Deploying a Node.js application on EC2 instance and setting up CI/CD pipeline using Jenkins

Satyam Arya

2 years ago

Jenkins is an open-source automation server that is used to automate the building, testing, and deployment of software projects

Jenkins is a popular tool for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. It can be used to automate the entire software delivery process, from building and testing code to deploying it to production.

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipeline is a set of practices, tools, and processes designed to automate the building, testing, and deployment of software applications.

In a typical CI/CD pipeline, code changes are continuously integrated into a central repository and automatically built, tested, and deployed to production environments. This allows developers to catch and fix bugs early in the development cycle, deliver new features more quickly, and improve the overall quality and reliability of their software applications.

To deploy a Node.js application on an EC2 instance and create a CI/CD pipeline using Jenkins, you can follow these steps:

Step 1: Launch an EC2 instance and ssh into it

Log in to the AWS Management Console, navigate to the EC2 dashboard, and launch a new EC2 instance. Choose an Ubuntu Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to start.

Blog on how to launch an EC2 instance on AWS : Click here

Make sure that the security group associated with your EC2 instance allows incoming traffic on port 8080, which is the default port for Jenkins. You can do this by creating a new inbound rule in the security group.

Connect to the EC2 instance using SSH. You can find the connection details on the EC2 dashboard.

You can install MobaXterm to SSH into your EC2 instance: Click here

Step 2: Install Jenkins on the server

Blog on how to install Jenkins on AWS EC2 : Click here

Step 3:

Once Jenkins is up and running, you can access it by navigating to your EC2 instance’s public IP address followed by port 8080

To get the password, type the following command

sudo cat /var/lib/jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword

Step 4:

Create a new repository on GitHub to store your Node.js application code.

For demo Node.js application: Click here

Step 5:

Configure the job to pull the code from your GitHub repository, build the application, and run any tests.

Now, run ssh-keygen in your instance so that it will generate public private key to create connection between GitHub and Jenkins.

ssh-keygen
cd .ssh
ls
cat id_rsa
cat id_rsa.pub

id_rsa is our private key and id_rsa.pub is our public key

Now, we have to give our public key to GitHub and private key to Jenkins.

Step 6:

Now we will add the credentials to Jenkins so that Jenkins can access the code from the GitHub.

Click on Add -> save it

Under Credentials, select the credential that you recently created

Now we are all ready to Build the job now. Click on Build now.

Step 7:

Go to instance and check if the repo is cloned there

cd /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/todo-app
ls

Now check the readme and install the necessary dependencies.

sudo apt install nodejs
sudo apt install npm
sudo npm install
node app.js

Now our application is accessible on port 8000

Make sure that the security group associated with your EC2 instance allows incoming traffic on port 8000

Now take public IP of the instance and port 8000 and you can access the application.

Step 8:

Now we will dockerize the application so that it can be accessed anywhere by anyone.

Install the docker

sudo apt install docker.io

Dockerfile

FROM node:12.2.0-alpine
WORKDIR app
COPY . .
RUN npm install
EXPOSE 8000
CMD ["node","app.js"]

Now build the image using this Dockerfile

First we will give the permission and restart the server

sudo usermod -a -G docker $USER
sudo reboot

Restart the terminal again and go back to your working directory

cd /var/lib/jenkins/workspace/todo-app

docker build . -t node-app

Now we will create container from this image.

docker run -d --name node-app -p 8000:8000 node-app

Now take public IP of the instance and port 8000 and you can access the application.

Step 9:

Now we will automate this process by adding the commands in the shell

Now all the processes that we were doing manually will be performed automatically as we did the automation.

If got permission denied error, run the below command to give permissions

sudo usermod -a -G docker jenkins
sudo systemctl restart jenkins

Step 10:

Now we will configure web-hook so that every time there is any updation, deletion on the repository the job should be automatically triggered and it should perform the upcoming processes.

Go to Jenkins -> Manage Jenkins -> Manage Plugins -> Install Github integration plugin

Go to repository settings -> webhooks -> Add webhook

Payload URL -> http://3.86.179.172:8080/github-webhook/

Content type -> application.json

Go to Jenkins -> configure -> tick this

Now just update something in the repo and your job will be triggered automatically

Note: If you are getting got permission denied, run the following command and then update something in the repo and your job will be triggered automatically

sudo usermod -a -G docker jenkins
sudo systemctl restart jenkins

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below. Thanks for reading and have an amazing day ahead!😊