-click sa âÃÂÃÂLaunchâÃÂàkung mukhang maayos ang lahat para gumawa ng Instance

Bago magawa ang instance, kailangan nito ng key-pair. Maaari kang lumikha ng bagong key-pair o gamitin ang umiiral na. Mag-click sa button na âÃÂÃÂIlunsad ang mga instanceâÃÂàna magsisimula sa paggawa ng instance

Upang pumunta sa console at tingnan ang iyong instance, mag-click sa button na âÃÂÃÂView instanceâÃÂÃÂ

Dito, makikita mo na ang instance ay ginawa at nasa âÃÂÃÂInitiatingâÃÂàphase. Sa loob ng isang minuto o 2, makikita mong gumagana at gumagana ang iyong instance

Samantala, gumawa tayo ng RDS Instance

== Lumikha ng RDS Aurora gamit ang MySql Instance sa AWS ==
Mag-click muli sa search bar sa tuktok ng pahina at sa pagkakataong ito ay hanapin ang âÃÂÃÂRDSâÃÂÃÂ. Mag-click sa resulta upang bisitahin ang RDS Dashboard

Sa RDS Dashboard, mag-click sa button na âÃÂÃÂGumawa ng databaseâÃÂàupang i-configure at gawin ang instance ng RDS

Piliin ang âÃÂÃÂEasy createâÃÂàmethod, âÃÂÃÂAmazon AuroraâààUri ng makina, âÃÂÃÂDev/TestâÃÂàlaki ng instance ng DB tulad ng sumusunod
Mag-scroll pababa nang kaunti at tukuyin ang âÃÂÃÂDB cluster identifierâÃÂàbilang âÃÂÃÂmy-Nodejs- databaseâÃÂÃÂ. Maaari mong tukuyin ang anumang pangalan na iyong pinili dahil ito ay isang pangalan lamang na ibinigay sa RDS Instance; gayunpaman, iminumungkahi kong gamitin ang parehong pangalan upang hindi ka malito habang sinusunod ang mga susunod na hakbang

Gayundin, tumukoy ng master username bilang âÃÂÃÂadminâÃÂÃÂ, ang password nito, at pagkatapos ay mag-click sa âÃÂàGumawa ng databaseâÃÂÃÂ

Sisimulan nito ang paggawa ng RDS Amazon Aurora Instance. Tandaan na para sa produksyon o mga live na kapaligiran, hindi ka dapat magtakda ng mga simpleng username at password

Dito, makikita mo na ang instance ay nasa âÃÂÃÂCreatingâÃÂàstate. Sa humigit-kumulang 5-10 minuto, dapat mong i-on ang instance at tumatakbo

Gumawa ng ilang tala dito:
- Ang RDS Amazon Aurora instance ay magiging pribado bilang default, na nangangahulugang ang RDS Amazon Aurora instance ay hindi maaabot mula sa labas ng mundo at magiging available lang sa loob ng VPC

- Ang instance ng EC2 at ang instance ng RDS ay nabibilang sa parehong VPC

- Maaabot ang instance ng RDS mula sa instance ng EC2

== Mag-install ng mga dependency sa EC2 Instance ==
Ngayon, maaari kang kumonekta sa Instance na ginawa namin. Hindi ako makikipag-detalye sa kung paano kumonekta sa instance at naniniwala ako na alam mo na ito

 MySql Client
Kakailanganin namin ang isang MySQL client para kumonekta sa RDS Amazon Aurora instance at gumawa ng database dito. Kumonekta sa EC2 instance at isagawa ang mga sumusunod na command mula dito

- sudo apt update
- sudo apt install mysql-client
 Gumawa ng Table
Kakailanganin namin ang isang talahanayan sa aming halimbawa ng RDS Amazon Aurora upang maimbak ang aming data ng aplikasyon. Para gumawa ng table, kumonekta sa Amazon RDS Aurora instance gamit ang MySQL client na na-install namin sa EC2 instance sa nakaraang hakbang

