How to deploy docker app in aws using GitLab CI/CD

Question

I have a Symfony app that runs with docker-compose and I want to implement the auto-deployment with GitLab CI/CD, to run the app in some aws instance. I don't know what would be the best approach to take, basically this are my ideas and their steps:

Approach 1: (building in GitLab)

• Build the docker images in the GitLab runners
• Push the images to some image registry
• ssh to the aws instance
• pull the new image
• run the new containers with docker-compose

Approach 2: (building in aws)

• ssh to aws
• pull the branch to deploy
• build the docker images
• run the new containers with docker-compose

I like the first approach but maybe there is another better way to do it. It would be amazing to have some .gitlab-ci.yml reference file.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you build it in GitLab runners and push it to a registry, you can use it in more places that only on AWS.

Here is a reference file for the Docker-in-Docker build method(from docs):

.gitlab-ci.yml

build:
   image: docker:stable
   services:
     - docker:dind
   variables:
     DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2375
     DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2
   stage: build
   script:
     - docker login -u gitlab-ci-token -p $CI_JOB_TOKEN registry.example.com
     - docker build -t registry.example.com/group/project/image:latest .
     - docker push registry.example.com/group/project/image:latest