How I Set Up a Server To Host Multiple Node.JS Projects & Save $54+ Per App Annually vs Heroku

22 Aug 2020

We’ll go through the steps of setting up a single Ubuntu 20.04 server to host multiple Node.JS projects to save money

What and Why
Deploy a server and initially set it up
Set up a new app with its corresponding domains
Summary

What and Why

I have built several small lightly used Node.js projects on Heroku. I want several of them to not have the limitations of a free server, namely the fact it sleeps after 30 minutes & the ability to have free SSL certificates. There are a few other gotchas with Heroku in general. According to their pricing, I’d need to get, at minimum, a ‘Hobby’ server, one for every app. Each one costs $7 a month plus taxes which equates to more than $84 a year for each app.

I decided that I can do better. I went to VULTR’s site and looked into their servers, which they call Cloud Compute. Their cheapest server (and we can upgrade after deployment if needed), according to their pricing, is $2.50 a month or $30 a year. When you add the fact that, I can now host multiple apps on one server, the savings get greater with each app hosted.

A few requirements before we dive right in.

Apps will need to support a single Node.js version, at the time of writing it is 12.18.3. To check your version once the server is setup simply run node -v
You need to know the difference between IPv4 and IPv6
You need to know how to set up DNS. The method is different for each DNS host
Each app needs to have its own apex domain, subdomain or combinations thereof assigned to it
All apps should be listening for the PORT environment variable
In the instructions, wherever you see john replace it with the non-root user you’ll be creating and using

With that being said, you can use any server running Ubuntu 20.04 x64 should you wish not to use VULTR, some other options include Linode, Amazon EC2, DigitalOcean, and many more. Just skip the ‘Steps to deploy a new Cloud Compute server’ section deploy the server elsewhere then start with Setup a non-root user with sudo privilege.

Deploy a server and initially set it up

Steps to deploy a new VULTR Cloud Compute Server:

Login to VULTR
In the top right corner, click the circle with a plus sign then ‘Deploy New Serve’
Because we can always scale up, I personally selected the cheapest type of server Cloud Compute server
Choose a datacenter region that makes sense for your region
Make sure Ubuntu is selected with ‘20.04 (LTS) x64’
For the server size, I chose the cheapest which is $2.50 a month. If I ever need more resources, I can scale up.
Optionally, but suggested, enable auto backups (additional cost)
If you know about and have an SSH key, use that for auth. Either way, you will be able to find root’s password where you can manage the server on VULTR’s site.
Give the droplet a clever hostname
Optionally give the server an alternate label to find it on VULTR’s site
Today we are only deploying 1 server
Click ‘Deploy Now’
Log into your server using root over SSH (if you don’t know how see this article). You will find the IP address info when you go to manage your Cloud Compute server’s settings on VULTR’s site.
To update the list of packages run apt update
To upgrade out of date items run apt upgrade

Setup a non-root user with sudo privileges

For the rest of this post, I will be using ‘john’ as a user, substitute it for whatever you want.

Log into root via SSH if you are not already connected
Let’s set a temp variable to make the next bunch of steps newuser=john
Run the command adduser $newuser and fill in the answers, if you want
Run the command usermod -aG sudo $newuser

Optional 1 - If you wish to secure the server via SSH keys

Run the following set of commands to set up SSH for the new user account

mkdir -p /home/$newuser/.ssh
touch /home/$newuser/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod -R go= /home/$newuser/.ssh
chown -R $newuser:$newuser /home/$newuser/.ssh
nano /home/$newuser/.ssh/authorized_keys

Find the public SSH key that you wish to use and paste it into the SSH session where nano is running, it should only take up one line
If you want multiple keys for the account, optionally add additional keys, 1 per line
Press ‘ctrl-x’ to exit, then ‘Y’ to save and then finally press enter to accept the file name

Optional 2 - If you want to lock down the server and disallow passwords to authenticate an SSH session

Run sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Find the line containing ‘PasswordAuthentication’. If there is a ‘#’ before it, remove it, then make sure the line says PasswordAuthentication no
Press ‘ctrl-x’ to exit, ‘Y’ to save, then ‘enter’ to keep the existing filename
Lastly, run sudo systemctl restart ssh

Setup initial firewall

Run the following command to enable the firewall ufw allow OpenSSH
Run the following command to permit only SSH connections ufw enable
Log off of the root account by running exit. From here on in we will be using the account, john

Setup Nginx

Connect to the server again using ssh and the account john
Run the following sudo apt update to update the apt program, you will be asked for a password most likely, enter it
Run the following sudo apt install nginx to install nginx
Run the following sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full' to enable HTTP/HTTPS traffic (ports 80 and 443)
To verify everything is working navigate, from your browser to http://your_server_ip (HTTP, not HTTPS) you should get a standard ‘welcome to nginx’ page
To fix a possible memory problem, let’s set the hash bucket size by running sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
Look for the ‘server_names_hash_bucket_size’ directive and remove the ‘#’ from the line
Exit by pressing ‘ctrl-x’, save by pressing ‘y’, accept file name by pressing ‘enter’

Validate the config file by running sudo nginx -t you should get the following output if all is well:

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Restart nginx by running sudo systemctl restart nginx

Prepare server to use Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates

certbot will manage the Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates for us

To install certbot and it’s Nginx plugin run sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx

Set up Node.js’s latest LTS version

At the time of this writing, the latest LTS Node.js version is 12.18.3

Update apt-get with the correct package by running curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_lts.x | sudo -E bash -
Let’s install it by running sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
Let’s install a build tool by running sudo apt-get install -y build-essential
Let’s indicate that, by default, node apps should be running in production by doing the following
1. Run sudo nano /etc/environment
2. Add a new line containing NODE_ENV="production"
3. Save the file by ‘ctrl-x’, ‘y’, and ‘enter’
4. Load the new environment variable by running source /etc/environment

Install PM2, a process manager for Node.js

Run the following command to install PM2 sudo npm install pm2@latest -g
Acquire a command to setup PM2 to run at startup by running pm2 startup systemd
The last line of the output for the prior command, will be another command, run it
Kick off the initial run of the PM2 service by running sudo systemctl start pm2-john (replacing john)
Optional but recommended if you intend to have logging of your apps, we can set up log rotation. This will save 1 log file per period (defaults to daily, or when the file is larger than 10MB), and keep a maximum number of log files (which defaults to 30).
1. Let’s install pm2-logrotate by running pm2 install pm2-logrotate
2. Optionally change the defaults of pm2-logrotate, see the instructions here

Set up a new app with its corresponding domains

Three things: First this section can be done multiple times, once for every app domain combo. Second, replace xyz.com & www.xyz.com with your URL(s). Third, pick a unique port for this app, no two apps should share a port. Keep it in mind, you’ll need it twice.

Set up DNS

Please be aware that it can take up to 48 hours for DNS changes to take effect.

Go to your DNS server and set up an A record pointing to the IPv4 address for each domain you wish to be serviced by this app
On your DNS server, set up an AAAA record pointing to the IPv6 address for each domain you wish to be serviced by this app

Using git, copy over and set up the project

In the steps, NPM install is mentioned, no reason you can’t use YARN as long as you install it.

Use git to clone the repo into an appropriate folder, replace repo with the git address, and replace xyz.com with your chosen domain. sudo git clone repo /var/www/xyz.com
Take ownership of the folder by running sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/xyz.com
Change directory cd /var/www/xyz.com
If you need to npm install or run build commands, now is the time

Set up PM2 to launch, manage, and provide environment variables to the app

Head back to the home folder by running cd ~
Let’s create an ecosystem file, run nano xyz.com.ecosystem.config.js

Copy the below text into the SSH session

module.exports = {
 apps : [{
 name: "demo",
 script: "/var/www/xyz.com/app.js",

 /*
 * uncomment the next line or two to enable logging both stdout and
 * error outputs to disk and optionally enable prepending the logs with a
 * timestamp.
 */
 // log_file: '/home/john/applogs/xyz.com/combined.log',  // don't forget to change from john
 // time: true, // enable prepending of a time-stamp

