flyctl VS docker-node

For frontend deployment, I used Netlify (for the generous free package) and the recommended fly.io for server + database (also cheap package).

Create an account on Fly.io.

You can learn more about fly.io and tigris, we will need to create an account on both platforms for this project regardless. Anyway with the theory out of the way let's get started in the next section as we create our accounts and start building the app.

Fly.io is a platform that helps you run your apps and databases closer to your users all around the world. It takes your app code, packages it up neatly, and puts it on virtual machines that can be quickly started or stopped. This makes your app faster for users and more reliable. Fly.io is easy to use, works well for small projects or personal apps. It's a great way to make sure your app runs smoothly for people no matter where they are.

In this post, we'll start from scratch, running FerretDB locally via Docker, trying out the connection with mongosh and the MongoDB Node.js client, and finally deploy FerretDB to Fly.io for a production ready set up.

2- fly.io

Fly is a cloud platform that focuses on global edge computing. Fly specializes in high-performance hosting and provides a global network of edge locations. Fly is known for its scalability and performance optimizations.

But videototextai.com is built using NextJS + Firebase auth + Firestore and a backend deployed at fly.io . Fly makes it really easy to deploy docker containers and that is IMO the fastest way to develop, you can setup a local setup

Alternatives explored: * northflank: While running the wrk test, requests were taking 3-7 seconds. Couldn't repeat Heroku's phenomenon of "400ms-800ms" during such a load test. * fly.io: Reliability: It’s Not Great * render.com: I remember the time when indiehackers.com was down because of an outage on Render, not sure if it's worth trusting.

For personal/portfolio projects fly.io and render.com both have free tiers that support the major backend frameworks and Postgres at the very least (although I think with Render at least the DB expires and has to be reloaded after a certain amount of time, have not personally tried it).

FROM node:16-alpine AS base FROM base AS deps # Check https://github.com/nodejs/docker-node/tree/b4117f9333da4138b03a546ec926ef50a31506c3#nodealpine to understand why libc6-compat might be needed. RUN apk add --no-cache libc6-compat WORKDIR /app COPY package.json package-lock.json* ./ RUN npm ci FROM base AS builder WORKDIR /app COPY --from=deps /app/node_modules ./node_modules COPY . . RUN npm run build # Production image, copy all the files and run next FROM base AS runner WORKDIR /app ENV NODE_ENV production COPY --from=builder /app/.next/standalone ./ COPY --from=builder /app/.next/static ./.next/static COPY --from=builder /app/public ./public EXPOSE 3000 ENV PORT 3000 ENV HOSTNAME localhost CMD ["node", "server.js"]

This instructs docker to start building our image from an existing node image based on Alpine Linux. Alpine distribution is the smallest Linux distribution which allows building lightweight images.

FROM node:21-alpine AS base FROM base AS builder Check https://github.com/nodejs/docker-node/tree/b4117f9333da4138b03a546ec926ef50a31506c3#nodealpine to understand why libc6-compat might be needed. RUN apk add --no-cache libc6-compat RUN apk update Set working directory WORKDIR /app Install pnpm with corepack RUN corepack enable && corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate Enable pnpm add --global on Alpine Linux by setting home location environment variable to a location already in $PATH https://github.com/pnpm/pnpm/issues/784#issuecomment-1518582235 ENV PNPM_HOME=/usr/local/bin RUN pnpm install turbo --global COPY . . RUN turbo prune web --docker Add lockfile and package.json's of isolated subworkspace FROM base AS installer RUN apk add --no-cache libc6-compat RUN apk update WORKDIR /app First install the dependencies (as they change less often) COPY .gitignore .gitignore COPY --from=builder /app/out/json/ . COPY --from=builder /app/out/pnpm-workspace.yaml ./pnpm-workspace.yaml COPY --from=builder /app/out/pnpm-lock.yaml ./pnpm-lock.yaml RUN pnpm install Build the project COPY --from=builder /app/out/full/ . RUN pnpm turbo run build --filter=web FROM base AS runner WORKDIR /app Don't run production as root RUN addgroup --system --gid 1001 nodejs RUN adduser --system --uid 1001 nextjs USER nextjs COPY --from=installer /app/apps/web/next.config.js . COPY --from=installer /app/apps/web/package.json . Automatically leverage output traces to reduce image size https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/output-file-tracing COPY --from=installer --chown=nextjs:nodejs /app/apps/web/.next/standalone ./ COPY --from=installer --chown=nextjs:nodejs /app/apps/web/.next/static ./apps/web/.next/static COPY --from=installer --chown=nextjs:nodejs /app/apps/web/public ./apps/web/public CMD node apps/web/server.js

FROM node:18-alpine AS base # Install dependencies only when needed FROM base AS deps # Check https://github.com/nodejs/docker-node/tree/b4117f9333da4138b03a546ec926ef50a31506c3#nodealpine to understand why libc6-compat might be needed. RUN apk add --no-cache libc6-compat WORKDIR /app # Install dependencies based on the preferred package manager COPY package.json yarn.lock* package-lock.json* pnpm-lock.yaml* ./ RUN \ if [ -f yarn.lock ]; then yarn --frozen-lockfile; \ elif [ -f package-lock.json ]; then npm ci; \ elif [ -f pnpm-lock.yaml ]; then yarn global add pnpm && pnpm i --frozen-lockfile; \ else echo "Lockfile not found." && exit 1; \ fi # Rebuild the source code only when needed FROM base AS builder WORKDIR /app COPY --from=deps /app/node_modules ./node_modules COPY . . # Next.js collects completely anonymous telemetry data about general usage. # Learn more here: https://nextjs.org/telemetry # Uncomment the following line in case you want to disable telemetry during the build. # ENV NEXT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED 1 RUN yarn build # If using npm comment out above and use below instead # RUN npm run build # Production image, copy all the files and run next FROM base AS runner WORKDIR /app ENV NODE_ENV production # Uncomment the following line in case you want to disable telemetry during runtime. # ENV NEXT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED 1 RUN addgroup --system --gid 1001 nodejs RUN adduser --system --uid 1001 nextjs COPY --from=builder /app/public ./public # Set the correct permission for prerender cache RUN mkdir .next RUN chown nextjs:nodejs .next # Automatically leverage output traces to reduce image size # https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/output-file-tracing COPY --from=builder --chown=nextjs:nodejs /app/.next/standalone ./ COPY --from=builder --chown=nextjs:nodejs /app/.next/static ./.next/static USER nextjs EXPOSE 3000 ENV PORT 3000 # set hostname to localhost ENV HOSTNAME "0.0.0.0" # server.js is created by next build from the standalone output # https://nextjs.org/docs/pages/api-reference/next-config-js/output CMD ["node", "server.js"]

Official docker image for node is built from Alpine or Debian [1]

Forgive me if I don't believe that running a full OS on a host OS to run a single node command doesn't amount to running a VM.

[1] https://github.com/nodejs/docker-node/tree/main/20

This is Node's Docker image.

Since the project is written in Node.js, we need to find a Node.js environment on Docker Hub. We can find the official Node image on Docker Hub by searching for "Node.js".

This node image is just one of a range published by the Node.js team (https://hub.docker.com/_/node), and they also have the Dockerfile for their build available

do you mean container image? npm comes in the "node" container image https://hub.docker.com/_/node

I'm trying to setup a docker container for running a node js app. I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to docker, but from what I've read all I need to do is "Launch docker image" and enter the image name from the docker repo. In this case: https://hub.docker.com/_/node My config looks like this. After that the UI just says deploying forever. I must be missing something obvious, any ideas?