Deploying Node.js App on an AWS EC2 Instance

Introduction

This guide serves to provide instructions on how one can deploy a NodeJS application on an AWS EC2 Linux instance.

Steps

1. Creating an AWS EC2 Instance

The steps involving creating an AWS EC2 instance are detailed in the following page:

• Setting up an EC2 Instance

2. Secure Shell (SSH) into the instance

There are several methods in which you can SSH into your EC2 instance

Using an SSH Client:

EC2 Instance Connect:

Amazon EC2 Instance Connect offers a streamlined and secure method for establishing connections to Linux instances using SSH. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies and principals are used to control SSH access. This method effectively bypasses the need of handling and sharing SSH keys, which simplifies key management. Thus, EC2 Instance Connect will be our preferred method of accessing our instance.

When trying to connect to the instance, we are brought directly to this page where we are given different options to connect to the instance.

Once connected, you are brought into a Linux instance where the Github repository resides.

After you SSH into the EC2 instance, you need to change the user to a super user to have the necessary permissions by using the command:

sudo su

3. Installing NodeJS

We install nvm (node version manager) by using the following command:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.3/install.sh | bash

Using nvm, we install Node.js with the below command:

nvm install