 // environment variables
 env: {
     PORT: "3000",
 },
 }]
}

~/xyz.com.ecosystem.config.js

Replace demo with a proper name
Replace the script path with the fully qualified path to the entry of your program.
Change the PORT to the correct port you wish to use, keeping in mind each app should have a unique port.
Within the env object, each pair will be fed into your program as an environment variables overriding any system variables if they match. Feel free to add additional ones as you need, they are unique to this app.
If you wish to log to disk, uncomment the log_file line, changing both john and the xyz.com. Optionally uncomment the time line to have the logs prepended with a timestamp.
Press ‘ctrl-x’ to exit, ‘y’ to save, ‘enter’ to accept the name
If opting to log to disk, let’s create the folder for it by running mkdir -p ~/applogs/xyz.com
To start the app for the first time run pm2 start xyz.com.ecosystem.config.js
Let’s save the PM2 process list and corresponding environments so that on server startup, it’ll restart all the apps including the latest app we just added. Run pm2 save

A couple of commands for PM2 you should know about, especially as we update our apps. In addition to starting the app as we did in step 11 above we can:

Stop the app: pm2 stop xyz.com.ecosystem.config.js
Restart the app: pm2 restart xyz.com.ecosystem.config.js
Monitor your apps: pm2 monit

Set up an nginx server block for this app

To create and edit the server block file, run sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/xyz.com

Paste the following into you shell session

 server {
     listen 80;
     listen [::]:80;

     server_name xyz.com www.xyz.com;

     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;
     }
 }

Replace the xyz.com (there are two domains in this example listed, you can do one, two or more on the server_name line)
If necessary change the port from 3000 to the correct port the app is listening on
Next, let’s enable the file by creating a link from it to the sites-enabled directory, which Nginx reads from during startup by running sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/xyz.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
Let’s check our work in the nginx configs by running sudo nginx -t
If all is well, run sudo systemctl restart nginx

Set up SSL certificates for your domain

If this is your first time setting up certificates with certbot, you will be prompted for an email address, and you’ll need to accept an agreement

Please be aware that you may have issues if your DNS changes haven’t fully propagated yet

Let’s run certbot with the –nginx plugin, using -d to specify the domain names we’d like the certificate to be valid for by running sudo certbot --nginx -d xyz.com -d www.xyz.com
Answer the question about how you want to handle non-SSL traffic, I recommend ‘Redirect’ to redirect non-secure HTTP traffic to HTTPS.
The site should now be alive at http://xyz.com when you navigate there, you should be redirected to https://xyz.com

Summary

We now have a server with one or more NodeJS apps running on it. We configured the server with a node process manager (PM2) to take care of starting and stopping Node.js apps as needed. We are now resilient against app crashes, it’ll be restarted automatically. When the server restarts, our apps will start back up automatically as well. We set up a reverse proxy using nginx so that each app will respond to its unique domain name(s). Lastly, we saved money vs using Heroku.

A suggested next step would be if needed, set up your own hosted database, or Redis server using this server or another.

A good chunk of the steps above was derived from DigitalOcean’s wonderful tutorial and it’s prerequisites. I changed the order, modified some steps, and added additional steps. I also added to it by illustrating how to set up multiple apps.

If you’ve comments, as always please leave them below.

How I Set Up a Server To Host Multiple Node.JS Projects & Save $54+ Per App Annually vs Heroku

What and Why

Deploy a server and initially set it up

Steps to deploy a new VULTR Cloud Compute Server:

Setup a non-root user with sudo privileges

Optional 1 - If you wish to secure the server via SSH keys

Optional 2 - If you want to lock down the server and disallow passwords to authenticate an SSH session

Setup initial firewall

Setup Nginx

Prepare server to use Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates

Set up Node.js’s latest LTS version

Install PM2, a process manager for Node.js

Set up a new app with its corresponding domains

Set up DNS

Using git, copy over and set up the project

Set up PM2 to launch, manage, and provide environment variables to the app

Set up an nginx server block for this app

Set up SSL certificates for your domain

Summary

Aaron Young

Error

What and Why

Deploy a server and initially set it up

Steps to deploy a new VULTR Cloud Compute Server:

Setup a non-root user with sudo privileges

Optional 1 - If you wish to secure the server via SSH keys

Optional 2 - If you want to lock down the server and disallow passwords to authenticate an SSH session

Setup initial firewall

Setup Nginx

Prepare server to use Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates

Set up Node.js’s latest LTS version

Install PM2, a process manager for Node.js

Set up a new app with its corresponding domains

Set up DNS

Using git, copy over and set up the project

Set up PM2 to launch, manage, and provide environment variables to the app

Set up an nginx server block for this app

Set up SSL certificates for your domain

Summary

Templates (for web app):

Error