Next.js on AWS with SST

Create and deploy a Next.js app to AWS with SST.

There are two ways to deploy a Next.js app to AWS with SST.

Serverless with OpenNext
Containers with Docker

We’ll use both to build a couple of simple apps below.

Examples

We also have a few other Next.js examples that you can refer to.

Serverless

We are going to create a Next.js app, add an S3 Bucket for file uploads, and deploy it using OpenNext and the Nextjs component.

Before you get started, make sure to configure your AWS credentials.

1. Create a project

Let’s start by creating our app.

npx create-next-app@latest aws-nextjs
cd aws-nextjs

We are picking all the default options.

Init SST

Now let’s initialize SST in our app.

npx sst@latest init

Select the defaults and pick AWS. This’ll create a sst.config.ts file in your project root.

Start dev mode

Run the following to start dev mode. This’ll start SST and your Next.js app.

npx sst dev

Once complete, click on MyWeb in the sidebar and open your Next.js app in your browser.

2. Add an S3 Bucket

Let’s allow public access to our S3 Bucket for file uploads. Update your sst.config.ts.

const bucket = new sst.aws.Bucket("MyBucket", {
  access: "public"
});

Add this above the Nextjs component.

Link the bucket

Now, link the bucket to our Next.js app.

new sst.aws.Nextjs("MyWeb", {
  link: [bucket]
});

3. Create an upload form

Add a form client component in components/form.tsx.

"use client";

import styles from "./form.module.css";

export default function Form({ url }: { url: string }) {
  return (
    <form
      className={styles.form}
      onSubmit={async (e) => {
        e.preventDefault();

        const file = (e.target as HTMLFormElement).file.files?.[0] ?? null;

        const image = await fetch(url, {
          body: file,
          method: "PUT",
          headers: {
            "Content-Type": file.type,
            "Content-Disposition": `attachment; filename="${file.name}"`,
          },
        });

        window.location.href = image.url.split("?")[0];
      }}
    >
      <input name="file" type="file" accept="image/png, image/jpeg" />
      <button type="submit">Upload</button>
    </form>
  );
}

Add some styles.

.form {
  padding: 2rem;
  border-radius: 0.5rem;
  background-color: var(--gray-alpha-100);
}

.form input {
  margin-right: 1rem;
}

.form button {
  appearance: none;
  padding: 0.5rem 0.75rem;
  font-weight: 500;
  font-size: 0.875rem;
  border-radius: 0.375rem;
  background-color: transparent;
  font-family: var(--font-geist-sans);
  border: 1px solid var(--gray-alpha-200);
}

.form button:active:enabled {
  background-color: var(--gray-alpha-200);
}

4. Generate a pre-signed URL

When our app loads, we’ll generate a pre-signed URL for the file upload and render the form with it. Replace your Home component in app/page.tsx.

export const dynamic = "force-dynamic";

export default async function Home() {
  const command = new PutObjectCommand({
    Key: crypto.randomUUID(),
    Bucket: Resource.MyBucket.name,
  });
  const url = await getSignedUrl(new S3Client({}), command);

  return (
    <div className={styles.page}>
      <main className={styles.main}>
        <Form url={url} />
      </main>
    </div>
  );
}

We need the force-dynamic because we don’t want Next.js to cache the pre-signed URL.

Add the relevant imports.

import { Resource } from "sst";
import Form from "@/components/form";
import { getSignedUrl } from "@aws-sdk/s3-request-presigner";
import { S3Client, PutObjectCommand } from "@aws-sdk/client-s3";
import styles from "./page.module.css";

And install the npm packages.

npm install @aws-sdk/client-s3 @aws-sdk/s3-request-presigner

Test your app

Head over to the local Next.js app in your browser, http://localhost:3000 and try uploading an image. You should see it upload and then download the image.

5. Deploy your app

Now let’s deploy your app to AWS.

npx sst deploy --stage production

You can use any stage name here but it’s good to create a new stage for production.

Congrats! Your app should now be live!

SST Next.js app

Containers

We are going to build a hit counter Next.js app with Redis. We’ll the deploy it to AWS in a container using the Cluster component.

Before you get started, make sure to configure your AWS credentials.

1. Create a project

Let’s start by creating our app.

npx create-next-app@latest aws-nextjs-container
cd aws-nextjs-container

We are picking all the default options.

Init SST

Now let’s initialize SST in our app.

npx sst@latest init

Select the defaults and pick AWS. This’ll create a sst.config.ts file in your project root.

