Deploy code directly to AWS EC2 instance using Github Actions

Question

As the title says I am trying to deploy my Laravel-Angular application directly from Github to AWS EC2 instance using Github Actions.

In my application there are 3 Angular 8+ projects which are needed to be build before deployment. Where as laravel does not need to be build.

The solutions that are available suggests to use AWS Elastic Beanstalk to deploy code. But, if that is to be done how to attach an elastic beanstalk to an existing instance is not clear enough.

Is there a way to deploy code to AWS EC2 without using Elastic Beanstalk?

Here is my Github Actions build.yml :

name: Build Develop Branch

on:
  push:
    branches: [ develop ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ develop ]

jobs:
  build:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    strategy:
      matrix:
        node-version: [14.x]

    steps:
    - name: Code Checkout
      uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - name: Use Node.js ${{ matrix.node-version }}
      uses: actions/setup-node@v1
      with:
        node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }}
    - name: App 1 npm install
      run: npm install
      working-directory: angular-app-1
    - name: App 1 Build
      run: npm run build:staging
      working-directory: angular-app-1
    - name: App 2 npm install
      run: npm install
      working-directory: angular-app-2
    - name: App 2 Build
      run: node node_modules/@angular/cli/bin/ng build --configuration=staging
      working-directory: angular-app-2
    - name: App 3 npm install
      run: npm install
      working-directory: angular-app-3
    - name: App 3 Build
      run: node node_modules/@angular/cli/bin/ng build --configuration=staging
      working-directory: angular-app-3

Answer 1

Is there a way to deploy code to AWS EC2 without using Elastic Beanstalk?

I found a simple way to deploy to EC2 instance (or to any server that accepts rsync commands over ssh) using GitHub Actions.

I have a simple file in the repo's .github/workflows folder, which GitHub Actions runs to deploy to my EC2 instance whenever a push is made to my GitHub repo.

No muss, no fuss, no special incantations or Byzantine AWS configuration details.

File .github/workflows/pushtoec2.yml:

name: Push-to-EC2

on: push

jobs:
  deploy:
    name: Push to EC2 Instance
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout the code
        uses: actions/checkout@v1

      - name: Deploy to my EC2 instance
        uses: easingthemes/[email protected]
        env:
          SSH_PRIVATE_KEY: ${{ secrets.EC2_SSH_KEY }}
          SOURCE: "./"
          REMOTE_HOST: "ec2-34-213-48-149.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com"
          REMOTE_USER: "ec2-user"
          TARGET: "/home/ec2-user/SampleExpressApp"

Details of the ssh deploy GitHub Action, used above.

Answer 2

Real final edit

A year later, I finally got around to making the tutorial: https://github.com/Andrew-Chen-Wang/cookiecutter-django-ec2-github.

I found a Medium tutorial that also deserves some light if anyone wants to use Code Pipeline (there's a couple of differences; I store my files on GitHub while the Medium tutorial is on S3. I create a custom VPC that the other author doesn't).

---

Earlier final edit

AWS has finally made a neat tutorial for CodeDeploy w/ GitHub repository: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/latest/userguide/tutorials-github-prerequisites.html take a look there and enjoy :)

Like the ECS tutorial, we're using Parameter Store to store our secrets. The way AWS previous wanted us to grab secrets was via a script in a bash script: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/use-parameter-store-to-securely-access-secrets-and-config-data-in-aws-codedeploy/

For example:

password=$(aws ssm get-parameters --region us-east-1 --names MySecureSQLPassword --with-decryption --query Parameters[0].Value)
password=`echo $password | sed -e 's/^"//' -e 's/"$//'`
mysqladmin -u root password $password

---

New edit (24 December 2020): I think I've nailed it. Below I pointed to Donate Anything for AWS ECS. I've moved to a self deploying setting. If you take a look at bin/scripts, I'm taking advantage of supervisord and gunicorn (for Python web development). But in context of EC2, you can simply point your AppSpec.yml to those scripts! Hope that helps everyone!

Before I start:

This is not a full answer. Not a complete walkthrough, but a lot of hints and some code that will help you with setting up certain AWS stuff like ALB and your files in your repo for this to work. This answer is more like several clues jumbled together from my sprint run trying to make ECS work last night.

I also don't have enough points to neither comment nor chat soo... here's the best thing I can offer.

Quick links (you should probably just skip these two points, though):

1. Check this out: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/latest/userguide/instances-ec2-configure.html
2. I don't have enough points to comment or chat... This won't be a full answer, as well, though, as I'm trying to first finish an ECS deploy from GH before moving on to EC2 from GH. Anyhow...
3. One last edit: this will sound like a marketing ploy but a correct implementation with GitHub actions and workflow_dispatch is located at Donate Anything's GitHub repository. You'll find the same ECS work located below in there. Do note that I changed my GitHub action to use Docker Hub since it was free (and to me cheaper if you're going to use ECS since AWS ECR is expensive).

Edit: The ECS deployment works now. Will start working on the EC2 deployment soon.

Edit 2: I added Donate Anything repo. Additionally, I'm not sure if direct EC2 deployment, at least for me, is viable since install scripts would kinda be weird. However, I still haven't found the time to get to EC2. Again, if anyone is willing to share their time, please do so and contribute!

