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First, please ensure you have an AWS account. You can sign up here.

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1. Launch an EC2 Instance:

  • Navigate to the EC2 dashboard and click on Launch Instance.
  • Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) such as Amazon Linux 2023 AMI.
  • Select t2.micro (part of the AWS Free Tier).
  • Select Proceed without a key pair
  • On the Configure Security Group step, create a new security group:
    • allow ssh traffic.
    • allow HTTPS traffic.
    • allow HTTP traffic.
  • Review and launch the instance.

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2. Connect to the EC2 instance:

  • Navigate to your EC2 instance and click on Connect.
  • Leave the default parameters and click on Connect again.
  • Your are now connected to your instance.

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3. Set up your instance:

The command lines in this step demonstrate how to install a Node.js agent. If you are running Forest on another agent, please adapt the following to your specific stack.
  • Update the instance:
sudo yum update -y
  • Install Git:
sudo yum install git -y
  • Clone your repo:
git clone your-repo-link
  • Install Node.js and npm:
sudo yum install npm -y
  • Navigate to your project directory and install the necessary packages:
cd your-repo-directory
npm install
  • Set up all the necessary environment variables provided by the Forest environment creation wizard.
  • Add the APPLICATION_PORT environment variable to be able to contact the server from outside. In this example, we will choose APPLICATION_PORT=3310. If you choose another port, please adapt the next steps accordingly.
  • Start the agent 
npm run start:watch

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4. Adjust security group rules:

  • Navigate to your EC2 instance’s security group.
  • Click on Edit inbound rules.
  • Add a Custom TCP inbound rule to allow on port 3310.

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5. Create a target group:

  • In the AWS Management Console, navigate to the EC2 service.
  • Under “Target Groups”, click Create Target Groups.
  • Ensure target type is instance.
  • Choose HTTP to 3310.
  • Ensure VPC is set to the same VPC as your EC2 instance.
  • Setup the health checks as set to /forest.
  • On the next step, select instance and click on Include as pending below.
  • Finally create the target group.

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6. Request a certificate using AWS Certificate Manager (ACM):

  • Navigate to ACM and click on Request a certificate.
  • Enter your domain name and validate the domain ownership using DNS validation.
  • After viewing the new created certificate, click on Create records in Route 53.
  • Wait for the certificate to be validated (this can take some time < 1mn).

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7. Set up an Application Load Balancer (ALB):

  • In the AWS Management Console, navigate to the EC2 service.
  • Under “Load Balancers”, click Create Load Balancer.
  • Choose Application Load Balancer and follow the setup.
  • Ensure the ALB is set to the same VPC as your EC2 instance.
  • Select all regions.
  • Remove default security group and select the group associated to the newly created instance.
  • Add an HTTPS listener and choose previously created target group and certificate.
  • After creating the ALB copy the DNS name.

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8. Add CNAME to Route53:

  • Navigate to Route53 and choose your hosted zone (domain).
  • Create a CNAME record with the domain name filled in the certificate and the DNS name of the ALB.

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9. Finalize:

Check your domain. You should be able to access your Forest panel environment hosted on AWS. 🎉
This is a basic setup, and there are many optimizations and security enhancements (like using RDS, tightening security groups, etc.) that can be done for a production-ready deployment. Please refer to the AWS documentation to go deeper.