Amazon Web Services – Introduction to Amazon Lightsail
Amazon Light is an AWS service that provides the a gateway for simplified cloud hosting helping the AWS users. It act as a user-friendly cloud platform that is designed for easy hosting and management of virtual private servers (VPS). With the lightsail service users can quickly develop and manage the VPS instances with options for various operating systems.. It provides a streamlined interface and with predictable pricing. It is an ideal solution for developers, small businesses and startups for the AWS Cloud without having any complexity association with cloud services.
Table of Content
- What is AWS Lightsail?
- What is Amazon EC2?
- AWS Lightsail CLI Commands
- How to Launch and Configure WordPress Instance in Lightsail? A Step-By-Step Guide
- Features of AWS Lightsail
- AWS Lightsail vs Amazon EC2: What are the differences?
- AWS Lightsail vs Beanstalk: What are the differences?
- Advantages of Amazon Lightsail
- Disadvantages of Amazon Lightsail
- AWS Lightsail Pricing
- Amazon Lightsail Use Cases
- Amazon Lightsail – FAQs
What is AWS Lightsail?
Amazon Lightsail is a VPS (virtual private server) provisioning service, much like the Amazon EC2. But unlike the Amazon EC2, Lightsail doesn’t have as many configurations required to boot up the VPS. Lightsail is the easiest way for developers to get started with aws. It is specifically designed to be a quick and simple solution for small scale applications at fairly low costs. For example, to host a simple small website like blogs and portfolio pages, Lightsail can be a cheap and fairly better solution as compared to EC2. You can obviously do your work in EC2 and have the website deployed from a there but as mentioned before, setting up EC2 is a longer and harder method than AWS Lightsail.
What is Amazon EC2?
Amazon EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud, it is a service by AWS where you can get the instances virtually in rental basis. you will have control of everything from the type of server, number of cpu, capacity of storage, and network configurations. It is great for both busines and developers for easy scale up and for their use case based needs. It is popular for web hosting websites, developing apps and running machine learning tasks.
AWS Lightsail CLI Commands
AWS provides a set of commands that can be run on AWS-CLI (AWS Command Line Interface) to manage your services. Much like you’d manage from your AWS Console. Following is a list of commands that can be run for managing the AWS Lightsail service.
AWS Lightsail CLI commands for Instance Management
Command |
Description |
---|---|
create-instances |
It used for creating new virtual machines |
delete-instances |
It used to remove the existing instances |
get-instances |
It helps in retriving the specific instance |
start-instance |
It start the stopped instance |
Amaozon Lightsail – Disk Management
Command |
Description |
---|---|
create-disk |
It helps in creating a new disk |
delete-disk |
It helps in deleting a existing disk |
get-disk |
It used in retriving the details of a specific disk |
get-disks |
It lists all the available disks. |
Amazon Lightsail – Static IP Management
Commands |
Description |
---|---|
allocate-static-ip |
It helps in allocating a new static IP address |
attach-static-ip |
it helps in attaching a static IP address to an instance |
get-static-ip |
It retrives the details of a specific static IP address |
release-static-ip |
It release a static IP associated with the Instance |
Amazon Lightsail – Load Balancer Management
Commands |
Description |
---|---|
create-load-balancer |
It create a new relational database |
delete-relational-database |
It delete a relational database |
get-relational-database |
It retrives the details of a specific relational database |
get-relational-databases |
It lists all the available relational databases. |
Amazon Lightsail – Other Operations
Command |
Description |
---|---|
create-key-pair |
It helps in creating a SSH key pair |
get-key-pair |
It lists all the available SSH key pairs |
update-domain-entry |
It updates the domain entry configuration |
update-relational-database |
It updates the relational database configuration |
How to Launch and Configure WordPress Instance in Lightsail? A Step-By-Step Guide
Step 1: Sign up for AWS
- Firstly, navigate to the AWS sign console and login in with your AWS credentials.
- After successfully login, you will be landed on the Console Home. Enter the AWS Lightsail in searchbox and click on it.
Step 2: Create a WordPress instance
- On clicking on the Lightsail service, you will be landed to that page. They you can see create instance button.
- Click on the create instance and choose the WordPress as your blueprint
- Define the name of the instance and click on the create instance.
Step 3: Configure your WordPress instance
- Once, your instance is running, click on its access management dashboard.
- Navigate to the networking tab and configure your instance’s networking settings including the attaching of static IP if needed.
- Then, as a next step go the Connect tab and use the SSH to connect to your instance if you need to make any manual configurations.
Step 4: Get the admin password for your WordPress website
- On the instance management page, click on the Connect using SSH option to access your instance’s command line interface.
- Try on running the command with `cat bitnami_application_password` to retrive the default password for the your wordpress admin user.
Step 5: Sign in to the administration dashboard of your WordPress website
- Now, open the browser and try on accessing the wordpress with entering the public IP address or domain name of your WordPress instance.
- You will be redirected to the WordPress setup page where you can enter your admin username (default: user ) and the password that is obtaineed in the previous step.
