Deploying on EC2

Question

This question is for anyone who has actually used Amazon EC2. I'm looking into what it would take to deploy a server there.

It looks like I can start in VirtualBox, setup my server and then export the image using the provided ec2-tools.

What gets tricky is if I actually want to make configuration changes to my running server, they will not be persistent.

I have some PHP code that I need to be able to deploy (and redeploy) to the system, so I was thinking that EBS would be a good choice there.

I have a massive amount of data that I need stored, but it just so happens that latency is not an issue, so I was thinking something like s3fs might work.

So my question is... What would you do? What does your configuration look like? What have been particular challenges that perhaps you didn't see coming?

Answer 1

We have deployed a large-scale commercial app in the AWS environment.

There are three basic approaches to keeping your changes under control once the server is running, all of which we use in different situations:

1. Keep the changes in source control. Have a script that is part of your original image that can pull down the latest and greatest. You can pull down PHP code, Apache settings, whatever you need. If you need to restart your instance from your AMI (Amazon Machine Image), just run your script to get the latest code and configuration, and you're good to go.
2. Use EBS (Elastic Block Storage). EBS is like a big external hard drive that you can attach to your instance. Even if your instance goes away, EBS survives. If you later need two (or more) identical instances, you can give each one of them access to what you save in EBS. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/3630707/141172
3. Burn a new AMI after each change. There's a tool to create a new AMI from a running instance. If EBS is like having an external hard drive, creating a new AMI is like having a DVD-R. You can save the current state of your machine to it. Next time you have to start a new instance, base it on that new AMI. Good to go.

Answer 2

I recommend storing your PHP code in a repository such as SVN, and writing a script that checks the latest code out of the repository and redeploys it when you want to upgrade. You could also have this script run on instance startup so that you get the latest code whenever you spin up a new instance; saves on having to create a new AMI every time.

The main challenge that I didn't see coming with EC2 is instance startup time - especially with Windows. Linux instances take 5 to 10 minutes to launch, but I've seen Windows instances take up to 40 minutes; this can be an issue if you want to do dynamic load balancing and start up new instances when your load increases.

Answer 3

I'd suggest the best bet is to simply 'try it'. The charges to run a small instance are not high and data transfer rates are very low - I have moved quite a few GB and my data fees are still less than a dollar(!) in my first month. You will likely end up paying mostly for system time rather than data I suspect.

I haven't deployed yet but have run up an instance, migrated it from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10, tried different port security settings, seen what sort of access attempts unknown people have tried (mostly looking for phpadmin), run some testing against it and generally experimented with the config and restart of the components I'm deploying. It has been a good prelude to my end deployment. I won't be starting with a big DB so will be initially sticking with the standard EC2 instance space.

The only negativity I have heard it that some spammers have made some of the IP ranges subject to spam-blocking - but have not yet confirmed that.

Answer 4

Your virtual box approach I will suggest you take after you are more familiar with the EC2 infrastructure. I suggest that you go to EC2, open an account and follow Amazon's EC2 getting-started guide. This guide will give you enough overview on all things (EBS, IP, CONNECTIONS, and otherS) to get you started. We are currently using EC2 for production and the way we started was like I am explaining here.

I hope you become a Cloud Expert Soon.