Scalable Task Platform

A production-grade DevOps project documenting the full lifecycle of a task management application, from a simple backend service to a containerized, automated, cloud-deployed, and observable platform.

Built in public, one week at a time.

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What This Project Demonstrates

• Backend API development with Node.js and Express
• Containerization with Docker
• CI/CD automation with GitHub Actions, Amazon ECR, and Docker Hub
• Infrastructure as Code with Terraform
• Cloud deployment on AWS EC2
• Container orchestration with Kubernetes
• Monitoring and observability with Prometheus and Grafana

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Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	Node.js, Express
Containerization	Docker, Docker Compose
CI/CD	GitHub Actions
Image Registry	Amazon ECR, Docker Hub
Infrastructure	Terraform
Cloud	AWS EC2
Orchestration	Kubernetes
Monitoring	Prometheus, Grafana

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Roadmap

Week	Topic	Status
1	Project foundation and backend API	Done
2	Dockerize the backend	Done
3	React frontend and Docker Compose	Done
4	CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions, ECR and Docker Hub	Done
5	Terraform infrastructure and CI/CD pipeline extension	Done
6	Cloud deployment on AWS EC2	Done
7	Database integration	Upcoming
8	Kubernetes deployment	Upcoming
9	Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana	Upcoming
10	Hardening and project polish	Upcoming

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API Endpoints

Method	Route	Description
GET	/api	API status
GET	/api/health	Returns status and uptime
GET	/api/tasks	Returns all tasks
POST	/api/tasks	Creates a new task
PATCH	/api/tasks/:id	Toggles task complete or incomplete
DELETE	/api/tasks/:id	Deletes a task

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20 or higher
• npm
• Docker and Docker Compose

Run Locally Without Docker

git clone https://github.com/elizabeth-ikechukwu/scalable-task-platform.git
cd scalable-task-platform/app/backend
cp .env.example .env
npm install
npm start

Server runs on http://localhost:3000

Run With Docker Compose

git clone https://github.com/elizabeth-ikechukwu/scalable-task-platform.git
cd scalable-task-platform
docker compose up -d

Frontend runs on http://localhost:80

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CI/CD Pipeline

Every pull request and push to main triggers a five-stage pipeline:

lint -> unit-test -> build-and-integration-test -> publish -> terraform-apply

• terraform-plan runs on every pull request — shows exactly what infrastructure will change before merging
• terraform-apply runs on merge to main — infrastructure is provisioned by the pipeline, never from a local machine
• The publish stage pushes images to both Amazon ECR and Docker Hub, tagged with latest and the short Git SHA

AWS authentication uses OIDC — no static credentials stored in GitHub secrets.

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Infrastructure

All infrastructure is provisioned with Terraform and lives in infra/terraform/.

Resource	Details
VPC	Custom VPC with public subnet
Networking	Internet gateway, route tables
Security	Security groups with least-privilege rules
Compute	EC2 t3.micro running Amazon Linux 2023
IAM	Instance profile with SSM and ECR permissions
State	S3 remote backend with native state locking

EC2 instances configure themselves on first boot via a user data script — Docker is installed, images are pulled from ECR, and containers start automatically. No SSH required. All access via AWS SSM Session Manager.

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Weekly Updates

Detailed documentation for each week is in the docs folder.

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Author

Ikechukwu Elizabeth Nkwo

DevOps and Cloud Engineer

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