- After once you sign up, you will be redirected to the WordPress adminstration dashboard where you can start the customization of your website.
Step 6: Delete the WordPress Instance
After once, completing the usage of WordPress Instance delete the instance, to stop the billing of the AWS Lightsail service.
Features of AWS Lightsail
The following are the features of AWS Lightsail:
- Quick and simple setup: Setting up AWS Lightsail instance is a fairly simple task as compared to running an ECS or EC2 service.
- Can be provisioned from AWS console.
- Can be directly set up from AWS LightSail.
- Can be managed and set-up from AWS CLI.
- Cheaper: AWS Lightsail is cheaper as compared to EC2 and ECS service. Implying that it won’t offer as many features and as much configuration freedom as an EC2 instance.
- Multiple Instances: You can run multiple instances of AWS Lightsail and have them communicate with each other to make a fairly complex use case.
- Connection to other services: AWS Lightsail can connect to other AWS Resources much like any other EC2 instance.
- Less configuration: AWS Lightsail instance can be provisioned from a single page of configurations. It also has some pre-configured settings to support faster deployments. Following are some of the commonly used website configurations provided by AWS Lightsail:
AWS Lightsail vs Amazon EC2: What are the differences?
The following are the differences of AWS Lightsail and Amazon EC2:
Feature |
AWS Lightsail |
Amazon EC2 |
---|---|---|
Ease of Use |
It is designed for simplicity and pre-configured setups |
It offers more flexibility but requires more setup |
Pricing Model |
It has fixed monthly pricing with bundled resources |
It comes with pay-as-you-go model pricing with customizable resources. |
Management |
It act as simplified management interface |
It requires more manual configuration and management |
Target Audience |
It is ideal for beginners, small businesses and projects |
It is suitable for larger businesses and complex projects |
AWS Lightsail vs Beanstalk: What are the differences?
The following are the differences of AWS Lightsail and AWS Beanstalk:
Feature |
AWS Lightsail |
AWS Elastic Beanstalk |
---|---|---|
Ease of Use |
It is designed for simplicity with pre-configured setups |
It provides more automation for application deployment |
Control |
It offers more basic control over the infrastructure components |
It provides more control and customization options |
Scalability |
It has limited scalability with predefined plans |
It provides automatic scaling based on the application load |
Complexity |
It is a simplified management interface |
It requires more understanding of AWS Resources. |
Use Cases |
It is ideal for beginners, small businesses an d projects |
It is suitable for scalable web applications and services. |
Advantages of Amazon Lightsail
The following are the advantages of Amazon Lightsail:
- Amazon Lightsail is designed to be easy to use, with a simple setup process and a user-friendly interface.
- Amazon Lightsail is a cost-effective option for smaller websites and applications, with low upfront and predictable monthly costs.
- Lightsail provides a secure environment with features like SSL certificates, firewall management, and automatic backups.
- Lightsail provides fast, reliable performance with low latency and high throughput.
Disadvantages of Amazon Lightsail
The following are the disadvantages of Amazon Lightsail:
- Lightsail’s preconfigured services may limit customization options for more complex or unique applications.
- The resource limitations of Lightsail may not be suitable for larger or resource-intensive applications.
- Lightsail’s managed services may not be as flexible as other AWS services, such as EC2 and EBS.
- Lightsail may not have all the features and functionality available with other AWS services.
AWS Lightsail Pricing
The following is the pricing structure for AWS Lightsail:
Features |
Pricing |
---|---|
Instance Plans | Starts at $3.50 per month for the lowest plan |
Additional Resources | Charged based on usage (e.g., data transfer, SSD storage) |
Static IP Addresses | $3.00 per month for each allocated static IP |
Data Transfer | Data transfer beyond the included amount is charged at varying rates |
Snapshots | $0.05 per GB-month for instance snapshots |
Amazon Lightsail Use Cases
The following are the use cases of Amazon Lightsail:
- Small Websites and Applications: Lightsail is ideal for small websites and applications that have low resource requirements and need a cost-effective solution.
- Development and Test Environments: Lightsail can be used as a development and test environment, as it provides preconfigured services and easy setup.
- Database Hosting: Lightsail can host relational databases, like MySQL and PostgreSQL, making it a good option for small databases.
- Static Websites: Lightsail can be used to host static websites, with low resource requirements and fast performance.
Amazon Lightsail – FAQs
Is AWS Lightsail service comes in free tier?
AWS Lighsail service doesn’t come in free-tier but it facilitates with low-cost entry point.
What is AWS Lightsail is used for?
AWS Lightsail is used for easily launching and managing the virtual private servers (VPS) and other cloud resources.
What is AWS Lightsail wordpress SSL?
AWS Lightsail WordPress SSL provides SSL/TLS certificates for securing WordPress websites that are hosted on Lightsail.
What is AWS Lightsail Reddit?
AWS Lightsail Reddit is a subreddit for discussing and sharing the information about the AWS Lightsail.
Is lightsail IaaS or PaaS?
Lightsail is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), providing virtual servers and resources for users to manage and configure