Getting to MVP on AWS

Startups on AWS:
From Idea to MVP
Pieter Kemps - @P_Kemps
Business Development & Venture Capital
Joe Ziegler - @jiyosub
Startup Business Development Manager

Traditional World
customer is known
features are known
solution is known

Traditional World
is not where we live

Most startups
Know the problem, but not the solution
Many don't even know precisely what
problem they solve

1. Focus on a simple implementation of your idea

2. Start with a minimal core set of features

3. Release and listen to your users

3. Release, listen to your users, then iterate
Minimum Viable Product

MVP
Smallest thing I can do to test my idea?

« If you're not embarrassed
when you ship your first version
you waited too long »
Matt Mullenweg
CEO & Founder of WordPress

Staying lean is creating the
smallest viable product and
then iterate around it

Lean Startup goal is to accelerate iteration

Mean Time between deployments (weekday)
Max # of deployments in a single hour
Mean # of hosts simultaneously receiving a deployment
Max # of hosts simultaneously receiving a deployment
11.6
Seconds
1,079
10,000
30,000
Iteration & Innovation at Amazon.com

How can I lower the cost of innovation?
How can I launch faster & do more with less?
How do I develop a killer MVP?
Today

How can I lower the cost of innovation?
Fail Forward, Fail Faster
How can I launch faster & do more with less?
Build Apps, Not Infrastructure
How do I develop a killer MVP?
Develop Lean, Test Heavy
Today

Fail Forward, Fail Faster
Today

« Want to increase innovation?
Lower the cost of failure »
Johi Ito

AWS enables you to
Fail Forward
Fail Faster
Fail Cheaper

a prototype shouldn't require big investments

It should be cheap and validate ideas

Product Development
MVP
Time
Scale

Innovation & Iteration
MVP
Time
Scale

Time
Scale
Started: burbn, location-based mobile
app. Photo sharing is just one feature
Now: re-written as
photo app. Sold to FB
for 1bn

Time
Scale
Started: odeo, site to create & share
podcasts
Now: micro-blogging,
500M users, >10Bn
valuation

Time
Scale
Started: developed 51 games, none very
successful. But then game 52…
Now: raised $42M,
downloaded 1B times,
25% paid, best sold
game on AppStore

“Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying
will eventually make you look like an overnight
success.”
Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder

AWS lowers the cost of Innovation
Time
Scale
Scenario
Small team with initial idea for Mobile app
3 months to get to launch
Unknown customer/problem/solution
No cash….

• Internal testing with your team
• 2 Tier Web - Database Servers
• Use t1.micro Instances
Dev / Test Environment
Time
Scale
Average Spend
$0
p/m

• Release to small group of ‘core testers’
• 2 Tier Web & Database Servers
• 2 x t1.micro Instances
Alpha Release
Time
Scale
Average Spend
$15
p/m

• First public release – limited audience
• Master / Slave DB setup
• m1.small Instances
• Auto-Scaling Instances (2 Instance minimum)
Beta Release / MVP
Time
Scale
Average Spend
$235
p/m

Getting to MVP for $250
Time
Scale
Total Spend to MVP
$250
$235$15$0
• 3 months dev/test/release
• Serving Beta customers
• Ready for full production
and scale

• Full production, ready to scale to 1000s of users
• Multi AZ Web & DB Servers
• m1.medium Web Instances & Read Slaves
• m1.large DB Master Server
• Auto-Scaling Instances (2 Instance minimum)
Production
(v 1.0)
Time
Scale
Average Spend
$1000
p/m

In Summary…
Low Cost of Iteration
Means more Innovation

AWS
=
Automation
=
Launch Faster & Do more with Less

Your application
Your business & what makes you unique
Innovation, not undifferentiated heavy lifting
Spending developer time in the right place
Automate as much as you can
(Deep insight alert: Developer Time = Money)
FOCUS!

"Startups are all about focus. AWS enables focus"
Ray Bradford, Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield & Byers

Full
Automation
Full
Control
Elastic
Beanstalk
CloudFormation
“I just want my app to
run, and I only want
access to machines if
I really need to”
“I want to source control
my entire datacenter
deployment like I would
my apache config”
AWS
OpsWorks

Elastic Beanstalk CloudFormationOpsWorks
Question for you

Stacks available with Beanstalk
Elastic Beanstalk CloudFormation
.Net
PHP
Java
Python
Ruby
Node.js
OpsWorks

Quickly deploy and manage apps in AWS…

Application package is deployed into Beanstalk

User Application
Application Service
HTTP Service
Language Interpreter
Operating System
Host
Which creates the container in EC2

Beanstalk takes care of the environment…

…adding Elastic Load Balancer…

…Auto Scaling groups

…and launching instances

…all wired into the Beanstalk framework

…and published under a CNAME

…with logs and app versions held in S3

How do you create an app for
AWS ElasticBeanstalk?

No dependencies on AWS inherent for Beanstalk deployment
Source
uploaded and
executed in
AWS
Source
downloaded
and executed
locally
OpsWorks

Package up as normal…
Java .war file
Microsoft Web
Deploy package
PHP .zip file
Python .zip file
Git integrationIDE plugins
OpsWorks

With ElasticBeanstalk…
Full admin access on underlying resources
EC2 instances, AMIs, AutoScaling groups…

What happens under the covers of Beanstalk?
Elastic
Beanstalk
AWS
Create security group
Create auto-scaling policy
Create elastic load balancer
Add instance
Install software
Consolidate logs
OpsWorks

What happens under the covers of Beanstalk?
AWS
Create security group
Create auto-scaling policy
Create elastic load balancer
Add instance
Install software
Consolidate logs
A series of calls into AWS
to marshal resource
creation/configuration
OpsWorks

