Deploy Application on Amazon EC2

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Amazon EC2

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) : EC2 allows scalable deployment of applications by providing a Web service through which a user can boot an Amazon Machine Image to create a virtual machine, which Amazon calls an “instance”, containing any software desired. A user can create, launch, and terminate server instances as needed, paying by the hour for active servers, hence the term “elastic”.

Step 1. Launch an instance (Ubuntu linux)

  • a. Sign in your aws account and then open EC2 dashboard.
  • b. Launch an instance.
  • c. Select the Ubuntu Server 16.04 image.
  • d. Use t2.micro as instance (free). Click next instead of launch.
  • e. Jump to security group setup. Add ports and set sources (determine the traffic that can reach the instance).
  • f. Click Launch. You will be asked to create and name a new key pair and download the private key.
  • g. Wait for the instance to initialize.

Step 2. Connect to the instance

Open your terminal, run:

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chmod 600 /path/to/mykey.pem
ssh -i /path/to/mykey.pem ubuntu@YOUR_INSTANCE_IP

if asked “Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? ”, type “yes”, enter.

You are now on the remote server, you can play with Linux commands:

->hostname, ifconfig, whoami, uptime, pwd, ls

Step 3. Install Java, MySQL and Tomcat 9

Install Java

In your instance’s terminal, execute the following commands:

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install default-jre

Verify the java version:

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java -version

Install MySQL

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sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Then execute your import database sql file in the mysql shell.

Install Tomcat

Execute the following commands:

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cd /opt/
sudo wget http://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/apache/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.11/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.11.tar.gz
sudo tar xzf apache-tomcat-9.0.11.tar.gz
sudo ln -s apache-tomcat-9.0.11 tomcat
echo "export CATALINA_HOME=\"/opt/tomcat\"" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
cd /opt/tomcat
sudo bin/startup.sh

Verify with http(s)://YOUR_INSTANCE_IP:PORT_NUMBER/

Step 4. Run Application on EC2

This part will use java-based web application as example.

WAR file

WAR file (or Web application ARchive) is a JAR file used to distribute a collection of JavaServer Pages, Java Servlets, Java classes, XML files, tag libraries, static web pages (HTML and related files) and other resources that together constitute a web application.

Export WAR file(in Eclipse)

  • a. verify your website works correctly on local environment.
  • b. open your database config file (e.g. MySQLDBUtil.java), change and make sure port is 3306, and username and password are correct(e.g. ‘root’).
  • c. In Eclipse, select File->Export->Web->war File, save the war file to disk.
  • d. Copy the war file to your instance:
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scp -i /path/to/mykey.pem /path/to/warfile ubuntu@YOUR_INSTANCE_IP:~/
  • e. In your instance’s terminal(remote), type the following command:
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sudo cp ~/yourwarfile /opt/tomcat/webapps/
  • f. Verify the server on the browser

Some Configurations

Change the HTTP port from 8080 to 80

  • a. On the remote command-line terminal, edit the tomcat configuration by:
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sudo vim /opt/tomcat/conf/server.xml
  • b. Press i to enter insert mode, type :69 to go to line 69:
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<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"

Change 8080 to 80.

  • c. Press ESC to exit insert mode, then type :wq to save and exit.
  • d. Restart tomcat by:
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sudo /opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
sudo /opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
  • e. Visit your website to see if the server is started correctly.

Make tomcat auto start when Linux boots

  • a. On the remote command-line terminal, type the following command:
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sudo vim /etc/init.d/tomcat
  • b. Press i to enter the INSERT mode, then paste the following contents:
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#!/bin/bash

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: tomcat
# Required-Start: $network
# Required-Stop: $network
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start/Stop Tomcat server
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

start() {
 sh /opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
}

stop() {
 sh /opt/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
}

case $1 in
  start|stop) $1;;
  restart) stop; start;;
  *) echo "Run as $0 <start|stop|restart>"; exit 1;;
esac
  • c. Save and Exit.
  • d. Make the new file executable:
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sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/tomcat
  • e. Update bashrc to catch your script:
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sudo update-rc.d tomcat defaults
  • f. You can also use following command to manually restart tomcat:
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sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat restart

Make tomcat auto restart everyday

Your web app may be not that stable to run for months. You can restart it every night to keep it healthy.

  • a. On your instance’s terminal, type the following command:
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sudo crontab -e
  • b. Input 3 to select vim.basic as the editor
  • c. Move the cursor to the end, press i to enter edit mode. Input the following, It means restart tomcat at 1:00 and 13:00 UTC everyday:
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0 1,13   *   *   *   sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat restart
  • d. Save and exit.

Remote Debug

You can check Java error from Tomcat runtime log. Location: 

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/opt/tomcat/logs/localhost.<date>.log

e.g. /opt/tomcat/logs/localhost.2018-8-21.log

Check tomat process

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ps aux|grep tomcat

To kill the process:

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sudo kill -9 17273

Others

Learn vim:

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vimtutor

Learn emacs:

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C-h t
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