Kopyahin ang Database Endpoint mula sa Amazon Aurora Instance

Isagawa ang sumusunod na karaniwan na may tamang mga halaga
- mysql -u -p -h 
Here, my command looks as follows
- mysql -u admin -padmin1234 -h my-Nodejs-database.cluster-cxxjkzcl1hwb.eu-west-3.rds.amazonAWS.com
Once you get connected to the Amazon RDS Aurora instance, execute the following commands to create a table named “users”

show databases; use main; CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users(id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, username varchar(30), email varchar(255), age int, PRIMARY KEY(id select * from users;
Refer to the following screenshot to understand command executions

 Create an Application Directory 
Now, let’s create a directory where we will store all our codebase and configuration files

- pwd
- cd /home/ubuntu/
- mkdir Nodejs-docker
- cd Nodejs-docker
 Clone the code repository on the EC2 instance 
Clone my Github Repository containing all the code. This is an optional step, I have included all the code in this document

- pwd
- cd /home/ubuntu/
- git clone httpsgithub.com/shivalkarrahul/DevOps.git
- cp /home/ubuntu/DevOps/AWS/Nodejs-docker/* /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker
**Note: **This is an optional step. If you copy all the files from the repository to the application directory then you do not need to create files in the upcoming steps; however, you will still need to make the necessary changes

== Deploy Nodejs app to AWS EC2 instance using a Docker container, RDS Amazon Aurora, Nginx with HTTPS, and access it using the Domain Name ==
 Docker, why use docker in your ec2 instance 
Docker is a containerization tool used to package our software application into an image that can be used to create Docker Containers. Docker helps to build, share and deploy our applications easily

The first step of Dockerization is installing Docker

 Install Docker 
- Check Linux Version
- cat /etc/issue
- Update the apt package index
- sudo apt-get update
- Install packages to allow apt to use a repository over HTTPS
- sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg lsb-release
- Add Docker’s official GPG key:
- curl -fsSL httpsdownload.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg –dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg
- Set up the stable repository
- echo “deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] httpsdownload.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable” | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
- Update the apt package index
- sudo apt-get update
- Install the latest version of Docker Engine and containerd
- sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io
- Check Docker version
- docker –version
- Manage Docker as a non-root user
- Create ‘docker’ group
- sudo groupadd docker
- Add your user to the docker group
- sudo usermod -aG docker 
- Exit

- exit
- Login back to the terminal
- Verify that you can run docker commands without sudo
- docker run hello-world
- Upon executing the above run command, you should see the output as follows

- Refer to the following screenshot to see the command that I have executed

 Dockerize your Node.js application in the EC2 instance 
Once you have Docker installed, the next step is to Dockerize the app. Dockerizing a Nodejs app means writing a Dockerfile with a set of instructions to create a Docker Image


Let’s create Dockerfile and a sample Nodejs app

- pwd
- cd /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker
- Create Dockerfile and paste the following in it, alternatively, you can copy the content from here as well

- vim Dockerfile
#Base Image node:12.18.4-alpine FROM node:12.18.4-alpine #Set working directory to /app WORKDIR /app #Set PATH /app/node_modules/.bin ENV PATH /app/node_modules/.bin:$PATH #Copy package.json in the image COPY package.json ./ #Install Packages RUN npm install express --save RUN npm install mysql --save #Copy the app COPY . ./ #Expose application port EXPOSE 3000 #Start the app CMD ["node", "index.js"]
- Create index.js and paste the following in it, alternatively, you can copy the content from here as well. This will be our sample Nodejs app

