AlexandreBrown / AWS-Beanstalk-Setup-Guide

Quick guide about how to get started with AWS Beanstalk with HTTPS and a custom domain name

AWS-Beanstalk-Setup-Guide

Prerequisites

1. Create an IAM user with programmatic access.
2. Download AWS CLI https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/getting-started-install.html
3. Setup your AWS account : aws configure
4. Download & install python https://www.python.org/downloads/ (I recommend using a virtual enviornment via micromamba/conda or venv)
5. Download aws Beanstalk CLI : pip3 install awsebcli

Setup

Subdomain Delegation [Optional]

Let's say we have a root domain (eg: mlprojects.ai) hosted on some domain name provider (eg: https://www.namecheap.com/ , https://www.godaddy.com/ etc).
Our goal is to create a subdomain on AWS Route53 without having to migrate the root domain mlprojects.ai to Route53.
To do so, we need to do the following :

1. Create a Route53 Hosted zone for the subdomain (eg: staging.mlprojects.ai)
   
2. Copy/Take note of the value of the NS record that was created automatically by Route53, it contains the DNS Server Names for the subdomain.
3. Navigate to the domain name provider of your root domain (eg: https://www.namecheap.com/ or any other). In this example, the root domain is mlprojects.ai.
4. Navigate to the DNS settings and create a new record of type NS for every DNS Server Name from step 2.
   This essentially enables the subdomain delegation from the root domain name provider to Route53.
   This is the only change required for the root domain name provider configuration, everything from now on will be done on Route53 and we won't have to edit the root domain name provider configuration.

HTTPS Certificate

1. Navigate to AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
2. Click to "Request" an HTTPS certificate using AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
3. Select public certificate
4. Enter the fully qualified domain name as your subdomain : staging.mlprojects.ai
5. Click "Request"

Confirm Ownership Of The Domain

1. From the ACM click "Create records in Route53" in the certificate details page.
   This will allow Route53 to validate ownership.
   After a few minutes, AWS will have issued your certificate upon confirming ownership.
   From the ACM certificates page you should see that your certificate is issued and not in use :
   

Create Your Application

1. For the purpose of this example, a basic python application was created in application.py.

Create Beanstalk Application

Here we create an application called myapp that uses the platform (AWS predefined env) python-3.8 under the region us-east-1 :

1. eb init myapp --platform python-3.8 --region us-east-1

Create Beanstalk Environment With HTTPS + HTTP to HTTPS redirect

These steps follow the AWS documentation and the config file is taken from the official AWS repository.

1. Create a folder for the beanstalk configuration, it has to be named .ebextensions at the root of your project. You can learn more about this configuration folder here : https://docs.amazonaws.cn/en_us/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/environment-configuration-methods-before.html#configuration-options-before-ebextensions
2. Create a .config file under the .ebextensions folder that will contain the environment resources options (see the file staging-resources-options.config from this repo).
3. Edit the CertificateArn from the .ebextensions/staging-resources-options.config file by entering the ARN of the ACM Certificate created earlier.
4. Create the environment : eb create staging-env --region us-east-1 --elb-type application
   Here we created an environment called staging-env in the region us-east-1 that has a load balancer of type application.
   For more information on what is an Appliation Load Balancer see the AWS documentation
   Note that the configuration in the .config file presented earlier expects a load balancer of type application.

Use Custom Domain For Beanstalk Environment

Using Route53

If you did subdomain delegation follow these steps:
These steps follow the AWS documentation

1. Navigate to the subdomain Route53 Hosted Zone (eg: staging.mlprojects.ai)
2. Click "Create a record"
3. Leave the Record name blank
   
4. Leave the Record type to type A
   
5. Toggle the "Alias" toggle
   
6. Under Route traffic to select Alias to Elastic Beanstalk environment.
7. Select the region you deployed your Beanstalk environment (eg: us-east-1).
8. Select your Beanstalk environment from the dropdown :
   
9. Click "Create records"

Visit your application using the subdomain url you used when you created the Route53 Hosted Zone (eg: https://staging.mlprojects.ai/)

Using Root DNS Registrar

Follow https://montanawong.medium.com/how-to-point-your-custom-domain-to-an-aws-load-balancer-51dc2eb6d84c

Deploy New Changes To An Environment

1. Edit your application source code.
2. Deploy your application to your Beanstalk environment : eb deploy staging-env --region us-east-1
   Here we deploy our application to the environment staging-env that we created earlier.
3. Navigate to your page and notice the changes were applied :