Hosting a website on AWS

Did you know that you can use CloudFormation to create and host a website on AWS?

I've been playing with EC2 to get the feel for AWS and in the process stumbled on a fun demo you can try--plus a few gotchas you might want to know before you try it.

I found a cool video, How to Launch a Website in 10 Minutes, on the AWS channel on YouTube. Basically, you create an S3 bucket to hold the website's resources, then you use CloudFormation to create an EC2 and an RDS instance, and install WordPress (and content) in the bucket. Very slick. It was a nicely done quick intro; however, I ran into a few issues:

• It's not under the free usage tier. The online docs (but not the video) warn you: this does cost money. The app also warns you when you create the EC2 and RDS instances. You're supposed to delete the instances as soon as you're done with the tutorial.
• The video tells you to select Upload a Template File (for the WordPress installation), but didn't say where to get the file. Apparently there are 2 or 3 different ways to specify a template. This can be confusing for a newbie. The online AWS tutorial is clear on this point, though.

It was a simple procedure--here are the basic steps:

• In the S3 tab, create a bucket and name it appropriately for your blog, e.g. amazing-blog.
• In the EC2 tab, if you do not already have an available Linux instance, create one.
• Upload all image files or other resources your blog will need to the bucket you just created.
• In the CloudFormation tab, click Create new stack. In the Create Stack dialog, provide the name of the bucket you created for the blog as the stack name.
• In Template, select Provide a Template URL, then type or paste the URL for the sample WordPress template, then click Continue. (This procedure is from the AWS docs; it's not noted in the video.)

https://s3.amazonaws.com/cloudformation-templates-us-east-1/WordPress_Single_Instance_With_RDS.template

The template contains several AWS resources including a LoadBalancer, an Amazon Relational Database Service DB Instance, and an Auto Scaling group.

• In the Parameters section of the dialog, provide the key name of an existing EC2 instance.

Cool idea, but is it worth it?

I left the WordPress website up for a few days to create fake content and mess with formatting. Then I noticed the meter was ticking on the EC2 and RDS instances. I did get charged a bit. To be fair, I was warned. The docs warn you about this, and instruct you to delete the resources as soon as you're done. The management console indicated an estimated monthly cost of $110. I'm not certain that the service comes to that much in real life usage, but it could be a very expensive blog!

IMO this demo was done more of a proof of concept--and a worthy idea. It could be worthwhile if your website required considerable web resources--for example, you had a large database of streaming audio files, or a catalog that would require a sizable relational database. But for your own personal blog, or even a small business website as demonstrated in the YouTube video, it's probably not a cost-effective option.

I admit I was taken with the idea of spinning up your own virtual hosting site, and I wish that AWS would offer a scaled down economy plan (not free but cheap...) for those who just want to spin up and discard experimental websites easily.