This document discusses how to use Amazon EC2 to scale a web application. It begins with an introduction to AWS terminology like instances and AMIs. It then covers instance types, launching a demo instance, logging in, and using storage services like S3 and EBS. The document explains how AWS can help applications scale through services like Elastic Load Balancing, RDS, and auto-scaling. It demonstrates setting up an ELB and discusses auto-scaling. In the appendix, it briefly discusses managing AMI changes and other AWS services of interest like CloudFront and Route 53.

1. USING AMAZON EC2
TO SCALE YOUR WEB APPLICATION
Ravi Pratap M
July 9, 2011

2. About Me
• Open source hacker
• GNOME, Mono, libcurl
• Budding entrepreneur
• Early employee, Hillcrest
Labs, Washington, D.C.
• Co-founder & CTO,
MobStac

3. Agenda
1. “What’s all the fuss about?” 8. “How does AWS help my
app scale?”
2. AWS jargon
9. A Scalable architecture
3. Instance types
10.Scalable serving: ELB, RDS,
4. Demo: Launching an instance Autoscaling
5. Let’s log in 11.Demo: ELB
6. Storage: S3 and EBS 12.Auto-scaling
7. Demo: S3 Console 13.Managing AMI changes

4. “What’s All The Fuss About?”
On-demand, self-service provisioning of computing resources -
no human intervention
Full control over the entire stack - no abstraction
Pay by the hour

5. AWS Jargon
An instance is a virtual server
An instance boots up from a disk image known as an AMI

6. Instance Types
Suited to different kinds of
applications
Standard, Micro, High-CPU,
High-memory, etc.
t1.micro qualifies for free-
tier - costs nothing to try it
out!

7. Demo: Launching an Instance

8. Let’s Log In
$ ssh -i mydefault.pem ubuntu@ec2-50-17-104-147.compute-1.amazonaws.com
ubuntu@domU-12-31-39-0B-6C-37:~$ sudo apt-get install python-dev
ubuntu@domU-12-31-39-0B-6C-37:~$ sudo apt-get install nginx

9. Storing Data
S3 EBS
Store arbitrary files (objects) Like raw hard disks, mount
in folders. as /dev/sdx
Like shared folders on the Attach to / detach from an
network instance

10. Demo: S3 Console

11. How Does AWS Help My App
Scale?
Doesn’t automatically - your
architecture needs to
change
Simple example - file
uploads to S3

12. A Scalable Architecture

13. Scalable Serving:
ELB, RDS, and Auto Scaling
Elastic Load Relational Auto Scaling:
Balancing: Database Service: Automatically
Automatically Run a MySQL scale capacity out
distribute traffic database in the or down based
between a bunch cloud, with on load patterns:
of instances automatic no wastage of
running your backups and resources
application replication

14. Demo: ELB

15. Auto Scaling
Automatically increase or decrease the number of running
instances by tracking a metric, like average CPU utilization
AMI must auto-configure on boot
Automatically pull code from repo
Be ready to serve requests

16. THAT’S ALL FOLKS!
twitter: @ravipratap
ravi@mobstac.com

17. Appendix: Managing AMI
Changes
Start with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS image P
Make changes manually, create new image P’
For next AMI change, boot up P’ and create new image P’’
after modifications
Rinse and repeat

18. Appendix: Other Services Of
Interest
CloudFront - CDN service
Route 53 - Scalable & highly available DNS service