How to Dockerize and Deploy Nestjs App to EC2, AWS

Introduction

I’m a newbie in the backend world, and I’ve been learning NestJS to build APIs. Recently, I’ve been exploring how to dockerize and deploy a NestJS app to an EC2 instance on AWS.In this post, I will guide you on how to dockerize a Nestjs app and deploy it to an EC2 instance. Let’s get started!

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure you have the following prerequisites:

A NestJS app
Docker installed on your local machine
An AWS account

Dockerizing the NestJS App

Step 1: Create a Dockerfile

First, create a Dockerfile in the root directory of your NestJS app. Add the following content to the Dockerfile:

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# Stage 1: Build the application (builder)
FROM node:20-alpine as builder

ENV NODE_ENV build

USER node
WORKDIR /home/node

COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci

COPY --chown=node:node . .
RUN npm run build

# ---
# Stage 2: Production image (slim and optimized)
FROM node:20-alpine

ENV NODE_ENV production

USER node
WORKDIR /home/node

# Copy essential files from build stage with ownership
COPY --from=builder --chown=node:node /home/node/package*.json ./
COPY --from=builder --chown=node:node /home/node/node_modules/ ./node_modules/
COPY --from=builder --chown=node:node /home/node/dist/ ./dist/

# Start the application in production mode
CMD [ "yarn", "start:prod" ]

Step 2: Build the Docker Image

Next, build the Docker image by running the following command in the root directory of your NestJS app:

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docker build -t nestjs-app .

Note: If you are using Macbook M1, you may need to add the --platform=linux/amd64 flag to the docker build command.

Step 3: Run the Docker Container Locally

You can run the Docker container locally to test if everything is working fine. Use the following command:

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docker run -p 3000:3000 nestjs-app

Step 4: Push the Docker Image to Docker Hub

Before deploying the Docker image to an EC2 instance, you need to push the image to Docker Hub. First, log in to Docker Hub using the following command:

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docker login

Then, tag the Docker image with your Docker Hub username and repository name:

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docker tag nestjs-app your-docker-hub-username/nestjs-app:latest

Finally, push the Docker image to Docker Hub:

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docker push your-docker-hub-username/nestjs-app:latest

Deploying the NestJS App to EC2

Step 1: Launch and Connect to your EC2 Instance

Step 2: Install Docker on the EC2 Instance

Install Docker on the EC2 instance by running the following commands:

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sudo yum update -y
sudo yum -y install docker

Start the Docker service:

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sudo service docker start

Access Docker commands in ec2-user user:

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sudo usermod -a -G docker ec2-user
sudo chmod 666 /var/run/docker.sock
docker version

Step 3: Pull the Docker Image from Docker Hub

First, log in to Docker Hub on the EC2 instance:

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docker login

Pull the Docker image from Docker Hub:

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docker pull your-docker-hub-username/nestjs-app:latest

Step 4: Run the Docker Container on the EC2 Instance

Run the Docker container on the EC2 instance:

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docker run -d -p 3000:3000 your-docker-hub-username/nestjs-app:latest

Once your Docker container is running on your EC2 instance, you can test your application by accessing it through your EC2 instance’s public IP or DNS.

Conclusion

In this post, you learned how to dockerize a NestJS app and deploy it to an EC2 instance on AWS. This approach allows you to easily package and deploy your NestJS application in a consistent and reproducible manner.

Questions?

I have some questions when I was writing this post. I will update the post with the answers later.

Best practices for .env file in NestJS app when dockerizing and deploying to EC2?
We need to stop the container before running the new one? The server will be down for a while. How to avoid this or what is the best practice?