docs • getting started • aws

Running on Amazon Web Services

This guide takes you through the steps to get Node-RED running in an AWS environment.

There are two approaches:

Running on the AWS Elastic Beanstalk Service (EB)
Running on Elastic Beanstalk with High Availability
Running under an Ubuntu image on AWS EC2

Running on AWS EBS

Prerequisites

Ensure you have an AWS account with Elastic Beanstalk, SQS and S3 enabled
Download EB command line and install on your local computer - see link
Create AWS credentials and save in a local file (~/.aws/config or Usersusername.awsconfig) as below

[profile eb-cli]
aws_access_key_id = key id
aws_secret_access_key = access key

Create EB Environment

Create a new directory (e.g. demoapp)
cd to that directory
run eb init to create a new elastic beanstalk project. Select the preferred region and use node.js as the platform. You will be asked if you wish to use ssh. If you do, please ensure you have ssh installed on your computer if you wish to generate a new key pair.
Login to the AWS Console on your browser, select Identity and Access Management (IAM) and add the AmazonS3FullAccess policy to the aws-elasticbeanstalk-ec2-role. Note: this gives full access from EBS to S3 and you may wish to tailor this policy to meet your own security needs

Create a Node-RED environment

Create a package.json file with the following content (replacing “demoapp” with your app name)

{
    "name": "demoapp",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "node-red demo app",
    "main": "",
    "scripts": {
        "start": "./node_modules/.bin/node-red -s ./settings.js"
    },
    "engines": {
        "node": "10.x"
    },
    "dependencies": {
        "node-red": "1.1.x",
        "aws-sdk": "2.4.x",
        "node-red-contrib-storage-s3": "0.0.x",
        "when": "3.7.x"
    },
    "author": "",
    "license": "ISC"
}

Copy the default Node-RED settings.js file to the demoapp directory
Edit the settings.js file to add the following entries to module.exports (setting awsRegion to that used in eb init and replacing demoapp with your app name) :

     awsRegion: 'eu-west-1',
     awsS3Appname: 'demoapp',
     storageModule: require('node-red-contrib-storage-s3'),

At the command prompt make sure you are in your application’s top-level directory and run the command eb create; you may wish to specify a more unique application name. This will take a long time to run but eventually will return successfully.

Configuring Node-RED access

Node-RED is now accessible directly from the web url of the application. However this is insecure and does not work very well for logging. Instead we will configure direct access to the administration port of node-red on the ec2 instance it is using.

In the AWS Console, select EC2, then select security groups. You will see a set of security groups. Select one with the name of your environment and a description of “Security Group for ElasticBeanstalk Environment”. Once selected, click on “Actions” and then “Edit inbound settings”. A dialog box with rules with appear. Add a new rule. Set type to “all traffic” and source to “my ip”. Save the rule.
Select the EC2 instance which is running the node-red application. copy its IP address
Enter the IP address in the browser with a port of 8081. This will provide direct access to the node-red administration console.

Note: the public IP address also provides access to the node-red application and it would be good practice to remove that access at the same time i.e. the HTTP rule for port 80.

Your Node-RED instance is now running on EBS. Any flows you create will be saved to AWS S3 so you can tear down the environment and the flows will be accessible whenever you redeploy.

Running on Elastic Beanstalk with High availability

This deployment option gives you a multiple node Node-RED setup, with a shared filesystem using Amazon Elastic File System (EFS). Because it runs multiple nodes behind a load balancer, you will have high availability - if a node dies, Elastic Beanstalk will replace it automatically.

solution diagram

To get started, clone the repository here https://github.com/guysqr/node-red-ha-on-aws and follow the simple instructions. The infrastructure is created for you by a CloudFormation template, so you don’t need to know much about AWS to set it up.

In addition, this deployment option enables you to run Node-RED under https and to login via Auth0 (or you can easily swap to in-built auth or any Passport-compatible ID provider).

Running on AWS EC2 with Ubuntu

Create the base EC2 image

Log in to the AWS EC2 console
Click ‘Launch Instance’
In the list of Quick Start AMIs, select Ubuntu Server
Select the Instance Type - t2.micro is a good starting point
On the ‘Configure Security Group’ tab, add a new ‘Custom TCP Rule’ for port 1880
On the final ‘Review’ step, click the ‘Launch’ button
The console will prompt you to configure a set of SSH keys. Select ‘Create a new key pair’ and click ‘Download key pair’. Your browser will save the .pem file - keep that safe. Finally, click ‘Launch’.

After a couple of minutes your EC2 instance will be running. In the console you can find your instance’s IP address.

Setup Node-RED

The next task is to log into the instance then install node.js and Node-RED.

Follow the AWS guide for connecting to your instance.

Once logged in you need to install node.js and Node-RED

   curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash -
   sudo apt-get install -y nodejs build-essential
   sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm node-red

At this point you can test your instance by running node-red. Note: you may get some errors regarding the Serial node - that’s to be expected and can be ignored.

Once started, you can access the editor at http://<your-instance-ip>:1880/.

To get Node-RED to start automatically whenever your instance is restarted, you can use pm2:

   sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm pm2
   pm2 start `which node-red` -- -v
   pm2 save
   pm2 startup

Note: this final command will prompt you to run a further command - make sure you do as it says.

Next steps

This guide barely scratches the surface of how you may choose to configure your instance to run in EC2. Node-RED is ‘just’ a node.js application that exposes an HTTP server - on that principle, there are many online guides you can use to learn what else is possible.