How I Deployed a Dockerized App to AWS Using Terraform and GitHub Actions

The Git Repo

As a DevOps and cloud enthusiast, I wanted to go beyond theoretical knowledge and create something real. In this post, I’ll walk through how I provisioned infrastructure on AWS using Terraform and deployed a Dockerized app using GitHub Actions CI/CD. This project helped me apply core DevOps practices and build a production-ready pipeline from scratch.

🛠️ Stack Overview

• 
  Terraform for infrastructure provisioning
  


• 
  EC2 for hosting the app
  


• 
  Docker to containerize the application
  


• 
  GitHub Actions for CI/CD
  


• 
  SCP + SSH for deployment automation
  

1️⃣ Infrastructure as Code with Terraform

I started by defining all infrastructure in Terraform to make deployments consistent and version-controlled. The configuration included:

• An EC2 instance with a public IP
  


• A security group allowing SSH (22), HTTP (80), and app port (4000)
  


• Optional Elastic Load Balancer for scalability
  

With reusable modules, I was able to spin up the entire environment with:

terraform init

terraform apply

2️⃣ Dockerizing the App

I deployed a simple Node.js app and containerized it using the following Dockerfile:

FROM node:18-alpine

WORKDIR /app

COPY . .

RUN npm install

EXPOSE 4000

CMD ["node", "app.js"]

Containerization ensured consistent behavior across dev and prod.

3️⃣ CI/CD with GitHub Actions

To automate deployment, I set up a GitHub Actions pipeline triggered on every push to main. It:

• SSHs into the EC2 instance


• Sends code using scp
  


• Builds and runs a Docker container remotely

Here’s a simplified snippet of the deploy.yml workflow:

name: Deploy to EC2



on:

  push:

    branches: [main]



jobs:

  deploy:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:

      - uses: actions/checkout@v3



      - name: Set up SSH

        run: |

          echo "${{ secrets.EC2_SSH_KEY }}" > key.pem

          chmod 600 key.pem



      - name: Deploy App

        run: |

          scp -i key.pem -r . ubuntu@${{ secrets.EC2_HOST }}:/home/ubuntu/app

          ssh -i key.pem ubuntu@${{ secrets.EC2_HOST }} '

            cd app &&

            docker build -t myapp . &&

            docker stop myapp || true &&

            docker rm myapp || true &&

            docker run -d -p 4000:4000 --name myapp myapp

All secrets like the SSH key and host IP are stored securely in GitHub.

✅ Results

Once deployed, the app was accessible at:

http://<EC2_PUBLIC_IP>:4000

Each push to GitHub automatically redeploys the latest code, saving time and ensuring consistency.

💡 Lessons Learned

• 
  Terraform makes infra reproducible and scalable


• 
  Docker simplifies app deployment


• 
  GitHub Actions is powerful and integrates directly with your codebase


• Keeping sensitive values in .env and .env.example is best practice

🔭 What's Next?

I’m planning to explore:

• Monitoring with CloudWatch


• Auto-scaling groups


• Using ECS or Fargate for container orchestration

🔗 Resources

• GitHub Repo: ci-cd-pipeline-aws
  


• Live Demo: http://<your-ec2-ip>:4000
  

☎️ Let's Connect

If you're a solo dev or early-stage founder looking to deploy to AWS with CI/CD and infrastructure automation, I can help.

• 
  Email: [email protected]
  


• 
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaustav-dey-107593244
  


• 
  Portfolio Website: Kaustav Dey DevOps & Cloud Specialist | AWS • Docker • Terraform • CI/CDm