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Deploying to AWS EC2

Virtual servers on AWS with full OS control, deploy via user data, Elastic Beanstalk, or SSH.

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Why

EC2 gives full control over the OS and runtime — install any software, run any process, attach any storage. It's the most flexible AWS compute, suitable for legacy apps and custom stacks.

Platform-as-a-Service adoption grew 24% in 2024 as teams shift from VM management to git-push deploys. the cloud infrastructure market reached $330B in 2024, growing 22% year-over-year (Synergy Research), and PaaS layers capture the majority of new workloads.

When

Use EC2 for legacy apps, custom software stacks, and workloads needing full OS access. Prefer Fargate/Lambda for containerized/serverless apps.

How

1. Launch — AMI (Amazon Linux 2023 or Ubuntu), instance type, key pair 2. User data — shell script runs on first boot to install app 3. Security group — open only needed ports (80, 443, 22) 4. Elastic IP — static IP for production 5. Load balancer — ALB for HTTPS, health checks, multi-AZ 6. Auto Scaling — ASG to scale instances on demand 7. Deploy — CodeDeploy, SSH+git pull, or Docker on EC2

Example

# user-data.sh — runs on first boot #!/bin/bash yum update -y yum install -y docker systemctl start docker docker run -d -p 80:3000 myapp:latest # Launch via AWS CLI aws ec2 run-instances --image-id ami-012345 --instance-type t3.medium --user-data file://user-data.sh --security-group-ids sg-abc123 # ALB + ASG for production aws elbv2 create-load-balancer --name myapp-alb --subnets subnet-1 subnet-2

Common Problems

  • ⚠Security group too open — 0.0.0.0/0 on all ports, restrict to needed ports only
  • ⚠No auto-recovery — instance dies, no ASG, manual restart needed
  • ⚠Configuration drift between environments — use infrastructure-as-code (Terraform/Pulumi) to keep dev/staging/prod identical

Best Practices

  • ✓Use Amazon Linux 2023 AMI — optimized for EC2, free, and AWS-supported
  • ✓Always use ASG + ALB — auto-heals failed instances and distributes across AZs
  • ✓Set up health checks and graceful shutdown — handle SIGTERM to drain in-flight requests before exit

FAQ