40

Amazon Lightsail Service:

AWS Lightsail is an entry-level AWS service, offering app developers access to
a configurable virtual private server (VPS) and a suite of easy to use tools. The
best place to start is with VPS. Although they’re just one component of Amazon
Lightsail, it’s important to understand what a VPS is and why you might want
to use one before we go any further. AWS Lightsail is mostly used by first-time
cloud users and developers looking to test out app prototypes, or by startups and
small scale production studios for whom the limitations of the Lightsail
environment are sufficient.
Virtual Private Server (VPS)

A virtual private server (VPS) is a software representation of a physical server

you can use to allocate compute resources for a job while remaining abstracted
from the physical server layer. Each virtual server can work independently of a
physical server. A user should set up a VPS before utilizing Lightsail Amazon
because Lightsail isn’t directly visible through the AWS management console
without a VPS. There are 2 types of VPS:

1. Managed VPS
2. Unmanaged VPS

Managed VPS

Managed VPS allows clients to worry more about the what than the how of
serving resources to front-end applications and to users. AWS can manage the
underlying infrastructure necessary for a given job or set of jobs you want to
execute on your VPS.

Unmanaged VPS

Unmanaged VPS provides a simple hosting experience where the client is

responsible for installing, configuring, and upgrading software.

ADITYA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE DCME

 41

Features of Amazon lightsail

 Lightsail is virtual private server.

 Application programming interface (API): Amazon provides a
powerful API with which to develop your applications or to integrate
with external applications.
 Access to other AWS services. It’s easy to extend the capabilities
of Lightsail to AWS services with like managed databases, CDNs, and
more.
 Secure shell (SSH) access. Lightsail provides a cloud-based console
option to connect over SSH.
 Secure networking. Configuring the details of the network through the
AWS is easy and secure. It’s possible to access through IP address,
DNS, firewall and more.
 Simplified load balancing.
 Snapshots for protecting your information.

Benefits of Amazon Lightsail

The benefits of Amazon Lightsail are listed below:

 Simplified UI: It runs through pre-installed software. There will be

less confusion for users who are using it for the first time.
 Familiarity: Developers and companies who use Amazon Lightsail
for web hosting and application development will find it more alluring.
 Affordability: The subscription is free for the first month and is
$3.5/month for the cheapest tier.
 Ecosystem: Benefits from the massive AWS ecosystem

ADITYA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE DCME

 42

 Reliability: The need for replacement is rare as the services run

through Amazon infrastructure and data centers.

Major difference between Amazon lightsail and EC2

Amazon Lightsail Amazon EC2

1. Used for simple web apps 1. Used for enterprise web apps

2. Used for websites including

2. Used for Big data, HPC, and analytics
WordPress, custom sites, and e-
workloads
commerce

3. Works on multiple VMs, migrations

3. Single configurable VPS from an on-premises environment,
including BYOL

4. Used for prototyping and test 4. Used for enterprise app development
environments and deployments

ADITYA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE DCME

 43

Creating a Wordpress site using AWS lightsail

Lightsail is amazon’s all-in-one monthly button bill really geared towards web
hosting but we could use it for other things as well. The best thing of AWS
lightsail is the pricing in all inclusive and really competitive. So we can actually
get started with a preety decent server for three dollars per month. It includes
everything you need to run a website, it even includes one TB per month
transferred in and out of the server which is insane their is no way with a regular
website you are hitting that every month. Unless you actively using it as an
uploader download server. But for just hosting a regular website there is no
chance you are going to hit that, with this processor atleast and its easily
scalable. If you start running in to needing more Ram you can just upgrade to
the next iteration and very quickly and easily scale up your website. Then also
because its built in to AWS you can also easily integrate in to cloud front
distribution, which is a cdn and cdn speeds up your website in different ways.

Firstly it allows people to access things closer to them. So transfer across an

Ethernet cable is not perfect it goes about the speed of light. So, if you are all
the way around the world that can actually takes a really long time. Especially
given the fact there are only a few underseat cables that has to sneck through.
So that can actually significantly increase the amount of time it take just to get a
single request and it just slowly stacks everything up and make serving content
around the world really slow and so the way cdn actually works is it stands in
front of your website and there are cdns all around the world. Basically when
somebody hits your website from around the world they will instead go to their
nearest cdn and that cdn will then give the any of the files on your website then
its got any of the files it does not have it will request from your website and
have them in its cache for the future users and anything like the database
operations will still go to your website because that was everything syncs up
this way they get much faster response times and your actual webserver gets a
lot less traffic to it. This means if your website all of a sudden gets on the front
page of reddit you are getting a lot less requests directly to your website.

Instead amazon’s delivery system will take care of all that and so those are the
two different ways it speeds it up. It not only gives people quicker access to it
by being closer but also removes a bunch of unnecessary requests from your
main web server means everything is distributed and faster.

ADITYA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE DCME

 44

 Log in to the Amazon Lightsail dashboard.

 Click on “Create instance”.

ADITYA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE DCME

 45

 Choose the “AWS Region” and “Availability Zone” for your instance.

 In the “Pick your instance image” section, select the WordPress image.

ADITYA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE DCME

 46

 Choose an instance plan.

 Enter a name for your instance. For example WordPress-Nikhil-1

 Amazon Lightsail will begin spinning up the new server. This process
usually takes a few minutes, and the status of the deployment process will be
displayed throughout.

ADITYA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE DCME

 47

 On the “Connect” tab, choose “Connect using SSH” on the server detail
page for your WordPress instance.

 This initiates a secure SSH connection to the server console in a new

browser window. You should see something like this:

ADITYA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE DCME

 48

 In the browser window, go to http://public Ip/wp-admin

In the address, replace PublicIpAddress with the public IP address of your
WordPress instance.

 Log in with the administrator credentials from the previous step.

ADITYA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE DCME

 49

 You are now signed in to the administration dashboard of your WordPress

website where you can perform administrative actions.

Now we can create our own website using word press.

ADITYA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE DCME