Deploying a Web Application using AWS EC2 and Application Load Balancer – Hands-on Project

Published: 1 month ago (March 15, 2026 at 10:03 AM EDT)

2 min read

Source: Dev.to

Source: Dev.to

Project Overview

In this project, I created a simple web application and deployed it using AWS infrastructure. The application is served by multiple EC2 instances, and traffic is distributed using an Application Load Balancer (ALB). This setup ensures that if one server fails, the application continues to run smoothly through another server.

Architecture

User
   ↓
Application Load Balancer
   ↓
Target Group
   ↓
EC2 Instances running Nginx Web Server

The Load Balancer distributes incoming requests across multiple EC2 instances to ensure better performance and high availability.

Technologies Used

AWS EC2
AWS Application Load Balancer
AWS Target Groups
Nginx Web Server
HTML & CSS
GitHub Pages

Step-by-Step Implementation

Launch EC2 Instances

Created two EC2 instances using the AWS Free Tier. Each instance was configured with Nginx via EC2 User Data so that the website is deployed automatically during launch.

Deploy Website on Instances

The website includes:

Welcome page
User login form
Suggestion input field
Project description section

Configure Target Group

Created a Target Group in AWS and registered the EC2 instances as targets, allowing the load balancer to monitor their health and distribute traffic.

Create Application Load Balancer

Set up an ALB to handle incoming traffic. The ALB forwards requests to the target group, which routes them to available EC2 instances, ensuring traffic distribution and improved reliability.

Configure Security Groups

Configured security groups to allow:

HTTP traffic on port 80
SSH access for instance management

GitHub Deployment

Uploaded the website code to GitHub and used GitHub Pages to host the static version.

Live website:
GitHub repository:

Key Learnings

Launching and configuring EC2 instances
How AWS Application Load Balancer distributes traffic
Managing backend servers with Target Groups
Deploying a static website using GitHub Pages
Ensuring high availability with cloud infrastructure

Conclusion

This project provided practical experience in deploying a cloud‑based web application using AWS services. Understanding load balancing is an essential skill in modern cloud and DevOps environments, and even a simple architecture demonstrates the core principles of scalable and fault‑tolerant systems.