Production-Grade Deployment on ECS

This project deploys a Dockerised analytics application to AWS ECS Fargate using Terraform and GitHub Actions CI/CD. It includes networking, load balancing, HTTPS, PostgreSQL, observability, and modular infrastructure configuration.

I built this project to showcase my cloud, networking, and infrastructure skills. I chose Umami because I had already used it for hosted frontend projects.

App URL

URL: https://analytics.tahmidchoudhury.uk

When the application is deployed and running, you can reach the frontend through my domain, all set up with Route53.

Architecture

The infrastructure is designed for high availability, security, and scalability.

Key components:

• VPC with public and private subnets across multiple AZs
• Application Load Balancer (ALB) with a health check on `/api/heartbeat`
• ECS Fargate service running tasks in private subnets
• CloudWatch enabled for DB and Task logs
• NAT Gateway for outbound internet access from private subnets
• ACM certificate for HTTPS
• Route 53 for DNS
• S3 for a remote Terraform statefile with state-lock enabled
• GitHub Actions for CI/CD using OIDC

Technology Stack

Cloud & Infrastructure

• AWS ECS Fargate
• AWS ECR
• AWS ALB (Application Load Balancer)
• AWS Route53
• AWS ACM
• AWS RDS PostgreSQL
• AWS VPC

Infrastructure as Code

• Terraform
• Modular Terraform Architecture

CI/CD & Automation

• GitHub Actions
• Docker
• Docker Compose

Backend & Application

• PostgreSQL
• Umami Analytics
• Node.js

Networking & Security

• Security Groups
• Public & Private Subnets
• NAT Gateway
• IAM Roles & Policies
• HTTPS / TLS

Repository Structure

app
├── docker-compose.yml
├── Dockerfile
└── src
    └── app
        └── api
            └── heartbeat
...
infra
├── bootstrap
│   ├── main.tf
│   ├── modules
│   │   └── ecr
│   │   └── s3
│   ├── provider.tf
│   └── variables.tf
├── envs
├── modules
│   ├── acm
│   ├── alb
│   ├── secrets
│   ├── cloudwatch
│   ├── dns
│   ├── ecs
│   ├── iam
│   ├── networking
│   ├── rds
│   └── security_groups
├── backend.tf
├── main.tf
├── outputs.tf
└── variables.tf
.github
└── workflows
    ├── docker-build-push.yml
    ├── terraform-apply.yml
    ├── terraform-destroy.yml
    └── terraform-plan.yml

How to set up locally

1. Clone the repository

# By HTTPS
git clone https://github.com/tahmidachoudhury/ecs-umami-analytics.git
# OR by SSH
git clone git@github.com:tahmidachoudhury/ecs-umami-analytics.git

cd ecs-umami-analytics

2. Create an environment file

Create a .env file in the root of the project:

touch .env

Add the required environment variables:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://umami:umami@db:5432/umami
APP_SECRET=your-random-secret

3. Start the application

The Docker Compose file contains everything needed to run the app locally.

docker compose up --build

4. Open the app

Once the containers are running, visit:

http://localhost:3000

5. Stop the application

docker compose down

6. Remove volumes and reset the database

Use this if you want a clean local reset:

docker compose down -v

CI/CD

1. Docker Build & Push

1a. Docker Build

1b. Push to ECR

2. Terraform Plan

2a. Terraform Plan Steps

3. Terraform Apply

3a. Terraform Apply Steps

3b. Post Deploy Check

4. Terraform Destroy

4a. Terraform Destroy Steps

Author

Tahmid Choudhury - DevOps Engineer