This document discusses leveraging AWS to host various websites and applications. It describes the hosting history of Forum One Hosting and then provides details on how AWS was used to host three specific websites - www.globalchange.gov, www.countyhealthrankings.org, and www.mcc.gov. For each website, it outlines the challenges, key AWS components used (EC2, S3, RDS, CloudWatch, etc.), and results. The document concludes with some final notes on best practices for using AWS like using one account, configuration management, and external monitoring.

1. Leveraging AWS
Jo Ryden
May 27, 2014

2. ...and a little WordPress
Drupal, Drupal,
Drupal...

3. Forum One Hosting
History
➢ - 2002: “Co-located shared hosting server in a shoe
box”
➢ 2003: “Rackspace dedicated & shared hosting”
➢ 2008: “Rackspace dedicated & cloud”
➢ 2012: “Rackspace cloud & AWS”
➢ 201?: “AWS”

4. www.globalchange.g
ov

5. Challenge
➢100,000+ unique site visitors launch day
➢Lots of press expected
➢Unknown number of (large) PDF
downloads
➢Needed quick setup (were not initially
slated to host)
➢Security concerns

6. Key Solution Components
➢EC2
○ 1 x c3.xlarge instance
○ Varnish
○ Memcached
○ Nginx microcaching
➢S3
➢CloudWatch
➢CloudFlare CDN

7. Result (~90 PDFs total)

8. Result (origin web server)

9. www.countyhealthranking
s.org

10. Challenge
➢High launch time traffic, tapering off
➢Resource intensive application(s)
➢Lots of press when embargo lifted

11. Key Solution Components
➢EC2
○ Varnish (map server and web server -
c3.xlarge)
➢RDS
○ MySQL (1 x m3.large)
○ PostgreSQL (1x m3.large)
➢CloudWatch

12. Result (web server)

13. www.mcc.gov

14. Challenge
➢FISMA compliance (couldn’t use RDS)
➢Redundancy (keeping web servers in
sync)
➢Legacy Site hosting (we didn’t build it)
➢“Moderate” traffic
➢DIY approach due to rules

15. Key Solution Components
➢EC2
○ Availability Zones
○ GlusterFS
○ HAproxy
○ Percona MySQL XtraDB cluster
○ ELB with alarms
➢CloudWatch

16. Result

17. Final Notes
➢One AWS account / client
➢Consolidated billing
➢ELB root domain “issue”
➢Configuration management is essential
➢Amazon’s own distribution image
➢External web site monitoring
➢IAM

18. Questions?jryden@forumone.com
www.forumone.com
THANK YOU!