Deployment of Medusa Backend to AWS EC2 Using GitHub Actions

This document outlines the process of deploying a Medusa backend application to an AWS EC2 instance using GitHub Actions to automate the deployment process. The application is set to run on port 9000.

---

Step-by-Step Process

1. Creating the EC2 Instance and Key Pair

• EC2 Setup: Create a new EC2 instance with the following configurations:
  • Instance type: t2.small
  • Operating system: Ubuntu 22.04
  • Security group: Allow inbound traffic on port 9000 for the Medusa backend application.
• Key Pair: Generate a new key pair to securely access the EC2 instance via SSH.

2. Accessing the EC2 Instance

Use the following command to access the EC2 instance via SSH:

ssh -i <key-pair-file> ubuntu@<EC2-public-IP>

Once inside the EC2 instance, install the necessary tools with the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install docker docker-compose git -y

3. Generating SSH Keys for GitHub Actions

• SSH Key Generation: Generate an SSH key pair to establish a secure connection between GitHub Actions and the EC2 instance:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "GithubActions"

• Public key: Add this key to the EC2 instance under ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.
• Private key: Store this in the GitHub repository as a secret under the name EC2_SSH_KEY.
• EC2 Public IP: Store the EC2 instance's public IP as a secret in GitHub, under the name EC2_IP.

4. Creating the GitHub Repository

• Create a new repository called EC2Deploy to manage the deployment process.
• Clone the previous Task-3 project to your local machine, and within the .github/workflows/ directory, create a new workflow file named deploy.yml to handle the deployment.

5. Writing the GitHub Actions Workflow

name: Deploy to EC2

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout Code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Install SSH Client
        run: sudo apt-get install -y sshpass

      - name: Add SSH Key
        uses: webfactory/[email protected]
        with:
          ssh-private-key: ${{ secrets.EC2_SSH_KEY }}

      - name: Deploy to EC2
        run: |
          ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no ubuntu@${{ secrets.EC2_IP }} '
          cd /home/ubuntu/EC2Deploy || git clone https://github.com/SlayerK15/EC2Deploy.git /home/ubuntu/EC2Deploy
          cd /home/ubuntu/EC2Deploy
          git pull
          docker-compose down
          docker-compose up -d --build
          '

Explanation of Workflow Steps:

1. Checkout Code: This step checks out the code from the GitHub repository to the runner machine.
2. Install SSH Client: Installs sshpass to facilitate SSH communication with the EC2 instance.
3. Add SSH Key: Adds the private SSH key stored in GitHub secrets for secure SSH access using the webfactory/ssh-agent action.
4. Deploy to EC2: SSHs into the EC2 instance, navigates to the project directory, pulls the latest changes from the repository, and restarts the Docker containers with docker-compose.

6. Pushing Code and Triggering Deployment

• After writing the workflow, commit and push the changes to the main branch. This triggers the GitHub Actions workflow and automates the deployment to the EC2 instance.
• The Medusa backend application will be successfully deployed and run on port 9000.

7. Verifying the Deployment

• Access the EC2 instance via SSH and run the following command to check if the Docker containers are running:

docker ps

• You can also check the images with:

docker images

These commands will confirm that the Medusa backend is running on the EC2 instance.

---

By following this process, the deployment of the Medusa backend to AWS EC2 using GitHub Actions is automated and can be easily repeated with future updates.