Hosting Drupal on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Heather Wozniak, Ph.D. Web Developer, UW College of Arts & Sciences hwozniak@uw.edu

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1 Hosting Drupal on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Heather Wozniak, Ph.D. Web Developer, UW College of Arts & Sciences

2 Questions, questions How many servers and Drupal sites do we support? Why did we choose AWS? How much does it cost? How do we manage the servers? How do we manage the Drupal sites? Pro s, con s, discussion

3 How many servers do we support? Staging server (micro) 24x7 Production server (medium) 24x7 Dev and testing servers ad hoc (micro)

4 How many Drupal sites do we support? In production, as of 5/14/ On staging, as of 5/14/ Combined prod + staging 41 Our web team does all the technical support and Drupal configuration. Departmental staff only add and manage content. We have trained 75+ web editors. We use Drupal multisites to consolidate maintenance tasks and share modules/themes across sites.

5 The path to AWS depts.washington.edu Can t have multisites + custom subdomains + SSL Performance and stability issues Each custom subdomain costs $50 per year Standard Managed Server Too expensive for a pilot project Pricing not competitive with third-party managed VPS Still requires some server ops knowledge Managed VPS Still requires some server ops knowledge Long wait for support to make changes No shibboleth support, no ldap we can t authenticate!

6 The path to AWS (cont.) We have to do this ourselves. Yikes! Buy our own box? Non-managed VPS? Standard Hosted Server? Wasn t available yet. Cloud computing? Let s try AWS Minimal cost + maximum flexibility About a month to get everything fully configured AMI (Amazon Machine Image) with LAMP, backup scripts, virtual hosts, APC, Drupal multisites, etc. AMI has evolved over time

7 How much does it cost? 2 continuous servers + ad hoc dev servers + local backups + AWS snapshot backups = $1, over last 12 months $ average per month $4.05-$6.48 per prod site, per month (Plus <$10 per month for off-site backup storage)

8 A&S Monthly AWS Bill Total

9 How does that compare to SMS and SHS? If one slice for staging and two for production (similar to AWS micro and medium instance), not including snapshots or offsite backups, or ad hoc instances: Standard Managed Servers: Approx. $466/month + initial setup ($1100 x 2) Standard Hosted Servers: Approx. $66/month + initial setup (is there a charge?) Backup service approximately $9/month for 150GB?

10 How do we manage the servers? A single AMI serves as base for all servers. The AMI has an instance volume, containing the OS and LAMP stack, and a data volume, containing the MySQL data, Drupal/web directories, and local backups. Three layers of backups: Data volumes are backed up nightly via AWS snapshot. MySQL databases and web files are backed up nightly on the local data volume. Database and web file backups are copied off-site, to a non- AWS server, once a week in case of total AWS catastrophe!

11 How do we manage the servers? All changes that should persist are made on the AMI. Examples: add new virtual hosts, add new SSL certificate, update backup scripts. Some AMI configuration files are stored in git repos. Occasionally we launch new instances from the AMI. Backup scripts and cronjobs are manually configured each time. Each server has a single IP address. A single SSL certificate is shared across all servers. The SSL cert has all subdomains listed as Subject Alternative Names.

12 How do we manage the Drupal sites? Majority of Drupal sites belong to one multisite installation Every site has a drush alias Drupal core and contrib modules are managed in a git repo Drupal core updates are fetched and merged from Drupal remote Contrib modules are updated via drush Custom modules are added to the repo as git submodules Each custom module has its own project history Custom modules can be installed independently on other sites Code changes are applied to production by merging tags

13 Pro s of AWS Lots of flexibility Create dev and testing servers on the fly, without worrying about breaking things Identical staging/dev/production servers Not affected by local weather/power outages Cost effective, no setup fees, no lifecycle/replacement costs Increase instance and data volume size according to need Room for growth RDS, autoscaling, cross region redundancy, other AWS services

14 Con s of AWS Had to learn server ops Server maintenance takes away from Drupal dev/support Risk are we doing it right? Responsibility if it fails AWS adds some overhead on top of standard server ops Local dev is harder doesn t mirror server Small peanuts compared to other AWS clients

15 Questions? Discussion?