Everyone loves to deploy their applications to the Amazon EC2 instance. It's easy to deploy and maintain. This tutorial will launch a Laravel application to an EC2 instance.

What is EC2?

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is one of the first offerings of Amazon Web Services (AWS). It's a computing service, and you can virtually launch applications of any size securely and reliably.

Prerequisites

1. You need a Laravel application. If you don't have one, you can use this example app to deploy.

P.S.: You don't need a Laravel app; you can use any application of your choice. Ideas are the same; just a few deployment steps are different.

So, what are you waiting for? Let's go ahead and deploy your app to an EC2 instance. ☁️

Create Key Pairs

1. Login to AWS Management Console, and select the correct region from the top-right corner:

   

2. Now, go to EC2 Console, and click on the Key Pairs button under Network & Security:

   

3. Click on Create key pairs from the top-right corner:

   

4. Give it a name and click Create key pairs. It will download the keypair file and keep it in a safe place for later.

   

Launch an EC2 Instance

1. Now, go to the instances page by clicking Instances under Instances:

   

2. Click the Lunch instance button from the top-right corner:

   

3. Now you are on the Lunch instance page:

   

   A. Give your instance a name
   B. Select Ubuntu
   C. Select "Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS" AMI

4. In the next section:

   

   D. Select the instance type; I selected a free-tier eligible "t2.micro".
   E. Select the key pairs you selected previously.

5. Select all of these three checkboxes:

   

6. Keep everything else as it is and click on the Lunch instance button from the right sidebar's summary widget:

   

7. And then click the View all instances button:

   

8. Wait until Status checks turn 2/2 checks passed and copy public_ip in a safe place:

   

Connect to the instance via SSH

1. Change permission of your key file

    chmod 400 my_keypairs.pem
   

2. Run this command by replacing <ip_address> to your instance's public IP address, you have copied before:

    ssh -i "my_keypairs.pem" ubuntu@<ip_address>
   

3. Enter yes, if you are asked to save your IP to known hosts list. You should be logged in to the instance.

Launch your Laravel app

1. Install some required packages

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt install curl git unzip -y
   

2. Let's install PHP 8.1 and its required package to launch the app

    sudo apt install software-properties-common -y
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php -y
    sudo apt install -y php8.1-fpm \
        php8.1-cli \ 
        php8.1-mysql \ 
        php8.1-curl \ 
        php8.1-xml \ 
        php8.1-mbstring
   

   Check the version by using php --version command:

   

3. Install composer

    # Download the bin file
    curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
    # Move it to correct path
    sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
    # Make it executeable
    sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/composer
   

4. Install Nginx

    sudo apt install nginx -y
   

5. Clone your git repository link to an app directory. Replace the value of GIT_REPO and APP_DIR value. Then, run the command.

    # Replace values of these variables with yours
    GIT_REPO=https://github.com/HarunRay/laravel-to-lightsail.git
    APP_DIR=laravel-app
    # go to www directory
    cd /var/www/html
    # clone the git repo
    sudo git clone "$GIT_REPO" "$APP_DIR"
    # go to application directory
    cd "$APP_DIR"
    # copy .env.example file
    cp .env.example .env
    # Install dependencies
    sudo composer install
   

6. Create Nginx config file:

    sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/laravel
   

   Paste this code. Change 52.201.59.133 to your IP address and save.

    server {
     listen 80;
     listen [::]:80;
     server_name 52.201.59.133;
     root /var/www/html/laravel-ap/public;
   
     add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
     add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
   
     index index.php;
   
     charset utf-8;
   
     location / {
         try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
     }
   
     location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
     location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
   
     error_page 404 /index.php;
   
     location ~ \.php$ {
         fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
         fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
         include fastcgi_params;
     }
   
     location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
         deny all;
     }
    }
   

   Exit the Vim editor by pressing esc and then :wq . Then run this command:

    # link nginx config 
    sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/laravel /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
    sudo systemctl start nginx
    sudo systemctl enable nginx
   

7. Set permission for your Laravel app:

    # Go to your laravel app directory
    cd /var/www/html/laravel-app/
    # Add files & folder www-data user & group
    sudo chown -R www-data:www-data .
    # Add your ubuntu to group
    sudo usermod -a -G www-data ubuntu
    # Set file(s) permission
    sudo find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
    # Set folder(s) permission
    sudo find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
    # Set cache directory permission
    sudo chgrp -R www-data storage bootstrap/cache
    sudo chmod -R ug+rwx storage bootstrap/cache
   

8. Now, generate app key:

    sudo php artisan key:generate
   

9. Open .env file to update:

    sudo vim /var/www/html/laravel-app/.env
   

   Now, change these values:

    APP_ENV=production
    # Change IP to yours
    APP_URL=http://52.201.59.133
   

   Exit the Vim editor by pressing esc and the :wq .

10. Restart Nginx service

    sudo service nginx restart
    

    Now, type your public_ip to browser and hit enter. You should see the welcome page. 🚀

...

Conclusion

This article covers the very basic things about launching an instance. If you have any query or you are stuck, feel free to ask in the comment.

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