2. Add a Cluster

To deploy our Next.js app in a container, we’ll use AWS Fargate with Amazon ECS. Replace the run function in your sst.config.ts.

async run() {
  const vpc = new sst.aws.Vpc("MyVpc", { bastion: true });
  const cluster = new sst.aws.Cluster("MyCluster", { vpc });

  cluster.addService("MyService", {
    loadBalancer: {
      ports: [{ listen: "80/http", forward: "3000/http" }],
    },
    dev: {
      command: "npm run dev",
    },
  });
}

This creates a VPC with a bastion host, an ECS Cluster, and adds a Fargate service to it.

The dev.command tells SST to instead run our Next.js app locally in dev mode.

3. Add Redis

Let’s add an Amazon ElastiCache Redis cluster. Add this below the Vpc component in your sst.config.ts.

const redis = new sst.aws.Redis("MyRedis", { vpc });

This shares the same VPC as our ECS cluster.

Link Redis

Now, link the Redis cluster to the container.

cluster.addService("MyService", {
  // ...
  link: [redis],
});

This will allow us to reference the Redis cluster in our Next.js app.

Install a tunnel

Since our Redis cluster is in a VPC, we’ll need a tunnel to connect to it from our local machine.

sudo npx sst tunnel install

This needs sudo to create a network interface on your machine. You’ll only need to do this once on your machine.

Start dev mode

Start your app in dev mode.

npx sst dev

This will deploy your app, start a tunnel in the Tunnel tab, and run your Next.js app locally in the MyServiceDev tab.

4. Connect to Redis

We want the / route to increment a counter in our Redis cluster. Let’s start by installing the npm package we’ll use.

npm install ioredis

Add the relevant imports to your index.mjs.

import { Resource } from "sst";
import { Cluster } from "ioredis";

const redis = new Cluster(
  [{ host: Resource.MyRedis.host, port: Resource.MyRedis.port }],
  {
    dnsLookup: (address, callback) => callback(null, address),
    redisOptions: {
      tls: {},
      username: Resource.MyRedis.username,
      password: Resource.MyRedis.password,
    },
  }
);

Let’s update the component. Replace the Home component in app/page.tsx.

export const dynamic = "force-dynamic";

export default async function Home() {
  const counter = await redis.incr("counter");

  return (
    <div className={styles.page}>
      <main className={styles.main}>
        <p>Hit counter: {counter}</p>
      </main>
    </div>
  );
}

We need the force-dynamic because we don’t want Next.js to cache the counter.

Let’s add some styles to app/page.module.css.

.main p {
  font-family: var(--font-geist-mono);
  font-size: 14px;
  letter-spacing: -0.01em;
}

Test your app

Let’s head over to http://localhost:3000 in your browser and it’ll show the current hit counter.

You should see it increment every time you refresh the page.

5. Deploy your app

To build our app for production, we’ll enable Next.js’s standalone output. Let’s update our next.config.mjs.

const nextConfig = {
  output: "standalone"
};

Now to deploy our app we’ll add a Dockerfile.

View Dockerfile

# https://github.com/vercel/next.js/tree/canary/examples/with-docker

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

# Copy over generated types
COPY sst-env.d.ts* ./

# 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 corepack enable pnpm && pnpm i --frozen-lockfile; \
  else echo "Lockfile not found." && exit 1; \
  fi

# Rebuild the source code only when needed
FROM base AS builder

# Add linked resources to the environment
ARG SST_RESOURCE_MyRedis

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 \
  if [ -f yarn.lock ]; then yarn run build; \
  elif [ -f package-lock.json ]; then npm run build; \
  elif [ -f pnpm-lock.yaml ]; then corepack enable pnpm && pnpm run build; \
  else echo "Lockfile not found." && exit 1; \
  fi

# 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

# server.js is created by next build from the standalone output
# https://nextjs.org/docs/pages/api-reference/next-config-js/output
ENV HOSTNAME="0.0.0.0"
CMD ["node", "server.js"]

This builds our Next.js app in a Docker image. To make sure that the build process in Docker has access to our Redis cluster, we have the following.

# Add linked resources to the environment
ARG SST_RESOURCE_MyRedis

Here MyRedis is the name of the component in our sst.config.ts file.

Let’s also add a .dockerignore file in the root.

.git
.next
node_modules

Now to build our Docker image and deploy we run:

npx sst deploy --stage production

You can use any stage name here but it’s good to create a new stage for production.

Congrats! Your app should now be live!

SST Next.js container app

Connect the console

As a next step, you can setup the SST Console to git push to deploy your app and monitor it for any issues.

SST Console Autodeploy

You can create a free account and connect it to your AWS account.