An open source focused (Drupal and WordPress) breakdown for web designers and web developers of resources which are available for free on the Amazon Web Services Free tier.

3. A standardized boilerplate stack, and interface
designed for the stack, which substantially
simplifies website building and delivery on AWS

5. AWS in a Nutshell
• An Elastic (Infrastructure as Code) Cloud
• Virtually any kind of computing on
virtually unlimited resources. When
Skynet goes online, it will run on AWS.
• Per usage pricing

6. Myths
AWS is Expensive
AWS is for “enterprise”
AWS is too complex

7. Reality
Value is significantly higher.
Small businesses now have access to
enterprise features
Kind of true, but we hope to
change that
Myths
AWS is Expensive
AWS is for “enterprise”
AWS is too complex

10. Route 53
Features
• Low TTL defaults
• Supports complex routing
• Support alias records
What is it?
DNS servers. Replaces the “ns1.yourdomain.com” and
ns2..” servers you receive from most hosts
Compared to the competition:
Provides 4 geographically diverse DNS server on the
edge network.

11. EC2
Features:
• Can be saved and restored as “AMI”
• Entire marketplace of AMIs
What is it?
Your web server
Compared to the competition:
• Baseline performance standards
• CPU credits creates measureable performance
expectations
• CPU class transparency
• Can be any kind of computer you want it to be
Free Tier: t2.micro
1CPU
1GB Ram

12. EBS
What is it?
Your hard drives(s)
Compared to the competition:
• Performance transparency per drive
size
• Purchasable, guaranteed
performance options
• Create as much or as little as you
need.
• Each provision stored redundantly in
multiple locations.
• Snapshots have account permissions
for easy, secure transfers
Free tier:
30GB Storage per service

13. RDS
Features:
• Automated back-ups and trimming for 100% of your allocated
storage
• Automatic, incremental version updates in a window you specify.
What is it?
Managed MySQL server
Compared to the competition
• Simple provisioning
• Multi-AZ makes multi-zone, automatic
failover as simple as a checkbox
• Simple read-replica creation
Free tier: t2.micro
1CPU
1GB Ram

14. Elasticache
Features:
• Significantly enhances performance of Drupal,
WordPress and any other cache dependent
application.
• Reduces traffic to your database
What is it?
Managed Memcached server.
Compared to the competition:
• Managed, dedicated cache servers do not exist at AWS price points.
• Rebuilds itself upon failure
• Provides discoverability endpoint for dynamic scaling
Free tier: t2.micro
1CPU
1GB Ram

15. S3
Features:
• No predetermined size or traffic
limitations.
• Only pay for what you use ($0.03
per GB)
• Can be a web server for static files
• Easily connects to CloudFront CDN
for cheap, high performance
delivery of static assets.
What is it?
A hard drive with a network interface attached (Think world’s largest NAS).
Compared to the competition
S3 is a unique service
Free Tier:
5GB storage
20,000 Get requests
2,000 put requests

16. SES
Features:
• Managed, whitelisted servers help land your emails in an
inbox
• Sets DKIM entries for you (if you’re using Route 53)
• Scales to meet needs (with some AWS permissions)
What is it?
Email sending service
Compared to the competition:
Web hosts do not offer a similar service.
Free Tier:
62,000 Emails per month
(Never Expires)

17. VPC
Features:
• Keeps other customers servers from talking to your servers
• Provides numerous enhancements for allowing your servers
to talk to each other.
What is it?
Defines separation of servers
Compared to the competition:
Similar functionality is only offered with expensive
hardware
Free tier:
Usage is always free

18. CodeDeploy
What is it?
Service for managing… code deployments.
Compared to the competition:
Service is unique to AWS. Deployment services can be manually created for any server,
But setup is elaborate and manual; lacks CodeDeploy dashboard.
Features:
• Simple rollbacks through the
CodeDeploy dashboard
• Synchronization with GitHub or S3
• Keeps developers out of the
production website Free Tier:
Always free

19. CloudWatch
What is it?
Log ingestion, for easy access to important logs, and monitoring for all of your
deployed resources
Compared to the competition:
• Log ingestion is fairly unique to AWS
• Monitoring offers more granularity in access rights and alert setup.
Features:
• Logs are searchable, and
continue to exist after an
instance has been terminated
• Alerts can be set against
matching regex patterns
discovered in the logs
Free Tier:
5GB of log ingestion
5GB of archived log storage

20. CloudWatch Alerts
Compared to the competition:
• Actions can be taken or defined according to the alert, such as
AutoScaling or recovery
• Can be custom defined by the admin. Not dependent on existing metrics
What is it?
Areas of system trouble as defined by the admin
Features:
• Integrates with SNS, for granular control
of parties notified and notification
methods Free tier:
First 10 alarms
always free

21. SNS: Simple Notification Service
What is it?
A service for defining who, or what, gets notified per any action which takes place in AWS
Compared to the competition:
• Can send notifications via email, text message or HTTP request
• Exceptionally customizable. Not limited to a strict set of
notifications as defined by your hosting company.
Features:
• Each user notified can subscribe or
unsubscribe to each topic.
Free tier:
100 Text messages
1,000 emails
100,000 HTTP messages
1million mobile pushes

22. ~$0.10 per GB delivered
When the free tier ends

23. When the free tier ends

24. When the free tier ends

30. DEMO TIME!

31. Dylan Burris
Dylan@illuminedigital.com
@TheBigBurris