I followed all the steps given on the tutorial page of AWS to create a subdomain(https://aws.amazon.com/es/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/create-subdomain-route-53/) and I'm pretty sure I got everything right because the tutorial is pretty straight forward. For context, before this I setup a LAMP stack on the server linked with my main domain (example.com).
My question is how to upload and manage files on my subdomain (subdomain.example.com). I thought that all I needed to do was to create a new EC2 instance and link it with the "hosted zone" of my subdomain, and after that I could just upload files and it would work (like I did on my original instance of the main domain). But after many tries clearly I'm doing something wrong, because the page of my subdomain (subdomain.example.com) keeps appearing blank with just the text "This site can't be reached."
You say that you installed a LAMP stack on the instance, so presumably there is a web server listening on port 80.
To test this, first login to the instance via SSH, then try curl localhost to test the web server. If that fails, then there is a problem with your web server.
If it works, the you should check the Security Group associated with the Amazon EC2 instance. It should be allowing incoming traffic on port 80 from 0.0.0.0/0.
Next, obtain the Public IP address of the instance. In a browser on your own computer, try accessing the IP address, eg http://1.2.3.4. That should work if the Security Group has been correctly configured.
By the way, you should be using an Elastic IP address (EIP) for the EC2 instance, which is a 'static' IP address that does not change. You can create an EIP in the EC2 management console, then associate it with the instance. This prevents the Public IP address from changing if the instance is stopped.
Next, try accessing the instance via the domain name. If this does not work, then test the name resolution by using ping with your domain name. The Ping itself won't work, but it should display the IP address that is linked to that domain name. Make sure that the IP address matches the Public IP address you used in the previous step.
If no IP address is provided, then you are missing an A-Record in the hosted zone. You should create the A-Record in the hosted zone and provide it with the Public IP address of the instance.
Related
I have a domain that I own. I will say is example.com. I added SSO.example.com as a Type A record on GoDaddy with a value of 37.89.245.2(example).
The IP address is a elastic IP on a Windows AWS server.
I can ping the IP address but I can't ping the URL. Do I need to do something with the IP address on the AWS Windows server to be able to ping the URL?
This is pretty much one of my first web based projects so any help would be appreciated!
Ping is not a reliable test method in AWS because most security groups do not permit inbound ICMP protocol, which is used by Ping. So, if you really want to test connectivity, do it on a port that you actually need your application to support, such as HTTP (80) or trying an SSH/RDP connection.
Another common use for a Ping is to resolve the domain name to an IP address, since it displays the result on-screen. This can be a good way to check that your Amazon Route 53 configuration is correct. (Same as a dnslookup.)
I was jumping the gun a bit and the new NameServers I was using had not replicated completely yet. After replication completed everything was able to be pinged successfully.
There is a topic in EC2 documentation Changing the System Hostname. Why does one need to change it? Just for fun? Just to have some nice shell prompt?
// change this
ubuntu#ip-123-12-1-231 ~ $
// to this?
ubuntu#my-beautiful-hostname ~ $
I'm learning how AWS DNS work, where my EC2's DNS lives that resolves a default Public DNS name to Public IP address of my instance
Public DNS: ec2-xx-xx-xxx-xx.ap-southeast-2.compute.amazonaws.com
Public IP: xx-xx-xxx-xx
And how can I host multiple apps with real domain names (example1.com, example2.com, so on) in one EC2 instance, how to modify and manage DNS. And actually I don't know what to read about it in docs, and read everything related to hostnames and DNS, and found this topic Changing the System Hostname and don't understand why would one want to change a hostname and if it can be valuable info for me.
UPD:
And now a real a practical question for those specimens who like closing questions quietly.
Where does a DNS live in EC2 instance? How is Public DNS mapped to Public IP? Where is that record in my EC2 Ubuntu instance? Is Route53 involved in it?
Where does a DNS live in EC2 instance?
It doesn't, DNS resolution use by the server is set in /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/nsswitch.conf. The hostname domain name for that server is set (Redhat derived systems) in /etc/sysconfig/network
How is Public DNS mapped to Public IP?
With a DNS record
Where is that record in my EC2 Ubuntu instance?
In the DNS for the domain that you have attached it to
Is Route53 involved in it?
Only if you are using Route53 for DNS
EC2 DNS location (source):
In EC2-Classic, the Amazon DNS server is located at 172.16.0.23.
