Today I will show how to deploy a simple application
to AWS EC2. I will do it in such a way to be used from
a CI CD pipeline. In such a way each new version will be deployed
automatically to EC2. For more than 10 years already, I don't need
to buy an expensive server to deploy an application. I have plenty of cloud providers which offer
me virtual machines to rent. I have GCP, Google Cloud Platform, Azur from
Microsoft, and AWS, Amazon Web Services. For the current video I will focus on AWS. AWS has plenty of services to deploy an application:
EC2, ECS, Lambda, EKS and more. But let's focus on the easiest one for now,
EC2. EC2 is a virtual machine. AWS rents me a virtual machine per hour. If I use it all the month I must pay 720 hours
of usage. If I turn off my VM on nights and on weekends,
I pay less. I only pay for it when I use it. But what is an EC2 instance? EC2 stands for Elastic Cloud Computing. It means that I rent some cloud computing
resources in an elastic way. If I want one CPU, I configure my instance
to have one CPU. If I want 10 CPUs, I upgrade my existing instance
to the target. But a VM is not only CPU, I can also configure
the RAM memory and the hard drive and more customizations. Ok, but when turning on a VM, an EC2 instance,
there are some considerations to take into account. The first one is the VPC, the Virtual Private
Cloud. This is the network where will be placed my
EC2 instance. All the instance I turn on in my account will
be associated to my VPC. I can have bigger networks smaller networks
or multiple networks depending on the architecture of my application. Another service before starting with the demo,
the Security Groups. I have now my EC2 instances, my VMs, inside
a VPC, inside a network. But which ports are available? Which are open? Are they open to the world? Or only to a given IP address? The Security Groups will filter the requests
to the EC2 instances per port. I can block all the incoming requests to my
instances but for one single port. And in the reverse way give complete access
from my instances to the internet. The Security Groups can be applied to other
services as the databases or cache services. Let's go now to the AWS console and create
some instances to deploy my application. I have a simple application, a Spring Boot
application. Which responds to the following endpoint. I will now create an instance in AWS to upload
my application and request it. I first created a fresh AWS account. Some personal information were necessary as
my contact information and a credit card. Nevertheless, I can use AWS for free so no
charges will be applied. But only some services and resources are available
for the free tier. We will see it in a moment. I must first choose my region where all my
resources will be created. I will start by creating a VPC, a network
where to deploy my EC2 instance. When creating a VPC, I can create a bare VPC
or a complete set of connected resources, as subnets, routes and more. I won't explain all of those because it's
out of the scope of this video. If you want more details about those services,
add a comment and I will maybe create a video about the networking services. So I create a VPC with all the attached services,
which are mandatory to create later my EC2 instance. I leave all the options by default and create
it. My VPC is ready. Let's go now to the EC2 screen. Before creating my EC2, I will upload my SSH
key to AWS. This will let me connect to my EC2 instance
later with SSH. Let's go now to the last step before creating
my EC2 instance, the Security Groups. To access my instance, I need the port 22
for an SSH connection and the port 8080 as it's the default port of my Spring Boot application. The rest of the ports must be closed. On the other way, I have no restrictions for
the outgoing connections. I let my instance to connect to any external
port, all in the internet. Okay, all steps done. Let's go now with my EC2 instance. I start by naming my instance. Then choose the OS. I don't want anything particular, just a Linux
one. So I choose the default one, the Amazon Linux,
which is based on CentOS. Then choose the size of the instance. This will impact on the cost of my instance. I want to stay on the free tier, so I choose
the t2.micro. I have more choices, with their specificities
and cost. But let's stay with this one. I choose now my previously uploaded SSH key. This way I can connect my instance via SSH. In the networking settings, I will change
to use my VPC. Be sure to use a public subnet, otherwise
the instance won't be accessible from the outside. I must enable the auto assigned IP. This way the instance will have a public IP,
where I can connect from my localhost. And now choose the previously created Security
Group. I leave the storage, the hard drive, as it
is. And finally just take a look at the advanced
details. If I go to the bottom, I see the user data
where I can put a shell script which will be executed when starting my instance. I won't use it now. But remember it for later. It will be very interesting to be used from
a CI CD. Finally, hit the launch button and wait until
it's available. I see that my instance is available now. Let's connect to it. I just need the public IP now, and go to a
