How to deploy Ruby on Rails to AWS

Deploy Ruby on Rails with its bundled Puma server on ECS Fargate behind an Application Load Balancer.

Prerequisites

A Git repository containing your application and its production build command.
A Ravion account with your AWS account connected. Start free at Ravion signup.
The Ravion CLI installed and authenticated. See CLI installation.

The examples use my-org/my-app as a placeholder. Replace it with your repository before applying the config.

Set up this Rails app for Ravion ECS hosting.

Configure the deployment

Rails binds to localhost by default, so the production command must bind to 0.0.0.0. This example uses Railpack for the build. Use build_source: dockerfile instead when you need a custom Dockerfile. Railpack detects Rails from the application files. Railpack detects Rails through Gemfile and config/application.rb. It reads the Ruby version from .ruby-version, Gemfile, or mise files, installs Node when frontend tooling requires it, precompiles assets and Bootsnap, and configures common native dependencies. Set the production start command to bin/rails server -e production -b 0.0.0.0 when your repository does not provide one. Ravion injects PORT automatically from container_port.

ravion.yaml

project:
  givenId: rails-app
  name: Rails app
environments:
  - givenId: production
    name: Production
    moduleInstances:
      - givenId: network
        name: Network
        type: rvn-aws-network
        version: 1.0.0
        input:
          aws_account_id: ravion-prod
          aws_region: us-east-1
          name: rails-production
      - givenId: cluster
        name: ECS cluster
        type: rvn-ecs-cluster
        version: 1.0.0
        input:
          network:
            moduleGivenIdRef: network
          name: rails-production
      - givenId: database
        name: PostgreSQL database
        type: rvn-rds
        version: 1.0.0
        input:
          network:
            moduleGivenIdRef: network
          name: rails-production-db
          db_name: rails
          username: rails
          engine_major_version: "15"
      - givenId: web
        name: Rails web service
        type: rvn-ecs-web
        version: 1.0.0
        input:
          cluster:
            moduleGivenIdRef: cluster
          name: rails-production-web
          build_source: railpack
          source_repo: my-org/my-rails-app
          container_port: 3000
          fargate_size:
            vcpu: 0.5
            memory_gb: 1

Set RAILS_MASTER_KEY, SECRET_KEY_BASE, and DATABASE_URL as runtime secrets. Populate the database secret from the RDS outputs before applying the service.

Apply and connect your domain

ravion project create --given-id rails-app --name "Rails app"
ravion project config apply rails-app --file ravion.yaml --dry-run
ravion project config apply rails-app --file ravion.yaml

Follow custom domains to connect your domain to the Application Load Balancer.

Next steps

Custom domains

Point a domain at your deployed service and manage its certificate.

Project config

Preview and apply Ravion configuration from source control.

Pipelines

Add approvals, migrations, and deployment automation.

Logs and metrics

Inspect deploy output and production health in Ravion.

​Prerequisites

​Configure the deployment

​Apply and connect your domain

​Next steps