Deploy Flojoy Cloud to AWS

Flojoy Cloud is the easiest way to supercharge your test & measurement data with powerful data visualizations, collaboration, and easy to use APIs for Python, LabVIEW, and MATLAB.

You can use our public Flojoy Cloud instance for your test and measurement data here: https://cloud.flojoy.ai

Additionally, you can deploy your own Flojoy Cloud instance with our public AWS AMI. In this tutorial we’ll show you how with few very straightforward steps - all you need is an AWS account.

Prerequisites

• An AWS account.

• Active AWS SES with domain (For sending verification emails).

• An IAM role with proper SES policy. (We’ll describe this in next step)

• Enabled Google Oauth2.0 API. See here

• A valid domain (For SSL and HTTPS connection).

• A PostgreSQL instance in AWS RDS (You can setup your own postgresql db as well)

Create IAM role

1. Log in to AWS account and Search for IAM, then go to IAM dashboard.

2. From left sidebar click on Policies.

3. Now click on Create Policy.

4. Now click on JSON button from right top of Policy Editor section.

5. Paste following data to input box:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["ses:SendEmail", "ses:SendRawEmail"],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Note

Adjust the Resource option as your need.

6. Provide a Policy name and click Create Policy.

7. Now click on Roles from left sidebar.

8. Click on Create Role.

9. Select AWS Service and EC2 in use case section then click Next.

10. Now search for just created policy name and select it then again click Next.

11. Give a Role name and click on Create Role

Done! we’ve created an IAM role for SES service which we can attach with our EC2 instance to allow cloud app to send verification emails.

Steps to deploy on AWS

• First, Log into your AWS account. And head to EC2 dashboard. You can use search bar from top left corner for this. Just type ec2 and you’ll find the link for EC2 dashboard.

• From left side bar select AMIs. Then change AMI type from owned by me to public images from dropdown before AMI search bar.

• Now, in the AMI search input type for Flojoy-Cloud-AMI and you’ll find our public AMI for cloud app. Select it then click on Launch instances from AMI.

• In the next page, provide a name to your instance. In instance type section select at least t3.xlarge( 4vCPU and 16GiB ram) to allow app run smooth and fast.

• In the next section select a key pair for SSH purpose. After that in Network section select Allow HTTP traffic from the internet, Allow HTTPS traffic from the internet and Allow SSH traffic from option.

Caution

It is recommended to specify only known ip address for SSH traffic.

• Scroll down and click on Advanced details to expand that section.

• Select the IAM role just created with custom SES policy in IAM instance profile option.

• Then head to user data input at the bottom of Advanced details section and paste following bash script with valid domain name.

#!/bin/bash

cloud_domain="your-domain.com" # Domain name to use for cloud e.g. cloud.flojoy.ai

cat <<EOF >/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
server {
listen 80;

server_name ${cloud_domain};

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;
    }
}
EOF

Caution

Don’t forget to update the script with app domain name.

• Almost there! now click on launch instance button.

• We’re done with launching instance from Flojoy Cloud AMI. Now we’re only two steps away from getting our app ready.

Setup Credentials

Credentials are required for cloud app to run. So we need to setup our own credentials. Let’s do that in real quick with a few steps:

1. Go to EC2 dashboard from left sidebar. Then click on just launched instance and copy public ip.

2. Now connect to your EC2 instance with key-pair previously selected during configuring instance. Run following command to connect:

  ssh -i <path/to/key.pem> ubuntu@<public-ip>

3. Enable root mode:

  sudo su

4. Now open /root/cloud/.env file with your preferable editor nano or vim and paste following template with valid credentials:

JWT_SECRET=""                           # JWT secret for authentication
AWS_REGION=""                           # AWS region
SENDER_EMAIL=""                         # Email registered for AWS SES
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=""                     # Google auth client id
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=""                 # Google client secret
DATABASE_URL=""                         # Postgresql DB connection URL

GOOGLE_REDIRECT_URI="https://<cloud-domain>/login/google/callback"
NEXT_PUBLIC_URL_ORIGIN="https://<cloud-domain>"

Note

For AWS RDS PostgreSQL instance provide database URL string in following pattern: postgresql://<master-user>:<master-password>@<endpoint>:<port>/<db-name> the default db name is postgres and default master username is admin for RDS.

Caution

You need to connect you AWS RDS DB with EC2 instance in order to allow communication between EC2 instance and RDS DB. For that go to RDS dashboard, select the db you want to use for cloud app and click on Actions. Then click on Set up EC2 connection. Select just launched EC2 instance from dropdown and click Continue

Note

Change <cloud-domain> with the domain name you want to use for this app

5. Restart Cloud app service:

systemctl restart cloud_app

This will build the app with new credentials and start the app.

Note

We use Docker compose to build Cloud app and deploy. You can watch build logs by running tail -f /root/cloud-build.log

Enable HTTPS

We have deployed our own version of Flojoy cloud app. Now to allow app work properly we need to configure SSL on launched EC2 instance. Let’s do that:

1. Go to you domain provider website and add an ‘A’ record in your domain with the public ip of just launched EC2 instance.

Note

If you’re already connected to instance with SSH key and enabled root mode then jump to 4th step.

2. Now connect to your EC2 instance with key-pair previously selected during configuring instance. Run following command to connect:

  ssh -i <path/to/key.pem> ubuntu@<public-ip>

3. Enable root mode:

  sudo su

4. Install Certbot:

  sudo apt update
  sudo snap install --classic certbot

5. Prepare Certbot:

sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot

6. Get and install SSL certificate:

sudo certbot --nginx -d <your-domain-name>

And follow on screen instruction. This will get and install SSL certificate.

7. Restart Nginx:

systemctl restart nginx

Now visit https://your-domain.com and you should able to see Flojoy cloud app.

Note

If you see “502 Bad Gateway”, that means cloud app is still in build. Allow few minutes to start the app.

Having issues with deployment? Join our Discord Community and we will help you out!