Website Hosting and Migration with Amazon Web Services

Introduction (8 pages) In this section we cover the layout of the book and how it progresses from hosting static website content in AWS S3 all the way to hosting highly available infrastructure able to support a medium to large enterprise website. We'll explain AWS Free Tier and how we'll use this to setup our environments. We'll also explain the cost differences and things to consider when comparing standard ISP web hosting to AWS web hosting. We'll help the reader understand that progressing through this book and implementing each scenario will give them the confidence necessary to choose services that best fit their need and the ability to take more control over their website hosting. Part I: Hosting a Static Website in Amazon Web Services Chapter 1: Static Content Scenario (3 pages) We'll describe and deliver our first working scenario. You own a small business providing services to your local community. You understand the importance of having an online presence and have setup a domain with a basic website to describe your services. Your site consists of five pages, including a contact form where prospective and current customers can reach out and get information. The technology stack that you are using is HTML. * Describe the Sample File structure o Home Page o About Us o Services o Testimonials Chapter 2: Introduction to AWS Free Tier (6 pages) We'll walk our reader through the setup of an AWS Free Tier account and explain more about what services can be used in the first year of hosting a low / no charge. * Account sign up * Introduction to IAM / Protecting your Root Account * Access Overview - IAM Keys and Concepts Chapter 3: Your Content Storage Solution: Introduction to S3 (16 pages) In this chapter we'll walk the reader through the basics of the S3 service including bucket creation, folder setup, permissions, policies and privacy controls for objects. This will lay the framework for understanding how content can be made publically available in AWS and prepare them for understanding how to organize website content. * Bucket and Folder Creation * Uploading Files with the AWS Console * S3 Permissions, Policies and Content Delivery * 3rd Party Tools to assist with file management in S3 Chapter 4: Setting Up Your Website Content and Domain (16 pages) In this chapter we'll pick up where the last chapter finished and walk through the final steps of setting up a static website in AWS, which includes enabling website hosting on the S3 bucket, making the content of the buckets public, implementing a policy where objects can be retrieved for viewing and showing how we can setup a domain name in our second core AWS service, Route53, to front our new static content. * Enabling website hosting on an S3 bucket * Browsing web content using the S3 website endpoint * Domain Setup using Route53 o Why use Route53 (100% SLA!!) o Registering a new domain o Transferring an existing domain o Setting up a DNS zone file and using AWS Nameservers o DNS Aliasing in AWS (Zone Apex) o Setting up DNS to point to our static content Chapter 5: Next Level Static Content Hosting (14 pages) This chapter will be all about thinking "outside of the box" when it comes to how we can extend our static website to be quite functional and even leverage other AWS services to help us perform tasks. * Limitations of Static Content * Extending the Boundaries of Static Content o Templating Examples (Static version of a Blog site) o Embedding linked content (Google Maps example) o Extending our website Contact Form using Lambda (Serverless Processing) Chapter 6: Logging and Monitoring (16 pages) In this chapter we'll introduce our third core AWS service, Cloudwatch. We'll discuss how this can be used to track object metrics in S3, DNS requests in Route 53 and more as we leverage and use additional services across the AWS platform. * Introduction to CloudWatch * S3 Metrics and Monitoring * Route53 Metrics and Monitoring * Using external monitoring sources such as Google Analytics Part I: Summary (2 pages) At this point you have learned to setup an AWS Free Tier account, learned about AWS S3 and how it can be used to store and deliver content - including acting as a static website, learned how to setup a domain name and direct traffic to your static website hosted in S3, and use CloudWatch to monitor traffic to your site and object access. Pat yourself on the back - you deserve it! Next we'll take a look at a different website scenario - one that has both static and dynamic content. One that you also may be very familiar with - the Platform / CMS website. * Knowledge Check * Hosting Cost Considerations Part II: Hosting a Platform / CMS Website in Amazon Web Services Chapter 7: Platform / CMS Website Scenario (6 pages) In this chapter we'll set the stage for our second type of website and describe the architecture of such a site. Made up of static content, dynamic content