Posted on Oct 6, 2021

How to deploy Amplication app to DigitalOcean

This article shows you the way to deploy an app generated by Amplication to DigitalOcean. Amplication provides the dockerfile to use containers for deployment, but this blog explains how to do it manually. I will guide you step by step to deploy Nestjs app and Postgres database with DOCKER, NGINX and PM2.

1. Sign up a Digital Ocean account

Visit digitalocean.com and create an account
If you are a student, go to https://education.github.com/pack/offers to get 100$ offer
Add your credit card to start using awesome services

2. Create a droplet

Click on "Create" button and select create droplet
Config your droplet (CPU, region, ssh,...)
Waiting for your machine initialization
After finish loading, go to tab "Access", you will see a button to load the console.

3. Install Nodejs, NPM

sudo apt update sudo apt install nodejs sudo apt install npm

4. Install Docker

Install HTTPS packages:

sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common

Add the GPG key to your system:

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Add repository to APT sources:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu bionic stable"

Install Docker:

sudo apt install docker-ce

Finally, Install Docker Compose:

sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.21.2/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

5. Clone project from your git repository

git clone https://github.com/<username>/<repo-name>.git

If you don't see your code, please checkout this document on how to sync your code from Amplication to GitHub https://docs.amplication.com/docs/sync-with-github
You can also use my repo for testing: https://github.com/thucpn/amplication-server-demo-deploy

6. Install dependencies and initialize database

Go to server folder and install dependencies

cd <your-repo>/server npm install

Generate Prisma client

npm run prisma:generate

Start database in Docker

npm run docker:db

Initiate the database

npm run db:init

Start the server

npm start

Go to <droplet-ip-address>:3000 (example: 159.65.6.71:3000), you will see the response from server.

7. Setup PM2 to manage process

Install PM2

sudo npm i pm2 -g

Create an app

pm2 start dist/main.js --name myserver

Your app is now running!

View logs of app

pm2 logs myserver

8. Setup ufw firewall

sudo ufw enable sudo ufw status sudo ufw allow ssh sudo ufw allow http sudo ufw allow https

9. Setup NGINX as a reverse proxy

Install nginx

sudo apt install nginx

Open config file

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Add the following to location block

 location / { proxy_pass http://localhost:3000; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade'; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade; }