I do want to warn everyone that SECURITY GROUPS are very important. That clogged me for a long time, so make sure you get them right. In the ECS tutorial, I teach you how I do it.

---

Full non-full answer:

I'm working on this issue right now in this repo and another for ECS here using GitHub actions. I haven't started too far on the EC2 one, but the basic rundown for testing is this:

CRUCIAL

• You need to try and deploy from the AWS CLI first. This is because AWS Actions does not have a dedicated action for deploying to EC2 yet.
• Write down each of these statements. We're going to need them later for the GitHub action.

Some hints when testing this AWS setup:

• Before using CodeDeploy, you need an EC2 instance, an Application Load Balancer (you'll find it under Elastic Load Balancer), and a target group (which you create DURING the ALB setup). Go to target groups, right click on the group, and register your instance.
• To deploy from CodeDeploy, create a new application. Create a new deployment group. I think, for your setup, you should do the in-place deployment type rather than the Blue/Green deployment type.
• Finally, testing on the CLI, you should run the code you see here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/latest/userguide/tutorials-wordpress-deploy-application.html#tutorials-wordpress-deploy-application-create-deployment-cli
  • Do note, you may want to start from here (using S3 as a location to store your latest code. You can delete it afterwards anyways, as I believe DELETE requests don't incur charges): https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/latest/userguide/tutorials-wordpress-upload-application.html I personally don't know if that GitHub OAuth integration works. I tried once before (very amateur though, i.e. no clue what I was doing before) and nothing happened, soo... I'd just stick with that tutorial.

How your test rundown will look like:

• For me, for my ECS repo, I just went a full 10 hours straight trying to configure everything properly step by step like the GitHub action. For you, you should do the same. Imagine you're the code: figure out where you need to start from.
• Aha! I should probably figure out CodeDeploy first. Let's right an appspec.yaml file first! The appspec file is how CodeDeploy will work on the hooks for everything. Unfortunately, I'm current going through that problem here but that's because the EC2 and ECS syntax for AppSpec files are different. Luckily, EC2 doesn't have any special areas. Just get your files and hooks right. An example from my test:

version: 0.0
os: linux

files:
  - source: /
    destination: /code

hooks:
  BeforeInstall:
    - location: aws_scripts/install_dependencies
      timeout: 300
      runas: root
  ApplicationStop:
    - location: aws_scripts/start_server
      runas: root

The GitHub action:

What you'll need at minimum:

jobs:
  deploy:
    name: Deploy
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - name: Checkout
      uses: actions/checkout@v2

    - name: Configure AWS credentials
      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v1
      with:
        aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
        aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
        # TODO Change your AWS region here!
        aws-region: us-east-2

The checking out of code is necessary to... well... get the code.

For the configuration of AWS credentials, you'll want to add AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY to your GitHub secrets with a proper IAM credential. For this, I believe the only IAM role needed is for full CodeDeploy stuff.

Deploying the code:

This is when that test code that you should've tried before reaching this step is for. Now that your workflow is setup, let's paste the code from the CLI into your action.

    - name: Deploying with CodeDeploy
      id: a-task
      env:
        an-environment-variable: anything you want
      run: |
        echo "Your CLI code should be placed here"

Sorry if this was confusing, not what you're looking for, or wanted a complete tutorial. I, too, haven't actually gotten this to work, but it's also been awhile since I last tried, and the last time I tried, I didn't even know what an EC2 instance was... I just did a standalone EC2 instance and used rsync to transfer my files. Hopefully what I've written was several clues that can guide you very easily to a solution.

If you got it to work, please share it on here: https://github.com/Andrew-Chen-Wang/cookiecutter-django-ec2-gh-action so that no one else has to suffer the pain of AWS deployment...

Answer 3

First, you need to go through this tutorial on AWS to set up your EC2 server, as well as configure the Application and Deployment Group in CodeDeploy: Tutorial: Use CodeDeploy to deploy an application from GitHub

Then, you can use the following workflow in GitHub Actions to deploy your code on push. You essentially use the AWS CLI to create a new deployment. Store the AWS credentials for the CLI in GitHub Secrets.

Here is an example for deploying a Node app:

name: Deploy to AWS

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  deploy:
    name: Deploy AWS
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        node-version: [12.x]
        app-name: ['your-codedeploy-application']
        deployment-group: ['your-codedeploy-deploy-group']
        repo: ['username/repository-name']
        
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      
      - name: Use Node.js ${{ matrix.node-version }}
        uses: actions/setup-node@v1
        with:
          node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }}
          
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install
      
      - name: Build app
        run: npm run build

      - name: Install AWS CLI 
        run: |
          curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
          unzip awscliv2.zip
          sudo ./aws/install --update
      
      - name: Configure AWS credentials
        uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v1
        with:
          aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
          aws-session-token: ${{ secrets.AWS_SESSION_TOKEN }}
          aws-region: us-east-1
          
      - name: Deploy to AWS
        run: |
          aws deploy create-deployment \
          --application-name ${{ matrix.app-name }} \
          --deployment-config-name CodeDeployDefault.OneAtATime \
          --deployment-group-name ${{ matrix.deployment-group }} \
          --description "GitHub Deployment for the ${{ matrix.app-name }}-${{ github.sha }}" \
          --github-location repository=${{ matrix.repo }},commitId=${{ github.sha }}