Setting Up GitHub Actions CI/CD for VPS Deployment

Introduction

Automate your build and deployment pipeline to a VPS using GitHub Actions. This guide covers building, testing, and deploying via SSH and Docker.

Prerequisites

• GitHub repository
• VPS with SSH access
• SSH key stored as GitHub secret VPS_SSH_KEY

Step 1: Configure Secrets

In GitHub repo settings, add:

• VPS_HOST: server IP
• VPS_USER: SSH username
• VPS_SSH_KEY: private key
• DOCKER_IMAGE: registry image name

Step 2: Create Workflow

.github/workflows/ci-cd.yml:

name: CI/CD
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: "18"

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci

      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test

      - name: Build Docker image
        run: |
          docker build -t ${{ secrets.DOCKER_IMAGE }}:${{ github.sha }} .
          echo ${{ secrets.DOCKER_TOKEN }} | docker login --username ${{ secrets.DOCKER_USERNAME }} --password-stdin
          docker push ${{ secrets.DOCKER_IMAGE }}:${{ github.sha }}

  deploy:
    needs: build
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Setup SSH
        uses: webfactory/ssh-agent@v0.5.4
        with:
          ssh-private-key: ${{ secrets.VPS_SSH_KEY }}

      - name: Deploy to VPS
        run: |
          ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no ${{ secrets.VPS_USER }}@${{ secrets.VPS_HOST }} \
            "docker pull ${{ secrets.DOCKER_IMAGE }}:${{ github.sha }} && \
             docker stop myapp || true && \
             docker rm myapp || true && \
             docker run -d --name myapp -p 80:3000 ${{ secrets.DOCKER_IMAGE }}:${{ github.sha }}"

Summary

This workflow builds and tests your app, pushes a Docker image, and deploys it to your VPS via SSH, automating end-to-end CI/CD.