How to host Node.Js server and PostgreSQL database from my computer? - node.js

I want to host my own server and database on my computer, I don't want to pay monthly for services.
I developed a node.js app and it's using a postgresql database. I have a domain with an angular app and the app needs to use data from the server.
Can someone tell me how I can do this and which OS would be the best?
Thanks!

You have to do few things for that to work.
First, your Angular app needs to be able to connect with your home server so it either needs a static IP address accessible from the outside, a dynamic IP with dynamic DNS, or a VPN.
Your server needs to properly support CORS so that your Angular app would be able to connect with it. It will send OPTIONS requests that your server needs to handle properly.
Make sure that your server is always on, the internet connection is reliable, the power is reliable and that your services are properly restarted on reboot.
Make sure that your server is always up to date with security patches, is configured properly and doesn't use any unneeded software and services.
For (1) you have a lot of options and it all depends on whether you have a static or dynamic IP address, whether it is accessible from the internet etc. which you didn't include in your answer.
For (2) it depends on what Node framework do you use for you server-side application which you didn't include in your question. You need to use a way to set up CORS that is specific for the framework that you use.
The (3) is hard in home environment but it's important because on any downtime your users will not be able to use your application.
The (4) is critical in home environment because if anyone breaks into your server, he'll have access to your home network which may have a different kinds of consequences that breaking into a data center.
Another option would be to use a cheap VPS provider like Digital Ocean where you can get a server for $5 a month (or 2 months for free with this link) which may be less hassle that setting up your own server - for which you have to pay for electricity, manage the hardware, monitor the connectivity etc.
If you choose a VPS then (1) us taken care for you - you get your own static IP address accessible from the world, (3) is taken care for you completely, (4) is relatively easy to do and the biggest issue is making sure that CORS works as it should - but here you can host your API on the same domain as your frontend and then you don't need to worry about CORS at all.
If you get a VPS then you can host your frontend Angular app from the same server so that it doesn't even have to cost you more.

Related

In SSR, What is the meaning of Server?

I just learned CSR and SSR. So CSR is rendered in browser and
SSR is rendered in server and gives it to browser.
I can understand what CSR means but in SSR, what is the server?
Is it a big database like AWS? or just small codes stuff in npm?
I can't understand exactly what server means.
Anybody could help me?
Fundamentally, a server is just a computer with a program on it configured to respond to network requests. Often such a server's network configuration allows it to be reached from the public internet (with an IPv4 address and hostname). It can be as small or large as you want. You could use a hosted server (or hosted service provider) with a huge infrastructure like AWS; you could also use a spare computer lying around, install a backend on it (Node.js? Next.js? PHP? Etc...) and hook it up to your network, and it'll also function as a server.
There are also local development servers. These are pieces of software running on your local machine that allow you, the developer (and usually only you) to run server code while testing. These are usually accessible by plugging a localhost URL into your web browser, such as localhost:3000.
In SSR, 'the server' is usually the web server which contains the HTML files, but it can also be a separate server, such as with bigger websites that may have dedicated file storage servers, and rendering servers. Either way, the server is always just a computer owned by the website owners, which sends stuff over when someone asks it to.

What is the best architecture for a web-app communicating with a gRPC service?

I have built a website with chess.js and java chess libraries that communicates with a custom c++ chess engine via gRPC with python. I am new to web dev and especially gRPC, so I am not sure on the architecture I should be going for when it comes to hosting.
My questions are below:
Do the website and gRPC service need to be hosted on separate server instances and connected via API?
Everything right now is hosted locally and I use two ports as it is right now (5000 for the website and 8080 for the server). If the site and server aren't separate, is this how they will communicate to each other on a single server (one local port)?
I am using this website just for a showcase of my portfolio for job searching, so I am looking for free/cheap hosting that also provides a decent RAM availability since the c++ chess engine is fairly computationally intense. Does anyone have any suggestions for what hosting service I should use for this?
I was considering a free hosting for the website and then a cheap dedicated server for the service (if the two should be separate). Is this a bad idea?
Taking all tips and tricks that anyone has to offer. Again, totally novice to web dev, hosting, servers, etc.
NOTE This is an architecture rather than a programming question and discouraged on stack overflow.
The website and gRPC service may be hosted on the same server (as you're doing locally). You have the flexibility in running both processes (website and gRPC service) on a single more powerful host or separately on two hosts.
NOTE Although most often gRPC communicates over TCP sockets, it is possible to use UNIX sockets and even buffered memory too.
If you run both processes on a single host, you will want to consider connecting the website to the gRPC service via localhost (127.0.0.1 or the loopback device). Using localhost, network traffic doesn't leave the host.
If you run both processes on different hosts, traffic must travel across a network. This is slower and will likely incur charges when hosted.
You will want to decide whether the gRPC service should be exposed to any network traffic other than your website. In many cases, a gRPC service is used to provide an API to facilitate integration by 3rd-parties. If you definitely don't want the gRPC service accessed by other things, then you'll want to ensure either that it's bound to localhost (see above; and thereby inaccessible to anything other than other processes e.g. your website on the host) or firewalled such that only the website is permitted to send traffic to it.
You can find cheap hosting of virtual machines (VMs) and you'll likely want to consider hosting both processes on a single VM, ensure that you constrain the resources that you pay for and that you secure traffic (as above).
You may wish to consider containerizing the application. In this case, while it's possible to run both processes in a single container, this is considered not good practice. You should thus consider 2 containers (website and gRPC server). Many hosting|cloud platforms provide container hosting and this is generally easier than managing VMs (since you don't need to patch|update the OS and any dependencies). If you can find a platform that accepts a Docker Compose describing or a Kubernetes Deployment in which you describe both your services and how they interact such that the gRPC service is only accessible to the website, that could be ideal.

NodeJS TLS/TCP server in need of an external firewall

Problem:
I have an AWS EC2 instance running FreeBSD. In there, I'm running a NodeJS TLS/TCP server. I'd like to create a set of rules (in my NodeJS application) to be able to individually block IP addresses programmatically based on a few logical conditions.
I'd like to run an external (not on the same machine/instance) firewall or load-balancer, that I can control from NodeJS programmatically, such that when certain conditions are given, I can block a specific remote-address(IP) before it reaches the NodeJS instance.
Things I've tried:
I have initially looked into nginx as an option, running it on a second instance, and placing my NodeJS server behind it, but after skimming through the NGINX
Cookbook
Advanced Recipes for High Performance
Load Balancing I've learned that only the NGINX Plus (the paid version) allows for remote/API control & customization. While I believe that paying $3500/license is not too much (considering all NGINX Plus' features), I simply can not afford to buy it at this point in time; in addition the only feature I'd be using (at this point) would be the remote API control and the IP address blocking.
My second thought was to go with the AWS/ELB (elastic-load-balancer) by integrating AWS' SDK into my project. That sounded feasible, unfortunately, after reading a few forum threads and part of their documentation (unless I'm mistaken) it seems these two features I need are not available on the AWS/ELB. AWS seems to offer an entire different service called WAF that I honestly don't understand very well (both as a service and from a feature-stand-point).
I have also (briefly) looked into CloudFlare, as it was recommended in one of the posts, here on Sackoverflow, though I can't really tell if their firewall would allow this level of (remote) control.
Question:
What are my options? What would you guys recommend I did?
I think Nginx provide such kind of functionality please refer to link
If you want to block an IP with Node TCP you can just edit a nginx config file and deny IP address.
Frankly speaking, If I were you, I would use AWS WAF but if you don’t want to use it, you can simply use Node JS
In Node JS You should have a global array variable where you will store all blocked IP addresses and upon connection, you will check whether connected host IP is in blocked IP variable. However there occurs a problem when machine or application is restarted, you will lose all information about blocked IP-s. So as a solution to that you can just setup Redis (It is key-value database but there are also other datatypes) DB and store blocked IP-s there. Inasmuch as Redis DB is in RAM all interaction with DB will be instantly and as long as machine or node is restarted, Redis makes a backup on hard drive and it syncs from it and continue to work in RAM with old databases.

Setting up a web server for access outside of subnetwork (Node.js, Nginx maybe, Ubuntu server)

A little bit of context. I have developped a webapp on node.js (and a glamourous set of extensions). It has been approved for testing with true users at my company and i am supposed to deploy it now. Problem is that basically i have no idea unto how attack this problem. I have so many questions.
For the moment i have created a virtual machine on the local server. I have installed ubuntu server unto it and i have the intuition about how to deploy the app in this part (i suppose following the same steps as when i started to work on this project). I do not know however if i can have remote access from the outside of my network to this virtual machine. I also dont know if additional configuration in ubuntu's side is needed to make such an idea work (for example: in the installation there was a part about proxies that at the moment i decided to ignore)
From the few documents i have read about it since i was assigned this, a solution may lie in using nginx. The logic behind it if i am not mistaken (and please correct me if i am) is that nginx can help linking the HTTP requests (through the port 80 which is normally opened for access in most machines) and link it to a specific port on the machine (The sexy app i have developped).
In a more early stage, what ressources would i need to start this off? Would i need a domain name? IS it necessary? Do i need a different virtual server to link the apps or can they be on the same machine?
If you have additional comments or tips for someone that is learning to do this kind of thing, please do.
For remote access, you will need a couple of things. First of all, you will need to make sure that your virtual machine is on a bridged adapter. I'm not sure what virtual machine you are on, or I'd give you more detail on how to do this. Second, you will need to make sure that your router has port 80 (or whatever port you chose to use) setup via port forwarding so that requests coming in map to the server (a request comes to the router on the port, the router must then know where to send those requests to). Finally, if you want to use a port other than port 80, you should be able to configure this in the nodejs configuration. This may also be configurable in the router so that requests coming in on port 80 are mapped to, say 8080, but, given that this is a company, it's probably easier to reconfigure the nodejs server than have it set up special mapping.
This experience comes from personal experience with hosting web servers at home. Corporate routers should need similar configuration unless each system has a public IP address on the internet, which is unlikely.

Host name for nodeJS application on Local Network

I have developed an intranet site using nodeJS and it is running successfully on one of the Windows servers in our office and am now ready to deploy.
At the moment the only route to access is ip:port (192.168.1.88:8888 for example)
I would like for the local users on the network to just type 'intranet' into their browsers and be forwarded to this location. I have tried modifying the system32\drivers\etc\hosts file (with 127.0.0.1 intranet), but it 404'd, telling me that index was not found, so maybe it's trying to serve the application statically with a different web server (IIS is installed on the machine, although it's not running?)
Is there any way to achieve this "shortcut" at network level? It must also work for external visitors to the site so I've ruled out any local solutions.
I am aware that this information already exists online, however I find it is above my knowledge level as a humble javascript developer and seems to strafe into network administration territory. I wonder if anybody could provide a lay mans write up.

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