Can anyone point me in the direction of some demo code/app that I can use for a demo.
The app should have the ability to connect to a relational database and ideally be able to demonstrate the persistence of having the DB.
I.e. You can save values into the DB from the web app
I'm planning to deploy this onto AWS ECS for testing, alongside RDS.
Thanks in advance
Here is an AWS tutorial that shows how to write a Java Spring Boot Web app that is deployed to Elastic Beanstalk ( Elastic Beanstalk is an AWS service that leverages Amazon EC2 and S3 and deploys, manages and scales your web applications for you. It uses managed containers that support Node. js, Java, Ruby, Docker and more) and uses RDS to store and update data.
Creating the Amazon Relational Database Service item tracker
So most of what you are looking for is there - including how to setup the RDS instance and interact with it from a web app deployed to the cloud. If you follow this step by step (there is a lot of Java code) -- you will get this Sample Web App running on the cloud and it will teach you how to interact with RDS from a web app.
Also - this covers invoking additional services such as Simple Email Service from the web app.
What are the exact differences between EC2, Beanstalk and LightSail in AWS?
What are good real time scenarios in which I should use these services?
They are all based on EC2, the compute service from AWS allowing you to create EC2 instances (virtual machines in the cloud).
Lightsail is packaged in a similar way than Virtual Private Server, making it easy for anyone to start with their own server. It has a simplified management console and many options are tuned with default values that maximize availability and security.
Elastic Beanstalk is a service for application developers that provisions an EC2 instance and a load balancer automatically. It creates the EC2 instance, it installs an execution environment on these machines and will deploy your application for you (Elastic Beanstalk support Java, Node, Python, Docker and many others)
Behind the scenes, Elastic Beanstalk creates regular EC2 instances that you will see in your AWS Console.
And EC2 is the bare service that allows the other to be possible. If you choose to create an EC2 instance, you will have to choose your operating system, manage your ssh key, install your application runtime and configure security settings by yourself. You have full control of that virtual machine.
In simple terms:
EC2 - virtual host or an image. which you can use it to install apps and have a machine to do whatever you like.
Lightsail - is similar but more user friendly management option and good for small applications.
Beanstalk - an orchestration tool, which does all the work to create an EC2, install application, software and give you freedom from manual tasks in creating an environment.
More details at - https://stackshare.io/stackups/amazon-ec2-vs-amazon-lightsail-vs-aws-elastic-beanstalk
I don't know if my scenario is typical in any way, but here are the differences that were critical for me. I'm happier EC2 than EB:
EC2:
just a remote linux machine with shell (command line) access
tracable application-level errors, easy to see what is wrong with your application
you can use AWS web console panel or AWS command line tool to manage
you will need repeated steps if you want to reproduce same environment
some effort to get proper shell access (eg fix security rule to your IP only)
no load balancer provided by default
Elastic Beanstalk
a service that creates a EC2 instance with a programming language of your choice (eg Python, PHP, etc)
runs one application on that machine (for python - application.py)
upload applications as .zip file, extra effort needed to use your git source
need to get used to environment vs applications mental model
application level errors hidden deep in the server logs, logs downloaded in separate menu
can be managed by web console, but also needs another CLI tool in addition to AWS CLI (you end up installing two CLI tools)
provides load balancer and other server-level services, takes away the manual setup part
great for scaling stable appications, not so much for trial-and-see experimentaion
probably more expensive than just an EC2 instance
Amazon EC2 is a virtual host, in other words, it is a server where you can SSH configure your application, install dependencies and so on, like in your local machine. EC2 has a dozen of AMI (Amazon Machine Image: it is some kind of operating system of your EC2 server, for instance, you can have EC2 running on Linux based OS or in windows OS). To summarize, it is a great idea if you need a machine in your hands.
Amazon Lightsail is a simple tool that you can deploy and manage application with small management of servers. You can find it very practical if your application is small, For instance, it will perfectly fit your application if you use Wordpress or other CMS.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an orchestration tool. You can manage your application within that service, it is more elevated then AWS Light Sail.
If you still do not understand the differences, you can take a look at each service overview.
There is also an answer in Quora
I have spent only 10 mins on these technologies but here is my first take.
EC2 - a baremetal service. It gives you a server with an OS. That is it. There is nothing else installed on it. So if you need a webserver (nginx) or python, you'll need to do it yourself.
