I normally use Heroku or Openshift to publish apps but AWS works too. Here's a cheatsheet on how to set-up your NodeJS server from scratch on AWS.
This cheatsheet will focus on the development environment and not dive into making a node app.
Create an EC2 Server
Step 1 - Create a PEM
You need to create an PEM key in order to gain access to your AWS server.
Step 2 - Launch EC2
You need to Launch an Instance of EC2 using the EC2 Console.
https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/
This is where you will pick the PEM you just created.
Step 3 - Create A-Record
It's recommended that you create a static IP address to your EC2, then assign an domain A-Record to your static IP address.
https://pragmaticintegrator.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/assign-a-fixed-ip-to-aws-ec2-instance/
Step 4 - SSH
You can SSH into your new EC2 instance using PEM.
ssh -i ~/Desktop/keys.pem ec2-user@domainname.com
Step 5 - Configure Root
Once you've used SSH to log into the server, you then should configure your server by first creating a root password.
keys = {root: p@ssword }
sudo passwd root
Install NodeJS
Step 6 - Install packages
Become a root user
su root
YUM is your package manager and it's advised that you update it before you begin.
sudo yum update
Install GCC
sudo yum install gcc-c++ make
Install OpenSSL
sudo yum install openssl-devel
Install git so that you can checkout node.
sudo yum install git
Change director to /usr/src
cd /usr/src
Download NodeJS
sudo git clone git@github.com:nodejs/node.git
Change directory into /node
cd node
Step 7 - Check out Node
Checkout the version of node you need. If you need something that's stable, it might help to review this page
git checkout v4.6.0
./configure
make
sudo make install
Step 8 - Configure Node
Configure NodeJS
sudo nano /etc/sudoers
Step 9
Configure environmental variables by making this line:
Defaults secure_path = /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
Look like this:
Defaults secure_path = /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
Step 10 - Install npm
Install Node Package Manager (NPM)
sudo yum install curl
sudo su
PATH=$PATH:/home/ec2-user/node
export PATH
curl https://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh
exit
Step 11 - Install a few more packages
Install ExpressJS and Forever packages from npm.
sudo npm install express -g
sudo npm install forever -g
Your done!