In EC2-VPC, the Amazon DNS server is located at the base of your VPC network range plus two.
For more information, see Amazon DNS Server in the Amazon VPC User Guide
Well i had the same issue as you did and someone replied me this
It isn't a huge deal if you are just running a single server, mostly
to help you identify a server with local networking. Some things like
mail servers will use your hostname unless you specify otherwise.
This is an example of somewhere I saw that done
My original query
why do some people set hostname and some dont? whats the use?
hostnamectl set-hostname
I've (hopefully) successfully set up Cpanel on AWS with clustering following the instructions: https://blog.cpanel.com/part-1-how-i-built-a-cpanel-hosting-environment-on-amazon-aws/
I've been using CPanel/WHM on a dedicated server for a few years before I set up this new Cpanel installation on AWS. My issues comes from how new accounts are set up differently on a dedicated server vs the AWS way.
My first issue:
When I created a new account on my dedicated WHM, I was provided IP Addresses from the server farm that I assigned to newly created accounts. Once assigned, I can access the site with either the IP or the domain name. Now with this new AWS way, there's no info in the tutorials about how I obtain new IP Addresses. I tried adding a new local IP like 10.0.0.30 (because it says it's in NAT mode and use local IP) and assigning this as a dedicated IP to the newly created accounts but I don't understand how anybody can access the site through that IP since its a local IP. So how do I access the domain through custom IP and domain like I did before? I must be missing something fundamental.
My second issue:
On my dedicated WHM after I created a new account, I would typically go to DNS Functions -> Edit DNS Zone and edit the zone to customize my nameserver as so:
mynewdomain.com
ns1.mynewdomain.com
ns2.mynewdomain.com
anothersite.com
ns1.anothersite.com
ns2.anothersite.com
thirdsite.com
ns1.thirdsite.com
ns2.thirdsite.com
and then in my register I would add these custom nameservers into the register and point them to the dedicated IPs of each domain. But with the AWS way, the only way I was able to set this up was to use the new cluster nameservers as the nameserver for ALL accounts in this new WHM installation.
Like this:
mynewdomain.com
ns1.awsnameserver.com
ns2.awsnameserver.com
anothersite.com
ns1.awsnameserver.com
ns2.awsnameserver.com
thirdsite.com
ns1.awsnameserver.com
ns2.awsnameserver.com
Is this the correct / the only way I can set up accounts now through this set up?
Is there a way to have custom nameservers names like I did in dedicated WHM?
In my case, I have a DNS server outside of Amazon so I'm not sure it would answer your question but it might lead you somewhere.
First to figure out what your public IP is you can:
Go to the AWS console and look at the instance detail of your server.
Look for the "endpoint". This points to your public address so you can do a PING or NSLOOKUP to find out what your IP is.
However, AWS does not recommend you hard-coding the public address as it could change. So what I did instead was to create a CNAME in my DNS that points to that "endpoint".
I hope that helps.
Consider an server ec2-50-1-2-3.compute-1.amazonaws.com, which is not publicly available and which does not have an elastic IP address. I cannot assign it an Elastic IP address as I don't have any more addresses to assign (used all 5 already on publicly-available servers).
The publicly-available servers need to access a service on ec2-50-1-2-3.compute-1.amazonaws.com. However, if I restart that server then it may receive a different address and I'll have to update 20 websites across 5 webservers with the new address. Is there any way to refer to the ec2-50-1-2-3.compute-1.amazonaws.com server which will persist even if I restart that server, considering that I have no more Elastic IP addresses to assign to it?
Is there any way to refer to
Key word "refer to" -- indeed, there is... a DNS CNAME.
Whether your DNS is in Route 53 or elsewhere, a CNAME record refers a system asking for a particular host by name, to a different host -- also by name.
Let's say, for example, that the service this system provides is the generation of reports. In the "example.com" domain...
reports IN CNAME ec2-50-1-2-3.compute-1.amazonaws.com.
Any machine looking up "reports.example.com" from the DNS will be referred to the hostname ec2-50-1-2-3.compute-1.amazonaws.com which will of course resolve to the machine's IP address.
If the machine's IP address (and therefore, in AWS, its hostname) changes because the instance was terminated or failed or replaced, you only have to update the information in one place -- the DNS. The systems that need to access this system would be configured with "reports.example.com" instead of the other hostname, so they wouldn't have to be maintained individually.