- vim index.js
const express = require('express const app = express const port = 3000; const mysql = require('mysql const con = mysql.createConnection({ host: "my-Nodejs-database.cluster-cxxjkzcl1hwb.eu-west3.rds.amazonAWS.com", user: "admin", password: "admin1234"app.getstatus', (req, res) => res.send({status: "I'm up and running app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Dockerized Nodejs Applications is listening on port ${port app.postinsert', (req, res) => { if (req.query.username && req.query.email && req.query.age) { console.log('Received an insert call con.connect(function(err) { con.query(`INSERT INTO main.users (username, email, age) VALUES req.query.username req.query.email req.query.age function(err, result, fields) { if (err) res.send(err); if (result) res.send({username: req.query.username, email: req.query.email, age: req.query.age if (fields) console.log(fields);} else { console.log('Something went wrong, Missing a parameter }app.getlist', (req, res) => { console.log('Received a list call con.connect(function(err) { con.query(`SELECT * FROM main.users`, function(err, result, fields) { if (err) res.send(err); if (result) res.send(result);
In the above file, change values of the following variables with the one applicable to your RDS Amazon Aurora instance:
- host: “my-Nodejs-database.cluster-cxxjkzcl1hwb.eu-west-3.rds.amazonAWS.com”
- user: “admin”
- password: “admin1234”
- Create package.json and paste the following in it, alternatively, you can copy the content from here as well

- vim package.json
{
“name”: “Nodejs-docker”,

“version”: “12.18.4”,
“description”: “Nodejs on ec2 using docker container”,
“main”: “index.js”,
“scripts”: {
“test”: “echo \”Error: no test specified\” && exit 1″
},
“author”: “Rahul Shivalkar”,
“license”: “ISC”
}
 Update the AWS Security Group 
To access the application, we need to add a rule in the Security Group to allow connections on port 3000. As I said earlier, we can access the application on port 3000, but it is not recommended. Keep reading to know our recommendations

- Go to the EC2 Dashboard, select the instance, switch to the “Security” tab, and then click on the Security groups link

- Select the “Inbound rules” tab and click on the “Edit inbound rules” button

- Add a new rule that will allow external connection from “MyIp” on the “3000” port

Learn more with our blog How to Dockerize a Node.js application

 Deploy the node.js server on the EC2 Server (Instance) 
- Let’s build a docker image from the code that we have

- cd /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker
- docker build -t Nodejs 

- Start a container using the image that we just build and expose it on port 3000
- docker run –name Nodejs -d -p 3000:3000 Nodejs
- You can see the container is running

- docker ps
- You can even check the logs of the container

- docker logs Nodejs
Now we have our Nodejs App Docker Container running

- Now you can access the application from your browser on port 3000

- Check the status of the application on /status api using the browser. httppublic-ip-of-ec2-instance>:3000/status
- You can insert some data in the application on /insert api using the Postman app using POST request

httppublic-ip-of-ec2-instance>:3000/insert?username=abc&[email protected]&age=2

- You can list the data from your application by using /list api from the browser
httppublic-ip-of-ec2-instance>:3000/list
- Alternatively, you can use the curl command from within the EC2 instance to check status, insert data, list data

- curl -XGET “httppublic-ip-of-ec2-instance>:3000/list”
- curl -XPOST “httppublic-ip-of-ec2-instance>:3000/insert?username=abc&email=[email protected]&age=26″
- Stop and remove the container
- docker stop Nodejs
- docker rm Nodejs
In this section, we tried to access APIs available for the application directly using the Public IP:Port of the EC2 instance. However, exposing non-standard ports to the external world in the Security Group is not at all recommended. Also, we tried to access the application over the HTTP protocol, which means the communication that took place from the Browser to the Application was not secure and an attacker can read the network packets

To overcome this scenario, it is recommended to use Nginx

 Nginx setup 
Let’s create an Nginx conf that will be used within the Nginx Container through a Docker Volume. Create a file and copy the following content in the file, alternatively, you can copy the content from here as well

