A Guide to Deploying Full-Stack Apps on AWS EC2

While platform-as-a-service (PaaS) providers like Vercel and Heroku are incredibly convenient, understanding how to deploy applications on bare-metal virtual machines like AWS EC2 is a crucial skill for any backend engineer.

Step 1: Provisioning the Instance

1. Navigate to the EC2 Dashboard in the AWS Management Console.
2. Click Launch Instance.
3. Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). I prefer Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS.
4. Select your instance type (a t3.micro is fine for testing).
5. Configure your Security Group to allow inbound traffic on ports 22 (SSH), 80 (HTTP), and 443 (HTTPS).

Step 2: Server Setup

SSH into your new instance:

ssh -i "your-key.pem" ubuntu@your-instance-ip

Update your packages and install the necessary dependencies (Node.js, Python, Docker, Nginx, etc.):

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install nginx -y

Step 3: Setting up a Reverse Proxy

Nginx acts as a reverse proxy, taking requests on port 80 and forwarding them to your application running on a local port (like 3000 or 8000).

Edit your Nginx config:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yourdomain.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    }
}

Conclusion

Managing your own EC2 instances gives you unparalleled control over your infrastructure and costs, a critical component of building scalable systems.