If you are using Route 53, it's also possible to configure Route 53 to actually give out a different answer using failover routing with health checks and divert requests elsewhere when the instance isn't working properly.
Amazon will not give you any difficulty at all if you simply request more Elastic IPs. It's right here: Request to Increase Elastic IP Address Limit
It turns out the the best way to refer to other instances in AWS is to use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). In VPC each machine gets a static internal IP address, which persists for the lifetime of the instance. In fact in VPC one can configure full networking!
Scenario:
I have an EC2 server which houses the api currently setup to accept connections from several iPads. I do not wish for network sniffers to see the JSON requests that are being exchanged between the servers and the devices. The idea is to have a secure protocol in place so that communication will be secured.
I have been told purchasing a SSL certificate is the way forward. The Amazon server instance I have running has an address in this format:
ec2-xx-xxx-xx-xxx.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com/
this is where my web root is with all the appropriate web service files. My webservice urls look something similar to this:
ec2-xx-xxx-xx-xxx.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com/Agent/Create
so on so forth. There is no hosting plan whatsoever (in the case that information is necessary).
I have been recommended to buy an SSL Cert from http://www.Godaddy.com and have thought about getting the up to 5 multiple domains SSL certificate package.
Question: 1
What things do I need to be made aware of in order to make sure nothing fails?
I have recently read that I may need to associate an elastic IP address to my instance, otherwise the IP of my instance will change on reboots? And if that is the case, that means that the SSL certificate that was used for this: ec2-xx-xxx-xx-xxx.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com domain would no longer work since the ip address would have changed upon reboot and therefor me losing my secure domain?
Question: 2
If my thoughts in question 1 stands true, then my question would then be what is the most user friendly way or lets say, the way for beginners to create a dedicated url for my server instance (so that 1) the domain name doesnt randomly change upon server reboot (not sure when i would reboot anyway) and 2) does this mean I can have easier webservice urls that one can remember? such as.... www.pk.com/Agent/Create instead of the long ec2 ugly url?!
Any easy to follow tutorials would be very helpful. I have looked at a few articles that spoke about elastic ip address, SSL certificates, and other articles about renaming ec2 url, but I'm in a position where I dont actually know which one applies to me. lol
Hope someone can help. thanks
What you want to do is to get an elastic IP address. This lets you bind your instance to a particular IP address when you start it up. You can then register a hostname in DNS (Amazon don't help you with this part) and state that that hostname has the IP address that is the elastic IP address that you have registered.
The final piece is to get a server certificate (strictly, a keypair where the public part is the server certificate) that has the hostname in the CN field of its Distinguished Name, and to install that server keypair on the instance. (This is another part that Amazon don't help you with, and is in fact the same process as if you were hosting the hardware yourself.) Like that, the client
looks up the hostname and gets the elastic IP address,
connects and gets the server certificate, and
checks the server certificate and sees that the hostname it is for is the hostname that they expected. (There's a few other checks as well, such as whether the certificate was signed by a trusted certificate authority and whether the certificate is within its validity period.)
That allows the client to trust that who they have securely connected to is who they expected to securely connect to, which is a key part of establishing trust.
What you do not do is use the AWS machine names (internal or external) in the certificate you apply for. Those change and you really do not want to trust other people's VMs.
Donal's answer is the way to go. You need to explicitly register a domain and generate the SSL certificate containing the CN as that domain. Elastic IP addresses definitely are your friends in this issue. You will need them.
I added another answer in order to give another point of view: if you ever want to scale your backend solution, going that way will be more difficult. If you ever thought about adding more servers to host your web service, you should definitely set up an Elastic Load Balancer, add your instances to it, and point the domain you just registered to your Elastic Load Balancer. Then, you can purchase the SSL certificate and install it directly on your ELB, configuring SSL termination on the ELB. You will also configure the ELB so that connections arriving at port 443 will map to port 80 (or whatever port) on your servers. Don't worry, this is plain easy to set up.
Whenever you want to add more servers to your web service, it will just be a matter of setting up another EC2 instance (this process can - and should - be automated) and adding it to the ELB.
With this setup, you get rid of the need for Elastic IP addresses. All the connections go through the ELB.