Introduction

This is a series of scripts and files for production-grade deployment of Meteor. Please visit this forum thread to get the history: https://forums.meteor.com/t/deploying-to-aws-with-meteor-1-3-5-still-using-mup/27306/20

Warnings

1. First, this is for experienced system administrators. Please don't submit an issue asking 'How do I generate an SSH key'.
2. You should really look into using MDG's own hosting solution first. Only if you have different needs does it make sense to launch your own servers.
3. These scripts are sanitized versions of what we are currently using for our app (https://zeschool.zegenie.com), we will make every effort to keep up to date
4. Mongo (and Redis if you wnat to use redis-oplog https://github.com/cult-of-coders/redis-oplog) launched on the same server, disable in pm2.json / launch scripts if you are using external DB service
5. PR's are welcome

Setup

We are using:

1. PM2 for all process management (see sample pm2.json which you have to start manually the first time on the server) -- and read PM2 docs for more info
2. tengine with load balancer and sticky sessions -- see our sample nginx.conf
3. Shell scripts to push build via SSH -- remote-build.sh
4. Shell scripts to install build remotely on server -- deploy-build.sh
5. Of course, nodejs / npm should be installed on your server (as well as pm2) -- and .sh in this repo are executable
6. Key-based SSH
7. Mongo and Redis (pm2.json) on the same server, allocate a process for Mongo

Folders

On the server,

1. we assume the app will be started from /home/meteor/build
2. pm2.json and deploy-build.sh should be located in /home/meteor/scripts

Process

1. We compile on our dev machine
2. Push the tarball onto server
3. Decompress and install on server
4. Reload PM2

All this is done by calling local script ./build-remote.sh which takes care of everything (if you set things based on the folders above).

A note about tengine

Tengine (http://tengine.taobao.org/documentation.html) is a fork of nginx but with solid production-grade features (that you would have to pay for with the pro version of nginx). nginx.conf in this repo contains our (sanitized) setup.

Bonus

1. You will notice in the nginx.conf we are accessing the pm2 web interface to get real time view of how our processes are running (Really cool!) -- see image at top of this readme
2. You will also notice in nginx.conf that status.example.org provides real-time view of the three meteor processes we have launched (load balancer status -- see image below)
3. We use Icinga2 (you can use Nagios too) to monitor server health, including checking on the load balancer status and pm2 processes (not included yet)
4. We use Cloudfront CDN (see http://joshowens.me/using-a-cdn-with-your-production-meteor-app/ with some improvements) and this is reflected in the nginx.conf

Should I use Meteor-based load balancer / deployment

Many in the community use the Cluster package for managing meteor instances. This is a lousy solution. The explanation of the authors is that HAProxy is too complex. Agreed, but nginx / tengine include proper load balancers. We shouldn't use meteor to run webserver functions. This looks like the classical dev thinking s/he is a system admin.

I personally dislike mup and even more mupx. The latter uses docker. The approach suggested here is for truly production-grade deployments. This is such an important issue, that I believe a good company either outsources deployment / hosting (e.g. Galaxy) or does it right.