Hosting CakePHP app with Amazon Web Services (EC2, etc.)?

Question

I don't think I fully understand Amazon Web Services yet, which is why I'm asking this question. I want to know if AWS would be a nice host for a CakePHP application that of course runs off PHP, and MySQL?

Would I have to change or add anything to my code if used a service like EC2? I also noticed that Amazon has it's own database system, does that mean no mysql.

Also as a side question, what do you guys think of the cost AWS?

Sorry if my question is a little scattered, or somewhat "noobish," but that is why I ask it. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

It seems this question has been answered 2 weeks ago. Yes, my current company hosted their CakePHP app (1.2.1, production & development) on AWS Asia Pacific (singapore) and EU West (Ireland). Both production and development servers are m1.xlarge (standard 4-core, 15GB, Fedora 8 64-bit). We tried LAMP starter before, but it's too small and cannot handle web traffic demand.

Basically you don't have change your code, unless you have reached the milestone having enough traffic that forces you to switch to CloudFront (CDN), RDS, and Load Balancer features (that's currently I am doing now.) But you have been warned to plan it as early as possible.

For the cost, the bill we received for June is around USD$550 ~ 600 (roughly m1.xlarge server running 24x7), and for July is USD$1100 ~ 1200 (roughly two m1.xlarge server running 24x7.) This would give you the idea how much it cost.

Answer 2

unless you need a dedicated instance just for your cakephp application you may be better off using a host that provides a full lamp hosting stack on a shared server.

with aws you would need to create an instance, configure that instance, eg install mysql if that is what you want, etc.

then you pay-per-hour while it is running, so for a full year it would be like 24*365*12c = $1050 approx. (you will need to check the exact rates for what you want)