This tutorial describes steps needed to deploy Nodejs app to AWS EC2 Ubuntu

We need AWS account, ready to deploy Nodejs app.

STEP 1 (warm up)

• Create Ubuntu instance with prefered memory and storage. In my case it is 8 GB memory and 250 GB SSD.
• Assign security group with rules. In my case, i added http, http2, ssh.
• Create key-pair and download it (SAVE IT SOMEWHERE, WE NEED LATER).
• Wait for instance to come online(3-5 mins)
• If instance name is empty, double-click on it and write something(Ubuntu, etc)

STEP 2 (Connect using putty, easiest part)

• First download Putty, you can do it.
• After downloading Putty. Select the instance from instances list(aws)
• Right click and select "Connect"
• Dialog opens. Copy the DNS. It is under "Connect to your instance using its Public DNS:", then click "x" to close it.
• Open Start menu and type PuttyGen. It should be there.
• Click "Load" button, and choose "key-pair.pem file you downloaded previously"
• Then click save private key, and u are done. Save this private key .ppk in somewhere(prefered to be in same folder with .pem file)
• Now we have .ppk file. Close PuttyGen and open start menu and type Putty and open it
• Paste the DNS you copied earlier to the input under "Host name"
• Then on the sidebar find CONNECTION->SSH->AUTH
• There is an input saying private key file, browse the folder and choose .ppk file of our
• Then go back to Session on sidebar. There you should see input box with label Saved Sessions. Type some name and click Save
• This is because we don want to browse this .ppk file everytime we connect.
• so after saving it should appear on list of saved sessions. Then you double click it.
• Terminal opens you type "ubuntu" and you are in.
• If you don want to type ubuntu everytime, you can add ubuntu before DNS and then save to sessions
• Click Load, add this For ex. ubuntu@mydns then save

STEP 3 (Meet the ubuntu)

• First type sudo apt-get update
• Install Nodejs, NPM, Mongodb, Ngnix, pm2(using npm)
• If you don have idea to install, type "How to install ...." to google, it will be installed

NPM, NODEJS

* sudo apt-get install npm
* curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_10.x | sudo -E bash - // 10.x is the version, you can replace with latest
* sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

• pm2
  • npm install pm2 -g
  • Use ecosystem. Example config (here)[#]
• Mongo db
  • Follow this tutorial install mongo
• NGINX SERVER (for reverse proxy)
  • follow this tutorial
  • And read begginners guide to learn a bit of using it

STEP 4 (security things(optional))

• Create seperate user for this project
• We need create a user in linux, then we create a key-pair to access it using ssh client
• First: login to ubuntu, and type sudo adduser replace_this_name --disabled-password
• Then we go to AWS console, and create new Key-Pair (on the sidebar)
• We download that .pem file, then open PuttyGen and load this file there.
• We will see public key starting like this 'ssh-...', copy that
• Then follow this tutorial: this
• Then like we did for ubuntu user, we just open Putty and browse .ppk file and save session, and connect.
• NOTE: We dont wont have password for new user, but you can set it later if you want, (login to ubuntu user, and set password to new user)
• If you want to restrict access to any home folder of users for other users, login to ubuntu user, and type sudo chmod 0750 /home/username, noone can read that folder except with privileged ones.

STEP 5 (Configuration files)

• MONGODB -> /etc/mongod.conf
  • To enable remote access comment bindIp (if above version 3.6.4 also add bindIpAll: true)
    • config file (here)[#]
  • Automatically start on startup of server
    • sudo systemctl enable mongod.service
  • export and import bson files use mongodump and mongorestore(supply port and host)
• Nginx
  • Listen to 80 port and redirect traffic to your local apps by url
    • example conf here
• PM2
  • By default Node app uses only one CPU core. Use ecosystem config to distribute load
    • Example config here
  • Automatically start on startup of server
    • type pm2 startup then follow the instructions given by terminal
    • keep in mind, for every linux user, pm2 save list located in their home folder