June 6, 2025 / Nirav Shah
As AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor IDE become more integrated into our workflows, context-awareness is becoming critical. That’s where the Model Context Protocol (MCP) comes in, a lightweight, open-source protocol that standardizes how applications feed structured context into large language models (LLMs).
In this guide, we’ll walk through setting up an MCP server that connects to a MySQL database, served over HTTPS, and hosted on an AWS EC2 Ubuntu instance. Once deployed, this server can power intelligent apps with rich, contextual data from your internal systems.
Before we get into the weeds, a quick primer:
This guide focuses on spinning up the MCP server.
Before getting started, ensure you have:
After launching my EC2 instance, I connected via SSH:
ssh -i my-key.pem ec2-user@<your-ec2-ip>
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y sudo apt install python3 python3-pip git -y
Depending on the implementation (e.g., sample Python server), you might:
A. Use a public MCP server repo (example):
git clone https://github.com/anthropics/mcp-server-python.git cd mcp-server-python pip3 install -r requirements.txt
If no repo is available, you can create your own Python-based MCP server (see below).
Example: Minimal Python MCP Server
Save this as mcp_server.py:
from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer import json class MCPHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler): def do_POST(self): content_length = int(self.headers['Content-Length']) request_body = self.rfile.read(content_length) data = json.loads(request_body) print("Received MCP request:", data) # Sample response response = { "capabilities": ["read_files", "search_code"], "data": {"message": "Hello from MCP server"} } self.send_response(200) self.send_header('Content-type', 'application/json') self.end_headers() self.wfile.write(json.dumps(response).encode()) def run(server_class=HTTPServer, handler_class=MCPHandler, port=9000): server_address = ('', port) httpd = server_class(server_address, handler_class) print(f"Starting MCP server on port {port}...") httpd.serve_forever() if __name__ == "__main__": run()
Run it with:
python3 mcp_server.py
Your MCP server will listen on port 9000.
Login to MySQL:
sudo mysql
Run:
USE mcp_demo; CREATE TABLE users ( id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, name VARCHAR(255), email VARCHAR(255), role VARCHAR(100) ); INSERT INTO users (name, email, role) VALUES (Nirav Shah, nirav@example.com', 'Admin'), ('John Doe', 'john@example.com', 'Editor');
Assuming your script is located at:
/home/ubuntu/mcp_server.py
And you’re running it using python3.
Run this command to create the service file:
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/mcp.service
Paste the following content:
[Unit] Description=MCP Server After=network.target [Service] User=ubuntu WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /home/ubuntu/mcp_server.py Restart=always RestartSec=5 StandardOutput=file:/var/log/mcp-server.log StandardError=file:/var/log/mcp-server-error.log [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
sudo systemctl daemon-reexec sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl enable mcp
sudo systemctl start mcp
sudo systemctl status mcp
You should see output like:
You’ll access MCP securely at:
https://your-domain.com
sudo apt update sudo apt install nginx certbot python3-certbot-nginx -y
Make sure your domain (e.g., mcp.mydomain.com) points to your EC2 public IP using an A Record.
Create a new Nginx config file:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/mcp
Paste this config:
server { listen 80; server_name mcp.eternalsoft.com; location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9000; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; } }
Replace mcp.yourdomain.com with your actual domain.
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mcp /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ sudo nginx -t sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d mcp.eternalsoft.in
Now adding handler for the GET request:
To fix it, simply add a do_GET method to your MCPHandler class.
– Updated mcp_server.py with GET Support
Add the do_GET method inside your MCPHandler class:
from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer import json import mysql.connector class MCPHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler): def do_GET(self): """Handles GET requests to verify server is running.""" self.send_response(200) self.send_header("Content-Type", "text/plain") self.end_headers() self.wfile.write(b"MCP Server is running.") def do_POST(self): """Handles POST requests to query the MySQL database.""" content_length = int(self.headers['Content-Length']) post_data = self.rfile.read(content_length) try: data = json.loads(post_data.decode('utf-8')) except json.JSONDecodeError: self.send_response(400) self.end_headers() self.wfile.write(b'Invalid JSON') return table = data.get("table", "users") # Default to 'users' table try: conn = mysql.connector.connect( host="localhost", user="mcpuser", # Replace with your MySQL user password="StrongPasswordHere", # Replace with your MySQL password database="mcp_demo" ) cursor = conn.cursor(dictionary=True) query = f"SELECT * FROM {table} LIMIT 100" cursor.execute(query) results = cursor.fetchall() self.send_response(200) self.send_header("Content-Type", "application/json") self.end_headers() self.wfile.write(json.dumps(results, default=str).encode('utf-8')) except mysql.connector.Error as err: self.send_response(500) self.end_headers() self.wfile.write(f"MySQL error: {err}".encode('utf-8')) finally: if 'cursor' in locals(): cursor.close() if 'conn' in locals(): conn.close() def run(server_class=HTTPServer, handler_class=MCPHandler): server_address = ('0.0.0.0', 9000) httpd = server_class(server_address, handler_class) print("MCP server running on port 9000...") httpd.serve_forever() if __name__ == '__main__': run()
sudo systemctl restart mcp.service
Now visit: https://mcp.eternalsoft.in/
As a Director of Eternal Web Private Ltd an AWS consulting partner company, Nirav is responsible for its operations. AWS, cloud-computing and digital transformation are some of his favorite topics to talk about. His key focus is to help enterprises adopt technology, to solve their business problem with the right cloud solutions.
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