- cd /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker
- mkdir nginx-conf
- vim nginx-conf/nginx.conf
server {
listen 80;
listen 80;
location ~ /.well-known/acme-challenge {
allow all;
root /var/www/html;
}
location / {
rewrite ^ httpshost$request_uri? permanent;
}
} server { listen 443 ssl http2; listen 443 ssl http2; server_name Nodejs.devopslee.com www.Nodejs.devopslee.com;
server_tokens off;
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/Nodejs.devopslee.com/fullchain.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/Nodejs.devopslee.com/privkey.pem;
ssl_buffer_size 8k;
ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam-2048.pem;
ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.1 TLSv1;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_ciphers ECDH+AESGCM:ECDH+AES256:ECDH+AES128:DH+3DES:!ADH:!AECDH:!MD5;
ssl_ecdh_curve secp384r1;
ssl_session_tickets off;
ssl_stapling on;
ssl_stapling_verify on;
resolver 8.8.8.8;
location / {
try_files $uri @Nodejs;
}
location @Nodejs {
proxy_pass httpNodejs:3000;
add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer-when-downgrade" always;
add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src * data: 'unsafe-eval' 'unsafe-inline'" always;
}
root /var/www/html;
index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
}
In the above file make changes in the 3 lines mentioned below. Replace my subdomain.domain, i.e. Nodejs.devopslee, with the one that you want and have

- server_name Nodejs.devopslee.com www.Nodejs.devopslee.com;
- ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/Nodejs.devopslee.com/fullchain.pem;
- ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/Nodejs.devopslee.com/privkey.pem;
 Why do you need Nginx in front of the node.js service? 
Our Nodejs application runs on a non-standard port 3000. Nodejs provides a way to use HTTPS; however, configuring the protocol and managing SSL certificates that expire periodically within the application code base, is something we should not be concerned about

To overcome these scenarios, we need to have Nginx in front of it with SSL termination and forward user requests to Nodejs. Nginx is a special type of web server that can act as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy, and HTTP cache. Here, we will be using Nginx as a reverse proxy to redirect requests to our Nodejs application and have SSL termination

 Why not Apache? 
Apache is also a web server and can act as a reverse proxy. It also supports SSL termination; however, there are a few things that differentiate Nginx from Apache. Due to the following reasons, mostly Nginx is preferred over Apache. Let’s see them in short

- Nginx has a single or a low number of processes, is asynchronous and event-based, whereas Apache tries to make new processes, new threads for every request in every connection

- Nginx is lightweight, scalable, and easy to configure. On the other hand, Apache is great but has a higher barrier to learning

 Docker-Compose 
Let’s install docker-compose as we will need it

- Download the current stable release of Docker Compose
- sudo curl -L “httpsgithub.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.29.2/docker-composeuname -suname -m)” -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
- Apply executable permissions to the docker-compose binary we just downloaded in the above step

- sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
- Test if the installation was successful by checking the docker-compose version
- docker-compose –version
- Create a docker-compose.yaml file, alternatively you can copy the content from here as well. This will be used to spin the docker containers of our application tech stack that we have

- cd /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker
- vim docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
services:
Nodejs:
build:
context: 

dockerfile: Dockerfile
image: Nodejs
container_name: Nodejs
restart: unless-stopped
networks:
- app-network
webserver:

image: nginx:mainline-alpine
container_name: webserver
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- "80:80"
- "443:443"
volumes:
- web-root:/var/www/html
- ./nginx-conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d
- certbot-etc:/etc/letsencrypt
- certbot-var:/var/lib/letsencrypt
- dhparam:/etc/ssl/certs
depends_on:
- Nodejs
networks:
- app-network
certbot:
image: certbot/certbot
container_name: certbot
volumes:
- certbot-etc:/etc/letsencrypt
- certbot-var:/var/lib/letsencrypt
- web-root:/var/www/html
depends_on:
- webserver
command: certonly --webroot --webroot-path=/var/www/html --email [email protected] --agree-tos --no-eff-email --staging -d Nodejs.devopslee.com -d www.Nodejs.devopslee.com
#command: certonly --webroot --webroot-path=/var/www/html --email [email protected] --agree-tos --no-eff-email --force-renewal -d Nodejs.devopslee.com -d www.Nodejs.devopslee.com
volumes:
certbot-etc:
certbot-var:
web-root:
driver: local
driver_opts:
type: none
device: /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker/views/
o: bind
dhparam:
driver: local
driver_opts:
type: none
device: /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker/dhparam/
o: bind
networks:
app-network:
driver: bridge
In the above file make changes in the line mentioned below. Replace my subdomain.domain, i.e. Nodejs.devopslee, with the one that you want and have. Change IP for your personal Email

