Deploying a Node.js Application to AWS Kubernetes Cluster (EKS)

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1. First, you will need to have an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account and create an Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS) cluster. You can do this through the AWS Management Console or using the AWS CLI.
2. Next, you will need to install and configure the AWS CLI and the AWS IAM Authenticator on your local machine. This will allow you to authenticate and access your EKS cluster from the command line.
3. Now, you will need to create a Node.js application that you want to deploy to your EKS cluster. If you already have an existing application, you can skip this step. Otherwise, you can create a new Node.js application using the Express framework.
4. Once you have your Node.js application ready, you will need to create a Docker image of your application. This can be done by creating a Dockerfile that describes how to build the image.
5. Once you have your Docker image, you can use the AWS CLI to push it to the Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR). This is a private registry where you can store your Docker images.
6. Now that your Docker image is stored in ECR, you can create a Kubernetes Deployment to deploy it to your EKS cluster. A Deployment is a Kubernetes resource that manages a set of replicas of your application and ensures that the desired number of replicas are running at any given time.
7. To create the Deployment, you will need to create a Deployment configuration file in YAML format. This file should specify the name of your Deployment, the number of replicas you want to run, and the Docker image you want to use.
8. Once you have your Deployment configuration file ready, you can use the kubectl command-line tool to create the Deployment. You can do this by running the following command: kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
9. Finally, you can create a Kubernetes Service to expose your Deployment to the internet. A Service is a Kubernetes resource that exposes a set of replicas as a network service. You can create a Service by running the following command: kubectl expose deployment [DEPLOYMENT_NAME] --type=LoadBalancer --name=[SERVICE_NAME]
10. Your Node.js application should now be deployed to your EKS cluster and accessible through the internet. You can verify this by accessing the URL of your Service, which should be displayed in the output of the kubectl expose command.

That’s it! You have successfully deployed your Node.js application to an AWS EKS cluster using the command line.

In the next article, I will include code for each step above and we will see how we can leverage Infrastructure as Code(IaC) tools such as Terraform to create our Kubernetes Cluster, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) tools such as GitHub Actions to automate our Docker images build and push to container registry, testing, deployment, monitoring and scalability considerations.