CloudFormation
A consistent scripting interface for
creating/configuring AWS
resources
A framework for lifecycle
management of resources
created using scripts
Security
Scaling
Database
Networking
Monitoring
Messaging
Workflow
DNS
Load Balancing
BackupCDN
Compute
Storage
CloudFormation – underlying automation framework
OpsWorks

CloudFormation components & terminology
Template
CloudFormation
Stack
JSON formatted file
Parameter definition
Resource creation
Configuration actions
Configured AWS services
Comprehensive service support
Service event aware
Customisable
Framework
Stack creation
Stack updates
Error detection and rollback
CloudFormationElastic Beanstalk OpsWorks

The benefit of templated environments
Template
Procedural definition
Create it programmatically

Template
Known configuration
Store stack configuration in
source control

Template
Known configuration
source control
Parameter driven
Dynamic and user-driven
templates

Template
Known configuration
source control
Parameter driven
Dynamic and user-driven
templates
Collaboration
Share templates with ease as
just files

Powerful management framework with Chef support
Stack Layers Management
Managed
environment
Definition of environment
such as production or test
Management
services
Scaling, cloning, user
access, self healing
Collection of
resources
Blueprint for a
collection of resources
(instances, EBS, EIPs
etc)
OpsWorks
Apps
Your application
assets
Resources to deploy
and run in layers

Simple stack creation through layers
Layers
Load balancing
HA Proxy installation in an availability zone
Application container
Static, Node.js, Rails, PHP
Database layer
MySQL

Scaling and auto-healing
Auto healing
Replacement of an ec2
instance regardless of
scaling thresholds
i.e. always maintain 3
nodes across 3 AZs
Time based scaling
Run an ec2 instance on a
given schedule
i.e. run these instances only
during weekend peaks
Load based scaling
Add and remove instances
from a layer based upon
load rules
i.e. run these instances only
when CPU goes over 80%

Get started fast with Beanstalk
(Developer sandboxes with production ready infrastructure)
Take fine grained control with CloudFormation
(Comprehensive control of all aspects of infrastructure)
Manage with layers and recipes - OpsWorks
(control with Chef customization)

Why do you care?

…grew to 14 million users in just over a year
…reached 150 million photos & terabytes of data
…signed up 1.0 million users in 12 hours after launching an Android app
…over 100 million active users in January 2013
on AWS…with only 3 engineers

“Your users around the world don’t
care that you wrote your own DB”
Mike Krieger, Instagram Cofounder

Take lots of it when you need it
Unlimited elastic capacity
1. Spinning up environments as you need them
2. Development and test frameworks in AWS
3. Testing at Scale
4. Rolling out to Production
5. Preserve for future reference

1.
Spinning up environments as you need them

Spinning up environments in a way that suits you
Do it yourself CloudFormationBeanstalk
AMIs, snapshots,
boostrapping
Using core AWS features to set
up an environment to meet your
needs
Use console or enact through
simple scripting
Declaratively defined
to your requirements
Take full control of complex
environments using Cloud
Formation template language
Generate environment
specifications as you build
software
Managed standard
containers
Give development & test
environments to developers
direct from IDEs
Configure containers to meet
your needs through properties

2.
Development and test frameworks in AWS

AWS is open and flexible – build your dev-test systems
Frameworks & environments
Source control
Leverage EC2 to run popular source
control systems
Project management
Add integrated project
management and issue tracking
Workstations
Enable standard build
developer/test workstations
Build servers
Use EC2 horsepower to drive build
servers and continuous integration

Create environments to support specific test types
Testing at scale
Unit & regression
Scale up and parallel run unit and
regression plans in a fraction of the
time
Load & performance
Utilize spot market for generating
load and test how applications
perform with auto-scaling
A/B
Run A/B scenario testing with
replica stacks
Security
Create sandboxes for aggressive
security testing

Load & Performance Test
Bees with Machine Guns!

Bees with Machine Guns
EC2 Instance Contents
Instances
EC2 Instance Contents
Amazon CloudWatch
#1 Spawns
#3 Monitors
My App
github.com/newsapps/beeswithmachineguns

Auto Scaling
Group
V1
Elastic
Load
Balancer
Amazon
Relational
Database Service
(RDS)

Auto Scaling
Group
V1
Auto Scaling
Group
V2
Elastic
Load
Balancer
Amazon
Relational
Database Service
(RDS)

Auto Scaling
Group
V2
Elastic
Load
Balancer
Amazon
Relational
Database Service
(RDS)

5.
Preserve for future reference

Dispose for cost optimization, but preserve critical configurations
Disposable environments can be recreated
AMIs
Create a catalog of AMIs for
each iteration of an application
Stored in S3
Templates
Source control infrastructure
templates with every
application version
Snapshots
Save disk images with ‘frozen’
data sets and attach to instances
when needed

Dispose for cost optimization, but preserve critical configurations
Disposable environments can be recreated
AMIs
Create a catalog of AMIs for
each iteration of an application
Stored in S3
Templates
Source control infrastructure
templates with every
application version
Snapshots
Save disk images with ‘frozen’
data sets and attach to instances
when needed
Roll back and recreate an environment for any given application version

aws.amazon.com/code
Leverage the AWS Developer Tools
Code, Libs, SDK’s, Architectures and more
aws.amazon.com/developertools

Visit aws.amazon.com/startups
2 more Startup webinars:
1. From MVP to Scale on AWS May 21
2. From Scale to Profitability on AWS June 4
Sign up here: aws.amazon.com/apac/startupwebinars
Fill up your feedback form !

Questions?
Pieter Kemps – Business Development & Venture Capital
Joe Ziegler – Startup Business Development Manager

Getting to MVP on AWS

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