CloudDeployment

EC2 Flask App — Inventory Tracker

Deployed a small Flask app to AWS EC2 behind Nginx + Gunicorn. Goal: simple CRUD to enhance organization and co-op gaming experience.

← Back to Projects

PlatformAWS EC2 (Ubuntu)

Web ServerNginx

App ServerGunicorn (WSGI)

Service Mgmtsystemd

Goal

Host an inventory management app to enhance co-op gaming experience

Environment

AWS EC2 (Ubuntu)
Nginx, Gunicorn
SQLite

Steps (high level)

Provision EC2; harden SSH (key auth), update firewall (UFW/Security Group).
Install Python venv; deploy Flask app code; install deps.
Run Gunicorn as a systemd service; set working dir & env.
Configure Nginx server block: proxy pass to Gunicorn socket/port; enable gzip.
Acquire TLS with Certbot; set up auto-renewal.

Outcome

Stable, HTTPS-secured app with a deployment flow that mirrors real production setups.

Gunicorn systemd service

# /etc/systemd/system/inventory.service
[Unit]
Description=Gunicorn for Inventory App
After=network.target

[Service]
User=www-data
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/inventory
Environment="PATH=/var/www/inventory/venv/bin"
ExecStart=/var/www/inventory/venv/bin/gunicorn --workers 3 --bind unix:/run/inventory.sock wsgi:app
RuntimeDirectory=inventory
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Nginx server block

# /etc/nginx/sites-available/inventory
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;

    location /static/ {
        alias /var/www/inventory/static/;
    }

    location / {
        include proxy_params;
        proxy_pass http://unix:/run/inventory.sock;
    }
}

# After Certbot
# server { listen 443 ssl http2; ... }

AWSFlaskGunicornNginx