AWS

Two deployment paths for AWS: EC2 (one-command Docker Compose, simplest) and ECS Fargate + RDS (production-grade Terraform, ~$92/mo).

EC2 (Docker Compose)

Lowest-friction option. Spins up a t3.small EC2 instance (~$15/mo), installs Docker, and runs Postgres + Typesense + the gateway in Docker Compose.

Prerequisites

• AWS CLI installed and configured (aws configure)
• An EC2 key pair in us-east-1
• Ports 22, 80, and 8080 accessible from your IP

Deploy

bash deploy/aws/ec2/deploy.sh

The script will prompt for:

• JWT_SECRET
• TYPESENSE_API_KEY
• INTERNAL_API_KEY
• PG_PASSWORD
• LLM_API_KEY

Then it creates a security group (astra-sg), launches a t3.small in us-east-1, SSHes in, writes a .env file, and starts Docker Compose with three services: postgres (pgvector:pg17), typesense (27.1), and gateway (ghcr.io/your-org/astra:latest).

Default config

ECS Fargate + RDS (Terraform)

Production-grade deployment. ECS Fargate runs the gateway and Typesense; RDS PostgreSQL 17 with pgvector runs in a private subnet behind an Application Load Balancer.

Architecture

• ECS Fargate — gateway + Typesense services
• RDS PostgreSQL 17 — private subnet, encrypted at rest
• Application Load Balancer — HTTP/HTTPS termination
• Secrets Manager — all credentials injected at runtime
• VPC with public/private subnets and NAT Gateway

Prerequisites

• Terraform 1.5+
• AWS CLI configured with sufficient IAM permissions
• Docker image pushed to ECR (your-account.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/astra:latest)

Deploy

cd deploy/aws/terraform
cp terraform.tfvars.example terraform.tfvars
# edit terraform.tfvars
terraform init
terraform apply

terraform.tfvars

gateway_image     = "your-account.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/astra:latest"
db_password       = "your-secure-password"
jwt_secret        = "your-jwt-secret"
typesense_api_key = "your-typesense-key"
internal_api_key  = "your-internal-key"
llm_api_key       = "your-llm-key"

Enable pgvector

Run after the first deploy:

RDS=$(terraform output -raw rds_endpoint)
psql -h $RDS -U postgres -d astra \
  -c "CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vector;"

Redeploy gateway

aws ecs update-service \
  --cluster astra-cluster \
  --service astra-gateway \
  --force-new-deployment \
  --region us-east-1

Cost estimate

Terraform file reference