and usually driven by a database - platforms that will fall into this category are Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and many others. We'll explain how we're going to leverage core services that we used in previous chapters and how we'll add additional core services such as EC2 and RDS to stand up servers that will host our website application engines and databases. Chapter 8: Architecture of a CMS Website (15 pages) This chapter will discuss the components that we need to think about when setting up or moving our website to AWS and what services will be utilized. We'll deliver sample files to be used and we'll also go into detail on how to export data from common platforms so that the reader would end up with something similar to our sample files. * Static Content Considerations * Dynamic Content / Application Engines * Database Content * Sample Files and how these were created o Export from Wordpress o Export from Joomla o Export from Drupal * Services we'll be using in AWS Chapter 9: Static and Dynamic files in S3 (12 pages) In this chapter we'll take a deeper dive into S3 and how it can be used to host static and dynamic files as a way to optimize the host server so that we're not burdening it with content and application serving. * Static hosting recap * Dynamic file hosting * Moving content off the web server Chapter 10: Database Services (16 pages) This chapter will discuss the choices we have when it comes to hosting our database for our CMS website. It will introduce the AWS RDS service and cover the different supported platforms (MySQL, Aurora, Postgres, MSSQL) and the benefits of each type. Although some people may find that using RDS for database hosting is overkill for a website like this, we'll build a foundation that shows why this highly available, scalable solution is a good starting point to optimize web server performance rather than weighing down a single host with many tasks. * Introduction to RDS * Hosting the Database on the Web Server vs. RDS * Management Considerations for Database Services o Backups o High Availability o Logging o Access Chapter 11: Building the Infrastructure (20 pages) In this chapter, we'll introduce the concept of Infrastructure As Code using AWS CloudFormation to stand up the resources needed for our CMS website. This will be an introduction to CloudFormation, JSON, and the various other resources needed to properly setup such as Networking, Security Groups and IAM Roles. * Infrastructure As Code * Introduction to CloudFormation * Beginner JSON Formatting o Additional Resources * CloudFormation Stack Fundamentals * Resources and Parameters * Permissions and Creation of the Stack Chapter 12: Updating the Stack (10 pages) In this chapter we'll show how easy it is to remove and update our entire infrastructure when it is deployed as code. This will introduce a different way to think about backup strategies as well as how AWS enables the reader to rapidly deploy infrastructure and utilize services. We'll start to talk about enterprise level concepts such as Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective - terms that help the reader to be prepared for the absolute worst situation - having to stand a website back up from scratch. In AWS, this is made easy with the concepts and services that we'll cover in this chapter. * Preparing for the worst * Updating the Stack * Deleting and Re-Deploying the Stack * Disaster Recovery Part II: Summary (2 pages) At this point the reader has learned quite a bit about the core AWS services and how to use them to host web content, build infrastructure in a way that is easily deployable, use database services and the basics of networking and security. Their confidence level will be building and they will be wanting to explore additional services to see how those can be leveraged. This is exactly what Part III will teach them. * Knowledge Check * Hosting Cost Considerations Part III: Hosting an Enterprise Website in Amazon Web Services Chapter 13: Building Upon Your Foundation (4 pages) The chapters in the two previous parts of the book have laid a solid foundation and introductory knowledge so that readers will be ready to learn more about how to extend basic scenarios of web hosting within AWS to more advanced topics. This chapter will discuss the technologies and services that we'll spend the rest of the book exploring and how they can be used in the context of hosting an enterprise website. Chapter 14: Enterprise Website Scenario (3 pages) The Scenario: You've been operating your ecommerce site since you first learned what benefit and global reach the Internet opened up to you. You rely on your site everyday to advertise, sell products and services and lately you've been thinking about additional protection against disruptions to the site. Your site needs to be available not only for your potential customers, but you have staff that login to publish content and do work and for this