🚀 Build This Week: Deploy a Flask App on AWS with Terraform

DevOps Project #1 Provision an EC2 instance + Auto-deploy a Personal Finance Tracker using Infrastructure as Code

Hey Builders,

Welcome to Week 1 of the RealOps Weekly Nano Project Series — your weekly opportunity to build real-world DevOps skills one project at a time.

This week’s challenge is straight out of a cloud engineer’s day-to-day toolkit:

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🧱 Project: Deploy the Flask-Based FinTrack App on AWS with Terraform

Track: DevOps
Level: Intermediate
Time to Build: ~90 minutes
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/realops/fintrack

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💡 What You'll Build

• An EC2 instance on AWS provisioned via Terraform

• SSH access using key pair and a secure security group

• Python Flask app (FinTrack) auto-deployed using user_data

• Application exposed on port 5001

• Bonus: Configure remote backend using S3 (locking is optional — let’s see who figures it out 😉)

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✅ Build Checklist

• ✅ Fork and review the FinTrack GitHub Repo

• ✅ Write Terraform to provision an EC2 instance in your AWS account

• ✅ Configure SSH access and open port 5001 in your security group

• ✅ Use user_data to install dependencies and start the Flask app

• ✅ Visit http://<public-ip>:5001 to verify the app is live

• ✅ (Bonus) Set up remote backend using S3 for your Terraform state

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🧠 How It Works

This project is open to everyone. You’ll get the full solution breakdown on Friday — via a YouTube walkthrough and a guide on realops.network.

Start early, build during the week, and polish it off by the weekend with the reference solution.

If you want to build foundational knowledge, you could get started with our Geek or Nerd Plan from https://schoolofdevops.com/ or buy just the Terraform Course on Udemy.

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🏆 Earn XP & Recognition

• ✅If you are a paid member, take the quiz on campus.schoolofdevops.com to earn Project Points.

• 💬 Post on LinkedIn — tag @Gourav Shah + @School of DevOps to inspire your network

• 🔁 All, Share the link to your LinkedIn post in the Discord #project-showcase channel

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New project drops every Monday.
One challenge. One weekend. One step closer to mastery.

Let’s build. Together.
— Gourav