Using Amazon Webservices

Getting started with EC2

The following images are quite suitable as base images

• amazon/amzn-ami-pv-2013.09.0.i386-ebs
• amazon/amzn-ami-pv-2013.09.0.x86_64-ebs

Note the above images require that you use ec2-user for SSH access.

Instance type recommendations

• Normal systems: small or medium
• Test or development: micro

Storage options

Two scenarios exist

• Simple setup data and application in one
• Confidential data in an separate encrypted storage

For a separate storage you should do the following

1. Create a new EBS partition
2. Mount to suitable point
3. Encrypt and login using LUKS

Note that LUKS partitions may contain multiple passwords, and do not need to be at rest when copy/backup operations are active.

Stuff to do in Amazon linux

After booting images

• Set your timezone
• Update the firewall: Port 80
• Activate SMTP service [option]
• Install MySQL
• Install Tomcat
  • Deploy connection pool drivers
  • Deploy MySQL JDBC driver

After that just follow the normal install procedure for webapplications

• Deploy the war file
• Set up connection pool for the application

Maintaining the solution

Tips for maintaing you solution

• Consider instance termination protection
• Backup: Can be taken as EBS snapshots
• Monitor: Activate CloudWatch for the instance