Free MEAN dev cloud deployement

I recently had to figure out the cheapest way to deploy a containerized docker Node app and a MongoDB server to the cloud. And I was able to get it done for free. Here is how I did it.

Research

Just to be clear, the deployment is only meant for development purposes. This is not a setup for production. If you need production grade environment you will have to pay. The first provider I checked was Azure. They have free offers but after a month you have to pay a small fee. The offer was great, and I was almost steered to deploy the container there. However, I thought I could do better and aim for free. So after checking a few options I ended up choosing Heroku as the Docker Container host and Atlas as the MongoDB host. Atlas is the mother company for MongoDB.

Deployment

Deploying the container to Heroku was straight forward. Here are the steps I followed:

• Create an account
• Download Heroku CLI
• Connect to Heroku through the CLI>
• Connect to the Heroku Container Repo through the CLI
• Build the container, upload it and release it through the Heroku CLI

For a MongoDB deployment, Atlas provides a free option for developers, for testing purposes. Here is what I did to get the db deployed:

• Register an account
• Create a cluster
• Create a user
• Get the connection string
• White-list your IP address

And voila I was able to create a MongoDB cluster, connect to it from my dev environment as well from the container I deployed to Heroku. Over all the UX provided by Atlas was really great.

Both options above provide an easy way to test a cloud deployment. However, if you need to deploy to Azure, I would recommend the following video by Scott Hanselmann. Enjoy: