2 - Elastic Beanstalk

Node.js deployed on AWS using Elastic Beanstalk

A monolithic application behind a load balancer. All API route handling is done within the server process. A cluster of Node.js processes sharing a single port is used in order to fully utilize all cores of a multicore EC2 instance.

 

 

1. SSH into the development instance

If you have not done so already create a development machine on AWS to do this workshop.

If you don't already have an SSH session open, SSH to your development machine.

ssh -i ~/.ssh/<your key>.pem ec2-user@<your dev machine ip address>

If you haven't already done so clone the workshop code onto the dev machine:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/nathanpeck/nodejs-aws-workshop.git

Then change your current working directory to the right directory for this section of the workshop:

cd ~/nodejs-aws-workshop/2\ -\ Elastic\ Beanstalk/code

 

 

2. Install the Elastic Beanstalk command line tool

Now we will use Python PIP to install the Elastic Beanstalk command line tool. This tool will give us a command line wizard that will help detect details of our project, and automatically deploy it on AWS:

pip install awsebcli --upgrade --user

 

 

3. Initialize an Elastic Beanstalk application in the code directory:

Use the following command to start a new Elastic Beanstalk application in the code directory:

eb init

This will launch a command line wizard that asks questions about how you want to setup your application.

Complete the wizard as shown below:

The command line tool will automatically detect that this is a Node.js application. Note that for consistency please make sure you choose the "us-east-1" region for deployment. At the time of writing this workshop "us-east-1" is #13 in the menu.

 

 

4. Launch an environment for your application:

Use the following command to launch the application your initialized on your account:

eb create

This will start a command line wizard that asks you a few questions about the environment. You will need to enter your own name for the environment, and choose the "Network" load balancer type:

Note that it will take a few minutes to launch your first environment, since this is creating all the initial resources that are required. Once the environment is created future updates are faster.

 

 

5. Verify that your environment is up and running:

After the application completes deploying you can access your environment using the URL that is listed in the Elastic Beanstalk console:

Here is an example of using curl to fetch a list of users from the API:

curl http://nodejs-workshop-dev.us-east-1.elasticbeanstalk.com/api/characters

Or you can just enter the URL into your browser to check it:

 

 

6. Deploy a new version of the application:

You can make any changes that you want to the application, and then roll them out using the following command:

eb deploy

Note that for any code changes to be reflected when the project being deployed is a Git repo the changes must be committed to the repo, because Elastic Beanstalk always deploys the most recent commit, never uncomitted changes.

 

 

7. Shutdown the application

Whe you are done experimenting with Elastic Beanstalk you can shutdown your application. First choose "Terminate Application" from the action menu on your environment:

In the popup dialog enter the environment name to confirm that you really want to delete it, and click "Terminate"

It will take a few minutes for the environment to be cleaned up. You will see events for the environment that indicate that it is being destroyed:

Once you see "terminateEnvironment completed successfully" you can delete the application itself, by using the Action menu on the application: