Comprehensive guide to setting up a data driven website using Amazon web services for EC2

Question

I have started making a website and was hosting on Hostgator but I am going to move it to Amazon web services before launch. There is a small problem that I previously just uploaded my files to the relevant location to Hostgator and it has all just worked. I have no experience in setting up from scratch a production worthy server setup and I need to know how. I did setup the basic lamp stack on the EC2 instance, however, I keep reading that when the EC2 instance does down it will take all the data with it and I can not have that happen. I have also read then when it dies it wont do anything and you have to start up the apache server again it is not automatic. I need it to be reliable and have the data independent so it will not crash, burn and die if the server goes. I have worked out that I will need S3 for static things such as my PDF's and images as well as using the RDS for my MYSQL database. My domain name is registered elsewhere so I believe I need to use route 53 as well.I want to use AWS for a few reasons reasons, firstly as it can scale which is really important but not sure if this is built in or it requires customization. I have been told that it is very secure the EC2 and the last reason is that I can debug my php code. The debug reason is that I have an error that only appears on the Hostgator server not my local lamp stack and I can't debug it there so I should be able to when I move to EC2.

I have done a lot of looking around online and I can't find anything comprehensive about what to setup. I have been reading (some of you may think otherwise). However, I am so overwhelmed by the amount of information there is as it is either far to complicated discussing some theory that I do not care about or to easy and does not discuss how to use anything other then a generic install of a LAMP stack on the EC2 with out using the other services.

I have seen http://bitnami.com/stack/lamp/cloud/amazon but do not think this is what I want as again the EC2 has a mysql database and I am not using the RDS

If someone can point me in the direction of a comprehensive guide to setting up a slid LAMP stack on AWS (mabey even a book has been written) that would be great as I found the amazon docs did not go into much detail and told me how to do things but not why I should do them and what purpose they had.

Thanks

Answer 1

I'll start with answering your q's first, and as you are a newbie I would suggest don't pressurize to learn all of AWS, you can keep migrating slowly and keep discovering the magic of cloud.

Q. when the EC2 instance does down it will take all the data with it and I can not have that happen. I have also read then when it dies it wont do anything and you have to start up the apache server again it is not automatic?

A. When an EC2 instance goes down (down could mean shutdown manual by you or Down means AWS network is down, or instances are having some other issues) only the data on "ephemeral data" or you can say data on RAM or sessions will get lost, whatever is on disk will remain on disk, And the instance will be available as soon as problem is resolved. Apache will start itself when an instance restarts, and remains up until you manually shut it down or some other issue.

Q. I will need S3 for static things such as my PDF's and images as well as using the RDS for my MYSQL database?

A. Its a good practice to keep static stuff on s3, but not a necessary thing to do, you can set up a ftp or manage your static content like you were used to, like keeping it on a folder of your website. You don't necessarily need RDS to have a mysql database, I have a process running on aws with around 40 mil transactions a day, and I do it on a normal mysql at an ec2 instance. however having RDS gets rid from the daily backup and index maintenance hustles.

Q. My domain name is registered elsewhere so I believe I need to use route 53 as well ?

A. Again not a necessary thing, you can just go to your domain manager and change the A-name or C-name records (with static public ip of ec2) and give a static public ip to your ec2 instance or Elastic load balancer and you'll be up and running in no time.

Q. I want to use AWS for a few reasons reasons, firstly as it can scale which is really important but not sure if this is built in or it requires customization.

A. It can scale really well, but depends how do you want it to scale, and its highly customizable. there are 2 kinds of scaling

1. vertical - you change your instance type from one type to another to get better disk / cpu or RAM or better network performance, but this will need you to stop your ec2 instance and change its type, that means there will be downtime of around 10 minutes while you do so.

2. horizontal - you can put your website (ec2 based) behind a load balancer (ELB - elastic load balancer) and add/remove more instances to/from it as and when you deemed suitable, or you can also have an auto scaling policy to help you do it automatically depending up on the load at your web server.

Security? - you can be very well assured its very well secure, and so much secure that I can bet my life on a secure ec2 instance, i can swear by linux thor that it works and it works like a charm.

Debugging? - I suggest you do debugging by classic means, make logs of errors and all, just treat ec2 like a normal machine and learn slowly the tricks of trade.

Now lets setup a basic solid LAMP stack for ourselves, I am assuming that you have a ready ubuntu instance, and you can ssh to it, in case you haven't been able to make one - see this.

basically. 1. create security groups - This is your firewall, makes sure which ports are open, and also makes sure which ec2 instances can talk amongst themselves. 2. Create an ec2 instance - make any ubuntu instance. And access your instance using ssh - ssh is basically secure terminal connection to your ec2 machine which is secured by a key file (pem file) and whoever has it can access your machine's data, so keep it very very secure, and you can't afford to lose it. 3. install LAMP using - Tasksel utility 4. setup a public ip for yourself ( costs a dollar per month) - you can use this ip to redirect your www.example.com traffic using domain manager of your DNS provider - godaddy or someone alike i suppose.

I think this will be it to make you start with AWS.

Just to be safe that you have a copy of your data make an AMI of your ec2 instance with all the data on it. AMI is the image from which you can make a similar or better instance in 10 minutes flat (or even lesser).

You wil pay for - instance type you chose, public IP, traffic if its beyond a level (usually very very cheap), and disk usage (8 gb is the default disk), and AMI volume.

Have fun with AWS.