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🚀 Deploying Medusa Backend on AWS ECS with Terraform, RDS & GitHub Actions

👨‍💻 Overview

This project demonstrates the complete Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) setup and CI/CD pipeline to deploy the Medusa.js headless commerce backend on AWS ECS using Fargate, with PostgreSQL via RDS Aurora, Docker image on Docker Hub, and CI/CD via GitHub Actions.

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🔧 Prerequisites

• AWS Account
• GitHub Account
• Docker Hub Account
• Terraform Installed
• Docker Installed
• Git Installed

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🌐 Step 1: AWS Setup

1. Create IAM User

   • Enable programmatic access
   • Attach policies:
     • AmazonEC2ContainerServiceFullAccess
     • AmazonRDSFullAccess
     • IAMFullAccess
     • AmazonECS_FullAccess

2. Note your AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY — we'll use them in GitHub Actions.

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📦 Step 2: Terraform Infrastructure (IaC)

File: main.tf

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-east-1"
}

resource "aws_vpc" "main" {
  cidr_block = "10.0.0.0/16"
}

resource "aws_subnet" "subnet1" {
  vpc_id     = aws_vpc.main.id
  cidr_block = "10.0.1.0/24"
  availability_zone = "us-east-1a"
}

resource "aws_security_group" "ecs_sg" {
  name        = "ecs_sg"
  description = "Allow inbound"
  vpc_id      = aws_vpc.main.id

  ingress {
    from_port   = 0
    to_port     = 0
    protocol    = "-1"
    cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
  }

  egress {
    from_port   = 0
    to_port     = 0
    protocol    = "-1"
    cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
  }
}

resource "aws_ecs_cluster" "medusa_cluster" {
  name = "medusa-cluster"
}

# Add RDS PostgreSQL Aurora
resource "aws_rds_cluster" "medusa_db" {
  cluster_identifier = "medusa-db"
  engine             = "aurora-postgresql"
  master_username    = "admin"
  master_password    = "yourpassword"
  skip_final_snapshot = true
  vpc_security_group_ids = [aws_security_group.ecs_sg.id]
}

output "db_endpoint" {
  value = aws_rds_cluster.medusa_db.endpoint
}

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🐳 Step 3: Docker Setup

File: Dockerfile

FROM node:18-alpine

WORKDIR /app

COPY . .

RUN npm install

EXPOSE 9000

CMD ["npm", "run", "start"]

File: .env

DATABASE_URL=postgres://admin:yourpassword@<REPLACE_WITH_RDS_ENDPOINT>:5432/medusa

File: docker-compose.yml

version: "3.9"
services:
  medusa:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "9000:9000"
    env_file:
      - .env

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🔁 Step 4: GitHub Actions CI/CD

File: .github/workflows/deploy.yml

name: Deploy to ECS

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - name: Checkout Code
      uses: actions/checkout@v3

    - name: Configure AWS Credentials
      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v2
      with:
        aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
        aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
        aws-region: us-east-1

    - name: Login to Docker Hub
      uses: docker/login-action@v2
      with:
        username: ${{ secrets.DOCKER_USERNAME }}
        password: ${{ secrets.DOCKER_PASSWORD }}

    - name: Build and Push Docker Image
      run: |
        docker build -t ${{ secrets.DOCKER_USERNAME }}/medusa-backend .
        docker push ${{ secrets.DOCKER_USERNAME }}/medusa-backend

    - name: Deploy to ECS (Optional Step - if using ECS CLI or custom script)
      run: echo "Deploying image to ECS using AWS CLI or Terraform"

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🔐 Step 5: Add Secrets to GitHub

Go to your GitHub Repo → Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions and add:

• AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
• AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
• DOCKER_USERNAME
• DOCKER_PASSWORD

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🚀 Step 6: Run It All

1. Initialize Terraform:

terraform init
terraform apply

2. Get the RDS Endpoint from output and update .env

3. Build and Push Docker image:

docker build -t yourdockeruser/medusa-backend .
docker push yourdockeruser/medusa-backend

4. Push code to GitHub main branch → GitHub Actions takes over and deploys.

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✅ Final Result

• ECS Service running Medusa backend
• PostgreSQL RDS Aurora connected
• CI/CD with GitHub Actions
• Docker image hosted on Docker Hub
• Live, scalable, serverless deployment 🎉

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🎥 Video

🔗 [Insert YouTube Video Link Here]
In this video, I walk through everything — including my face and live output. Check it out!

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🔗 GitHub Repo

🔗 [Insert Public GitHub Repo Link Here]
Feel free to fork or star it! Contributions welcome.

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Let me know if you want this zipped or converted to a GitHub repo directly. Want me to build this out with real Terraform modules and ECS Task definitions too?