–email EMAIL, Email used for registration and recovery contact

- command: certonly –webroot –webroot-path=/var/www/html –email [email protected] –agree-tos –no-eff-email –staging -d Nodejs.devopslee.com -d www.Nodejs.devopslee.com
 Update the AWS security groups 
This time, expose ports 80 and 443 in the security group attached to the EC2 instance. Also, remove 3000 since it is not necessary, because the application works through port 443

 Include the DNS change 
Here, I have created a sub-domain “Nodejs.devopslee.com” that will be used to access the sample Nodejs application using the domain name rather than accessing using an IP

You can create your sub-domain on AWS if you already have your domain

Create 2 “Type A Recordsets” in the hosted zone with a value as EC2 instances’ public IP

One Recordset will be subdomain.domain.com and the other will be www.subdomain.domain.com

Here, I have created Nodejs.devopslee.com and www.Nodejs.devopslee.com, both pointing to the Public IP of the EC2 instance


**Note: **I have not assigned any Elastic IP to the EC2 instance. It is recommended to assign an Elastic IP and then use it in the Recordset so that when you restart your EC2 instance, you don’t need to update the IP in the Recordset because public IPs change after the EC2 instance is restarted

Now, copy values of the “Type
NS Recordset”, we will need these in the next steps

Go to the Hosted zone of your domain and create a new “Record” with your subdomain.domain.com adding the NS values you copied in the previous step

Now, you have a sub-domain that you can use to access your application

In my case, I can use Nodejs.devopslee.com to access the Nodejs application. We are not done yet, now the next step is to secure our Nodejs web application

 Include the SSL certificate 
Let’s generate our key that will be used in Nginx

- cd /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker
- mkdir views
- mkdir dhparam
- sudo openssl dhparam -out /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker/dhparam/dhparam-2048.pem 2048
 Deploy Nodejs app to EC2 instance 
We are all set to start our Nodejs app using docker-compose

This will start our Nodejs app on port 3000, Nginx with SSL on port 80 and 443. Nginx will redirect requests to the Nodejs app when accessed using the domain. It will also have a Certbot client that will enable us to obtain our certificates

- docker-compose up
After you hit the above command, you will see some output as follows. You must see a message as “Successfully received certificates”

**Note The above docker-compose command will start containers and will stay attached to the terminal. We have not used the -d option to detach it from the terminal

You are all set, now hit the URL in the browser and you should have your Nodejs application available on HTTPS

You can also try to hit the application using the curl command
- List the data from the application
- Insert an entry in the application
- Again list the data to verify if the data has been inserted or not
- Check the status of the application
- Hit the URL in the browser to get a list of entries in the database

- httpsNodejs.devopslee.com/list
 Auto-Renewal of SSL Certificates 
Certificates we generate using Let’s Encrypt are valid for 90 days, hence we need to have a way to renew our certificates automatically so that we don’t end up with expired certificates

To automate this process, let’s create a script that will renew certificates for us and a cronjob to schedule the execution of this script

- Create a script with –dry-run to test our script
- vim renew-cert.
bin/bash

COMPOSEusr/local/bin/docker-compose --no-ansi"
DOCKERusr/bin/docker"
cd /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker/
$COMPOSE run certbot renew --dry-run && $COMPOSE-s SIGHUP webserver
$DOCKER system prune -af
- Change permissions of the script to make it executable

- chmod 774 renew-cert.
- Create a cronjob
- sudo crontab -e
*/5 /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker/renew-cert.>> /var/log/cron.log 2>&1
- List the cronjobs

- sudo crontab -l
- Check logs of the cronjob after 5 mins, as we have set a cronjob to be executed on every 5th minute
- tail -f /var/log/cron.lo
In the above screenshot, you can see a “Simulating renewal of an existing certificate message. This is because we have specified the “–dry-run” option in the script

