[Enhancement]: Enterprise AWS Deployment

[dfetterman]

What features would you like to see added?

Quick Intro

I'm Dane Fetterman, and I manage a team of IT Architects specializing in Cloud Infrastructure at the University of Pennsylvania (Views are my own, Neither the University of Pennsylvania nor any of its affiliates are sponsoring this project). We started a small LibreChat POC last week and have developed a production-ready AWS deployment solution that we believe could be valuable to the broader LibreChat community.

What We've Built

We've created a complete AWS SAM (Serverless Application Model) deployment template that transforms LibreChat into an enterprise-grade, highly scalable cloud application. It's a full infrastructure-as-code solution designed for organizations that need LibreChat to scale reliably in production environments. We just don't like EC2.

Key Features of Our AWS Deployment:

Enterprise Architecture:

• ECS Fargate with auto-scaling (2-20 instances)
• Application Load Balancer with SSL termination
• Multi-AZ deployment across availability zones
• 80% Spot + 20% On-Demand instances for cost optimization
• Transit Gateway integration (assumes existing enterprise network infrastructure)

Managed Database Layer:

• DocumentDB (MongoDB-compatible) with automatic failover
• ElastiCache Redis with multi-AZ replication
• Automated backups and point-in-time recovery

Security & Compliance:

• VPC isolation with public/private subnets (assumes existing infrastructure)
• Secrets Manager integration for sensitive data
• Encryption at rest and in transit
• IAM roles with least-privilege access

Monitoring & Operations:

• CloudWatch logging and metrics
• Auto-scaling based on CPU utilization
• Health checks and automatic recovery

Configuration Management:

• EFS-based config system for real-time updates (managing librechat.yaml)
• S3 → EFS pipeline for configuration deployment
• Zero-downtime config updates

Why This Matters for LibreChat

Current State

Looking at the LibreChat repo, I see excellent Docker Compose setups that work great for development and small deployments. However, there's a gap when organizations need:

1. Enterprise scalability (handling hundreds/thousands of concurrent users)
2. High availability (99.9%+ uptime requirements)
3. Compliance requirements (data encryption, audit trails, network isolation)
4. Cost optimization at scale
5. Zero-maintenance managed services (We don't like EC2)

Our Solution Addresses:

Scalability Challenges:

• Automatic horizontal scaling based on demand
• Database read replicas and connection pooling
• Load balancing across multiple instances

Operational Excellence:

• Infrastructure as Code (no manual setup)
• Automated deployments and rollbacks
• Centralized logging and monitoring

Cost Management:

• Spot instance integration (up to 70% savings)
• Right-sized resources with auto-scaling
• Managed services eliminate operational overhead

Integration Proposal

We'd love to contribute this deployment option to the LibreChat project. Here's what we're thinking:

Option 1: Dedicated AWS Directory

/deploy/
  /aws-sam/
    template.yaml
    deploy.sh
    README.md
    /src/
      /config_manager/
      /mount_target_waiter/
    samconfig.toml
    librechat.yaml

Option 2: Documentation Integration

• Add comprehensive AWS deployment guide to docs
• Include our templates as downloadable resources
• Provide step-by-step deployment instructions

Benefits to the Community

For Individual Users:

• Professional-grade deployment option
• Handles scaling automatically
• Reduces operational complexity

For Organizations:

• Enterprise-ready from day one
• Compliance and security built-in
• Cost-effective at scale
• Integrates with existing AWS infrastructure

For the Project:

• Expands deployment options
• Attracts enterprise users
• Demonstrates LibreChat's production readiness

Technical Compatibility

Our deployment is designed to be:

• Version agnostic - works with current and future LibreChat releases
• Configuration compatible - uses standard LibreChat environment variables
• Extensible - easy to add additional AWS services (CloudFront, WAF, etc.)

Important Networking Considerations

Our current implementation assumes Transit Gateway infrastructure:

• Designed for organizations with existing enterprise AWS networking
• No NAT Gateways created:
  • Private subnets get internet access through Transit Gateway routing

For organizations without Transit Gateway:

• Would need modification to include NAT Gateway creation
• We can provide both deployment variants based on community needs

This architectural choice reflects our environment, but we recognize many organizations may need the NAT Gateway approach for simpler networking setups.

Questions for the Team

1. Interest Level: Is this something the LibreChat community would be interested in integrating?

2. Integration Approach: What would be the preferred way to integrate this? (separate repo, subdirectory, documentation, etc.)

3. Networking Variants: Should we provide both Transit Gateway and NAT Gateway deployment options to serve different organizational needs?

4. Maintenance: Would the team be open to having AWS-specific deployment code in the main repo?

5. Documentation: Where would AWS deployment docs fit best in the current documentation structure?

6. Community Feedback: Should we create a discussion thread to gauge community interest and networking preferences?

Next Steps

If there's interest, we'll:

1. Create a PR with the deployment templates and documentation
2. Provide demos of the deployment in action
3. Work with maintainers on integration approach
4. Support the community with deployment questions and issues

We believe this could significantly expand LibreChat's reach into enterprise environments while maintaining the project's open-source, self-hosted philosophy.

Looking forward to your thoughts and feedback!

More details

.

Which components are impacted by your request?

No response

Pictures

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[danny-avila]

Thanks for the detailed proposal, Dane!

PRs are definitely welcome for this. Enterprise deployment options with comprehensive documentation are always valuable contributions.

Quick thoughts on your questions:

Integration: The dedicated /deploy/aws-sam/ directory (Option 1) makes sense.

Networking variants: Both Transit Gateway and NAT Gateway options would be ideal, but you could start with what you have and iterate based on community feedback.

Documentation: We'll work with you on docs integration once the PR is up.

One question: How does this relate to the existing Helm chart deployment option? Are these complementary approaches for different use cases, or is there overlap in what they accomplish? Trying to understand if these would need to be maintained in parallel and what that might look like long-term.

Go ahead and open the PR when ready. Include your templates, deployment instructions, and architectural notes.

Looking forward to it!