terminal. The default user on an EC2 instance is ec2-user. Now I'm inside my EC2 instance. Great! I need now to deploy my application here,
my Spring Boot application. For that I first need to install Java, as
it's not installed by default in a Linux distribution. I update all the dependencies first. And now install Java. Okay my instance is ready to run my application. Let's upload my application and test it. I will come to my localhost and copy the JAR
file to my EC2 instance. Go back to the instance and run it. Finally I will test it from my localhost. But be sure to not close this terminal, as
it will stop the application. I will open a new tab. Great! My application is deployed on an EC2 instance. I could end the video right now. But this way to deploy an application is far
from being automated. Let's see now how to deploy automatically
the application in the EC2 instance from a CI CD pipeline. The first thing I will do is create an image,
an Ami, from the EC2 instance. This will create a copy of the hard drive
content as a backup. And every time I want to start a new EC2 instance,
I can start it from this image. This way I already have Java installed. Then I just need to upload a fresh version
of my application. Let's create the image. I leave all the options by default and create
the image. Now I can run another instance from this image
from the console. But that's not my purpose. My purpose is that when a new version of the
application is ready, is tested and packaged, I want to be automatically deployed in a new
EC2 instance. For that, I will use the already seen user
data. The user data is a shell script that can be
run at the startup of my EC2 instance. I will add a script which will download the
new version of the application and start it. But from where can I download the new version? I will use another service of AWS, S3. S3 is a Simple Storage Service. It's just a place where I can upload any file
I want. So at the end of my pipeline, when my package
is created, I will upload it to S3. Then start the EC2 instance. And in the startup script of the EC2 instance,
I first download the new version from S3 and then start it. Let's start by creating an S3 bucket. I will leave it public for simplicity. But of course, this is a very bad practice. I should protect it, then modify the authorizations
on my EC2 instance to be able to access the bucket. But that's out of the scope of this video. Leave the rest of the options by default and
created the bucket. And now, let's go to the terminal to create
the startup script. I first download the JAR file from S3, with
the AWS command. The AWS command is available on the default
image, in all the EC2 instances. And it's already configured to interact with
all the services in my account. And finally start the application. This script is saved inside my project. This way it's available in the CI CD pipeline. And finally what are the commands to run from
my CI CD pipeline? I first compiled the project to obtain a new
package. Then upload the package to S3. For this command to be successfully executed
with my AWS account, and must ensure that the AWS command is correctly configured with
my AWS account, or I can have those environment variables set in the CI CD runner. And finally start another instance with the
new version. Those parameters are the ID of the image template
I've created. How many instances I want to run at launch. The resources configurations of the EC2 instance
I want. The SSH key. The information about the VPC and subnet. Where the EC2 instance will be created. The Security Group I've have created to block
the ports. My startup script to indicate that I want
a public IP to be assigned to my EC2 instance. After running this command, the EC2 instance
will be started. I must wait one minute or two until it's available. Then I have my application accessible with
a new IP. I know that having a new IP for each version
is not the best. I may use an Elastic IP, configure a Load
Balancer or some rules on Route53. There are multiple solutions, but I want to
keep this video simple. Feel free to ask in the comments about the
networking services or the security services in AWS. I've created a VPC, a full network with all
its sub networks and routes. I've uploaded my SSH key to be able to access
my EC2 instance via SSH. I've created a Security Group to block the
ports I don't need. I've created my first EC2 instance. I've installed all the dependencies I needed
and then created an image to be used later. I've finally created an S3 bucket where to
upload all the new versions of my application. I've created a startup script which downloads
the latest version from S3 and start the application. Finally, from the CI CD runner, I've packaged
my application, uploaded it to S3 and started a new EC2 instance. Of course, there are other ways to deploy
an application in Amazon. I will make more videos about how to deploy
to Lambda, ECS and more. That's all for this video. I know I've not explained all the steps in
detail, but I want to make this video affordable for everyone. Ask in the comments about the parts you're
most interested in and I will make more videos about it. Don't forget to click on thumbs up, subscribe
to my channel and see you soon.