reason you need the site to be highly available and to scale up as your business grows. Again in this chapter we'll give some files that can be used to stand up a fully redundant, highly available infrastructure using CloudFormation. This infrastructure will be much more robust and we'll start to introduce additional services available within the core AWS services that we've already learned much about. Chapter 15: EC2 At Scale - The Ability To Grow Or Shrink Your Resources (20 pages) This chapter will discuss AWS EC2 resources such as Auto-Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing to give the reader knowledge in how to build and maintain a website that can scale up when busy and scale down during low periods. We'll talk about the different methods for scaling - scheduled and triggered based on CloudWatch metrics. We'll also explain how this concept extends to other AWS services as well. In addition to this we'll also talk about AWS ElasticSearch and how to send logs to this service which can then be setup to visualize your website / server infrastructure performance using Kibana. This data can be used to troubleshoot issues or perform data analytics against such as alerting you to popular areas of your website. * Introduction to Auto-Scaling * Planning for peak period and low periods * Load Balancing across multiple web servers <* Auto healing using CloudWatch and Auto-Scaling * Logging Chapter 16: Content Lifecycles, Management and Backup (14 pages) In this chapter we'll focus on the multiple options available for managing content in S3, including the concept of content lifecycles and how the reader can set policies to move less frequently accessed content to lower cost storage solutions. We'll talk about the retrieval process and give an introduction to AWS S3 RRS, Glacier and Snowball whch is used for importing large amounts of data into AWS. * Content Management Lifecycle Overview * S3 RRS : A use case for infrequently accessed content * AWS Glacier and long term storage * Getting large amounts of data into AWS Chapter 17: Extending Your Website with Workflow Services (15 pages) In this chapter we'll talk about how the reader can benefit from workflow services such as AWS SNS, SQS, Elastic Beanstalk, Elastic Transcoder, Data Pipeline and Kinesis. All of these services can help with processing and request management as well as be used to drive data analytics - giving a much better view into how your website is performing. * Alert Notifications using SNS and CloudWatch * Workflow Processing for tasks, orders and more using SQS * Code Deployment with Elastic Beanstalk * Additional services offered by AWS * Getting a handle on data post processing and analytics Chapter 18: Securing Your Website (10 pages) In this chapter we'll talk in more depth about how to manage a larger base of users that may need access to your AWS resources using IAM permissions, roles and user management. We'll introduce the reader to Certificate Manager for procuring (free) SSL Certificates that can be used to secure your web server content delivery. We'll also introduce security services Trusted Advisor and Inspector to show how these can be used to help you secure your infrastructure and code respectively. Lastly, we'll talk about the benefit of CloudTrail - a way to track all changes within your AWS environment. * Intermediate Account Management Practices for Small / Medium Businesses * Securing your website with SSL Certificates * Security Services and Auditing Tools o Trusted Advisor o Inspector o CloudTrail Chapter 19: Enterprise Applications (12 pages) In this chapter we'll introduce AWS Enterprise Services WorkMail and WorkDocs, which can be used as add-ons to your website to assist with day-to-day business tasks and organization. We'll introduce Directory Services which can be used to setup Active Directory in AWS or extend an on-site Active Directory to the cloud. * Enterprise Integration o Directory Services o Mail Services o Document Management Part III: Summary (5 pages) A chance to summarize how far we've come and explain that there is still so many resources that can be explored and leveraged. We'll drive home the fact that we've shown how AWS can be used to host three very unique website scenarios from the most basic to complex. We'll talk about the rate at which large corporations are adopting and moving to this infrastructure model and I can highlight experiences that I've had first hand at extending a corporate on-premise data center into the cloud and launching a new product platform that is completely cloud native. * Knowledge Check * Hosting Cost Considerations Additional Resources (3 pages) Places where the learning can continue and more further in-depth practice can be gained. These can be a variety of sources that I've used to gain additional knowledge and used as I'm working toward multiple AWS certifications. * AWS Resources * Pluralsight * Global Knowledge * CloudAcademy