How To Create Node App with Nginx Setup on Amazon EC2

Two things before we start

1. Node js app in a git repo - make sure your Node app is ready and available to clone from a git repo
2. AWS account - if you don't have one yet, you can sign up here

Launch an EC2 instance

1. Sign in to your AWS management console
2. Go to EC2 service
3. Go to Launch instance
4. Select the first one from the list: Amazon Linux 2 AMI for the 64-bit (x86) - basically the first default option
5. Select instance type. Assuming you are running a simple app then go for the cheapest instance: t3a.nano. Click Review and launch as we are blasting through the complexity here and will take all the default setting and only change the few we need later. On the next screen confirm again by clicking Launch
6. You will be asked to select an existing key pair or create a new key pair - it doesn't matter, we will be using a web based SSH client from AWS console to select any option. Click Launch Instances
7. Click View Instances and go make yourself a cup of coffee while AWS is launching your new instance. It will take a few minutes.

Set up security groups

1. On EC2 Dashboard, find your new instance and scroll the view to the right to see what Security Group your instance is in. Remember the name of the security group
2. In the left hand side menu find and go to Security Groups
3. Select the security group and from 'Actions' select Edit inbound rules
4. In inbound rules you want to add the following two rules:

• Type: SSH, Source: Anywhere
• Type: HTTP Source: Anywhere

Connect to your instance via SSH

1. From the AWS EC2 Instances dashboard, select your instance, press Connect
2. From connection options choose EC2 Instance Connect (browser-based SHH connection) - this is the easiest and fastest option with no config required!

Install Node, git, yarn and PM2 to run your app

sudo yum update

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.35.1/install.sh | bash

nvm install node

sudo yum install git

curl -o- -L https://yarnpkg.com/install.sh | bash

git clone https://github.com/<username>/<repository-name>.git <folder-name>
-- or --
git clone https://<username>@bitbucket.org/<username>/<repository-name>.git

ls

cd <your-app-folder>

yarn install

yarn global add pm2

pm2 start index.js --name my-app

pm2 startup

pm2 save

Set up Nginx to run your app behind the proxy

sudo yum install nginx

sudo amazon-linux-extras install nginx1.12

sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

server {
   listen         80 default_server;
   listen         [::]:80 default_server;
   server_name    localhost;
   root           /usr/share/nginx/html;
   location / {
       proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
   }
}

sudo service nginx restart

sudo chkconfig nginx on

Next steps