Deployment of IRIS Flask Web App using Putty and WinSCP on AWS EC2 Instance

1. Download Putty and WinSCP.
2. Create an Ubuntu EC2 instance using AWS console.
3. Allow All traffic from Anywhere in security groups of EC2 Instance.
4. Create a Key pair in .pem or .ppk format and download it.
5. Now select the created instance and click on connect.
6. Navigate to SSH client and copy the public DNS.
7. Open WinSCP and paste the copied public DNS in Host name .
8. Now, Navigate to EC2 Instance Connect and copy the username and paste it in username in WinSCP.
9. For Password in WinSCP click on Advanced --> navigate to SSH --> Authentication, then in private key file input box browse for .pem or .ppk file that we earlier downloaded.
10. If file is in .pem format than it will get automatically converted to .ppk and click Yes if it ask for permissions.
11. click on Loginand click onYesto do the authentication and for connecting to Host EC2 machine on AWS.
12. Drop the files from your local machine to Host EC2 ubuntu machine by drag and drop or by right click in file --> upload button.
13. A Putty terminal will get opened.
14. Install Python EC2 using Putty

sudo apt install python3

15. Update all packages and install pip python package manager.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install python3-pip 

16. Install all requirements for the Flask app to run using:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

17. Run python app using:

python app.py

18. Paste the public DNS that we have copied into browser with port:8080 and see your app runing on EC2.

19. Use below command to run your app even after closing Putty terminal.

screen -R deploy python3 app.py

20. To close the running app repeate above step again and ctrl+c to close session which created using above command.

Deploy Flask App using GitHub Actions, CI/CD piplelines, ECR, Dcoker and EC2 on AWS

Files needed:

* Dockerfile
* compose.yaml (If using docker-compose for creating docker image)
* .gitHub\workflows\main.yaml

While running the CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions for first time, below script should not be in comments.

  - name: Stop and remove container if running
        run: |
         docker ps -q --filter "name=texts" | grep -q . && docker stop texts && docker rm -fv texts

You can test with docker images using docker compose in localhost

1. docker init to create the necessary Docker assets to containerize your application with the followung steps as follows:

docker init

2. docker init provides some default configuration, but you'll need to answer a few questions about your application. For example, this application uses Flask to run. Refer to the following example to answer the prompts from docker init and use the same answers for your prompts.

3. Following files will be added:

• Dockerfile
• .dockerignore
• compose.yaml

4. Run the application using following command in a terminal.

docker compose up --build

# detached mode
docker compose up --build -d

5. Open a browser and view the application at http://localhost:5000

6. In the terminal, run the following command to stop the application.

docker compose down

Deployment workflow

 1. Build docker image of the source code
 2. Push your docker image to ECR
 3. Launch Your EC2 
 4. Pull Your image from ECR in EC2
 5. Launch your docker image in EC2

Create IAM user with policies

1. Login to AWS console
2. Create IAM user for deployment --> attach following policies

AmazonEC2ContainerRegistryFullAccess
AmazonEC2FullAccess

3. Navigate to Security Credentials for this IAM user --> Access keys --> Create Access Keys
4. Create Access Keys using CLI option --> Download your access keys in .csv file.

Create a ECR repository to store Docker Image

5. Create ECR repository in AWS by searching for ECR --> Get started
6. Keep the ECR repository private.
7. Provide a name to ECR repository.
8. Copy the ECR repository URI.

URI : 566373416292.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/myapp

Create a EC2 instance on AWS

9. Create a ubuntu EC2 virtual machine on AWS.
10. Do configuration as per your requirements.
11. Create a Key-pair for your EC2 instance and download it.
12. In Network Settings check the following:

Allow SSH traffic from the 0.0.0.0/0 (Anywhere)
Allow HTTPS traffic from the Internet
Allow HTTP traffic from the Internet

13. Click on Launch Instance to create a new instance of EC2.
14. Click on Instance ID for this EC2 instance --> Connect
15. Navigate to EC2 Instance connect --> Connect then a terminal of EC2 ubuntu machine will get opened in browser.

Running Commands on EC2 ubuntu instance terminal

16. Update and upgrade the packages using commands on terminal

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get upgrade

17. Download docker using:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh get-docker.sh

18. Add the user "ubuntu" to the "docker" group

sudo usermod -aG docker ubuntu

19. switching your primary group to the "docker" group

newgrp docker

Configure EC2 as self-hosted Runners

20. Go to your GitHub Project --> Settings --> Actions --> Runners --> New self-hosted runner
21. select the Linux and run the following commands on Ubuntu EC2 instance terminal for downloading GitHub Actions Runner.

# Create a folder
$ mkdir actions-runner && cd actions-runner

# Download the latest runner package
$ curl -o actions-runner-linux-x64-2.314.1.tar.gz -L https://github.com/actions/runner/releases/download/v2.314.1/actions-runner-linux-x64-2.314.1.tar.gz

# Optional: Validate the hash
$ echo "6c726a118bbe02cd32e222f890e1e476567bf299353a96886ba75b423c1137b5  actions-runner-linux-x64-2.314.1.tar.gz" | shasum -a 256 -c

# Extract the installer
$ tar xzf ./actions-runner-linux-x64-2.314.1.tar.gz

22. Configure the GitHub Actions Runner using Commands:

# Create the runner and start the configuration experience
$ ./config.sh --url https://github.com/Gourav052003/Iris-WebApp-Deployement-on-AWS --token ATOIALLTYUWFB54KS62L5NTGAKAKI

# user name of runner group as --> self-hosted

# Last step, run it!
$ ./run.sh

Setup Secrets in GitHub repository

23. Navigate to Settings --> Secrets and variables --> Actions
24. Add following secrets by clicking on New repositiry secret

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID= in .csv file we downloaded

AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY= in .csv file we downloaded

AWS_REGION = us-east-1

AWS_ECR_LOGIN_URI = 566373416292.dkr.ecr.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com

ECR_REPOSITORY_NAME = myapp

configuring security of EC2 instance

25. open EC2 instance --> Security --> click on security groups
26. Edit Inbound Rules --> Add Rule --> save rules

Custom TCP, Anywhere traffic , port 5000 

27. open Public IP with port :5000 in EC2 instance to see your app running on EC2