Beanstalk - helps you deploy your applications. Say you have a python/flask application which you want to run on a server. Traditionally you'll have to build the app, move the deployable package to another machine where a web server should be installed, then move the package into some directory in the web server. Beanstalk does all this for you automatically.
LightSail - I haven't tried it but it seem to be an even simpler option to create a server with pre-installed os/software.
In summary, these seem to make application deployment more easier by pre-configuring the server/EC2s with the required software packages and security policies (eg. port nos. etc.).
I am not an expert so I could be wrong.
I have a web application that uses Selenium in backend to run few scripts when invoked by user. I want to deploy this web app on AWS.
Here are my findings so far:
I can have a windows EC2 instance created and then I can install tomcat, firefox and all the necessary stuff. Then using putty or any other client, I can deploy my war and start tomcat.
I can directly make use of Elastic Beanstalk and deploy my war file there itself but then, there is no windows EC2 available for beanstalk and I don't know how to install firefox there and make my application work.
What is the best way to achieve this and what steps should I follow. I want to install a specific firefox version to be able to make it run with my selenium scripts.
There are two separate things here:
Deployment of web application on AWS cloud
Run the selenium tests against your web application
According to me, you should first think of deploying a web application to AWS cloud. There are many ways by which you can get it deployed to AWS cloud with below services:
Spin a new AWS EC2 instance, install all required software and deploy the web application.
Use AWS elastic beanstalk service with either with tomcat or docker.
Use AWS ECS if you prefer docker
According to me, second option will be quick for you with tomcat environment option. If you select tomcat environment, then your platform will be Tomcat 8 Java 8 on 64bit Amazon Linux.
Now, here comes the second part. You can have below options for your browser environments.
Spin a new separate AWS EC2 instances with correct AMI and install your specific browsers on these instances.
If you prefer SaaS, then you can take a look at browserstack or SauceLabs for remote environment.
If you have CI(jenkins/travis/Circle CI), then make use of that infrastructure to luanch your tests with either option from the above.
I am trying to set up an Amazon Server to host a dynamic website I'm currently creating. I have the domain bought on GoDaddy.com, and I believe that what I've done so far has linked the domain to my Amazon account.
I followed this tutorial : http://www.mycowsworld.com/blog/2013/07/29/setting-up-a-godaddy-domain-name-with-amazon-web-services/
In short, this walked me through setting up and Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Amazon Route 53. I then configured the DNS Servers, and my website now launches properly on the domain.
I'm not sure on the next step from here, but I would like to set up:
-A database server
-Anything else that might be necessary to run a dynamic website.
I am very new to hosting websites, and semi-new to web development in general, so the more in depth the better.
Thanks a lot
You have two options on AWS. Run an EC2 server and setup your application or continue to use the AWS managed services like S3.
Flask apps can be hosted on Elastic Beanstalk and
your database can be hosted on RDS (Relational Database Service). Then the two can be integrated.
Otherwise, spin up your own t2.micro instance in EC2. Log in via ssh and set up the database server and application like you have locally. This server could also host the (currently S3 hosted) static files too.
I have no idea what your requirements are, personally I would start with setting up the EC2 instance and go from there as integrating AWS services is without knowing what you need is probably not the easiest first step.
Heroku might be another option. They host their services on AWS and give you an end to end solution for deploying and running your python code without getting your hands dirty setting up servers.
I am new to Amazon Web Services. I was reading about Amazon ElastiCache and wanted to clarify if it is like (may be more than that) using RAM filesystem in Linux where we use a portion of system memory as a file system. As I referred AWS documentation it says ElastiCache is a web service. Is it like an EC2 instance with few memory modules attached? I really want to understand how it exactly works.
Our company has decided to migrate our physical servers into AWS cloud. We use Apache web server and MySQL Database running in Linux. We provide a SaaS platform for e-mail marketing and event scheduling for our customers. There is usually a high web traffic to our website during 9am-5pm on weekdays. I would like to understand if we want to use ElastiCache service, how it will be configured in AWS.? We have planned two EC2 instances for our web server and an RDS instance for the database.
Thanks.
Elastic cache is simply managed Redis or Memcached. Depending which one you choose, you would use the client for the cache with your application.
How you would implement it depends on what kind of caching you are trying to accomplish.