- Let’s remove the “–dry-run” option from the script

- vim renew-cert.
bin/bash
COMPOSEusr/local/bin/docker-compose --no-ansi"
DOCKERusr/bin/docker"
cd /home/ubuntu/Nodejs-docker/
$COMPOSE run certbot renew && $COMPOSE-s SIGHUP webserver
$DOCKER system prune -af
This time you won’t see such a “Simulating renewal of an existing certificate message. This time the script will check if there is any need to renew the certificates, and if required will renew the certificates else will ignore and say “Certificates not yet due for renewal”
== What is next on how to deploy the Nodejs app to AWS? ==
We are done with setting up our Nodejs application using Docker on AWS EC2 instance; however, there are other things that come into the picture when you want to deploy a highly available application for production and other environments. The next step is to use an Orchestrator like ECS or EKS to manage our Nodejs application at the production level. Replication, Auto-scaling, Load Balancing, Traffic Routing, Monitoring container health does not come out of the box with Docker and Docker-Compose. For managing containers and microservices architecture at scale, you need a Container Orchestration tool like ECS or EKS

Also, we did not use any Docker Repository to store our Nodejs app Docker Image. You can use AWS ECR, a fully managed AWS container registry offering high-performance hosting

If you want to create a cloud-native architecture, check out our video What is a Cloud-Native Architecture and how to adopt it?

== Conclusion ==
To deploy Nodejs app to AWS does not mean just creating a Nodejs application and deploying it on the AWS EC2 Instance with a self-managed database. There are various aspects like Containerizing the Nodejs App, SSL Termination, Domain for the app that come into the picture when you want to speed up your Software Development, Deployment, Security, Reliability, Data Redundancy

In this article, we saw the steps to dockerize the sample Nodejs application, use AWS RDS Amazon Aurora and deploy Nodejs app to ec2 instance using Docker and Docker-Compose. We enabled SSL termination to our sub-domain to be used to access the Nodejs application. We saw the steps to automate domain validation and SSL certificate creation using Certbot along with a way to automate certificate renewal that is valid for 90 days

This is enough to get started with a sample Nodejs application; however, when it comes to managing your real-time applications, 100s of microservices, 1000s of containers, volumes, networking, secrets, egress-ingress, you need a Container Orchestration tool. There are various tools like self-hosted Kubernetes, AWS ECS, AWS EKS that you can leverage to manage the container life cycle in your real-world applications

== FAQs ==
**Why do we need to deploy Nodejs app to AWS using Nginx
To deploy Nodejs app to AWS with SSL Termination requires changes in the code of the Nodejs. So, rather than making HTTPS configuration in the code and managing it on our own and being worried about it, it is better to use Nginx that can be used for the SSL termination and can act as a Reverse proxy to redirect requests to our Nodejs application

**Why do we need to use the SSL Termination for our Nodejs application
When communication takes place between a client and a server, i.e. between the browser and the Nodejs application, over theconnection, there are high chances of data theft, attacks on the server. To overcome such risks, it is always recommended to enable SSL Termination and communicate over a secured connection

**Why do we need to use a Container Orchestration Tool to manage our containers
Managing a few containers using docker CLI, or managing 10s of containers using docker-compose is fine. This does stand true when you have 100s and 1000s of micro-services, containers on multiple environments like Dev, QA, Staging, Prod. To not only manage containers but log management, monitoring, networking, load balancing, testing, and secrets management you need some kind of tool called a Container Orchestrator. There are various Container Orchestration tools like ECS or EKS that can help you manage your containers and other moving parts

**Can I deploy a Nodejs application on any other Cloud than AWS or Do I need to deploy Nodejs app to AWS

Yes, of course. You can deploy your Nodejs app on any Cloud. However, while choosing a Cloud provider there are a few areas of consideration as follows that one must think of

Certifications & Standards

Global Infrastructure
Data redundancy:
Low Latency Content Delivery:
Affordable Compute, Network and Storage solutions
Pricing model
Technologies & Service Roadmap
Contracts,& SLAs