How To Create Node App with Nginx Setup on Amazon EC2

How to launch a Node js app behind an Nginx proxy on Amazon EC2 instance in a step by step walkthrough.

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 

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

Click Save

Go back to Instances

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

Now the fun begins, we will blast through the installation of all the software you need. You will now be working in your SSH terminal

sudo yum update

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

nvm install node

sudo yum install git

6. Install yarn. You are wondering why not an npm? Here is an article . Bottom line, yarn is quicker and more resilient.

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

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

ls

cd <your-app-folder>

yarn install

You need a Node process manager so that it takes care of automatically restarting and reloading your app when something goes wrong. We will use PM2 - a very popular and production ready process manager.

yarn global add pm2

pm2 start index.js --name my-app

pm2 startup

Retype the command the console asks you for in order to create the start up configuration. You need to re-type it as copy-paste does not really work in the console!

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 //127.0.0.1:3000;
   }
}

sudo service nginx restart

sudo chkconfig nginx on

You are done! Up and running.

Go to your AWS dashboard with EC2 instances and find the Public DNS (IPv4) for your new instance. If you copy the url into the browser you should be able to see the output from your Node app.

Next steps

1. You still need to think how to set up a proper domain for your app

2. You need to configure your Nginx proxy headers and learn more about the server and location blocks configurations.

3. You probably want to set up a Git repo with your Nginx configuration files so that you can edit them in a proper code editor and than just pull their latest versions into your EC2 instance

4. Use a proper SSH client like  from your local machine. It will be a bit faster and smoother experience than the web client via AWS Console