Running A Small Web Site In AWS
I moved from a bare-metal 1&1 server to AWS a few years ago, and it was an excellent decision. Generally, I now have more control over running my site, and things like moving disks around and backing up are so much easier (and often less expensive). I can also easily scale up and scale down.
My Web site has now grown within AWS over the past few years, and I now have around 1.5 million users per year, and with over 36 million requests per year (and growing each day, as more people get into cybersecurity and want to learn more). So, over time, I learnt a few things about reducing costs, and saving time, and I have a few tips here.
Overall, I receive many requests to put advertisements on my site, but have rejected each one, as I want to keep it free to use, and support free access to education. Also, I do not have a team of Cloud engineers, and it’s just me administrating the site. The costs of running the site, are thus mine.
Scripting
While you can do most things in the GUI that AWS provides, the real power of AWS lies in the CLI (Command Line Interface), and where commands can be remotely run. I tend to use T3 instances, and often have to ramp up the performance of my Web site for lab requirements. For this, it is fairly easy to stop and instance, and then change the instance type — in this case to…
