Embarking on the journey of learning Amazon Web Services (AWS) doesn’t have to be an intimidating task. In fact, setting up a personal blog can serve as a practical and rewarding entry point into the AWS ecosystem. Let me share my experience, with a touch of humor and a dash of truth.

Getting Started:

I’ll admit, the idea of self-hosting a WordPress site on AWS might seem like overkill for a blog, and I discovered that firsthand. The ongoing maintenance overhead wasn’t aligning with my goals, but the process of building it out was undeniably enjoyable.

Throughout my career, I’ve noticed even seasoned developers sometimes grapple with the deployment aspects of their code. Those fortunate enough to have skilled Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams may sidestep these challenges. However, for the rest of us, deploying a simple blog on AWS can demystify the intricacies of deployment and add practical experience to our skill set.

For a mere $11 investment and a few hours of your time, you can gain insights into how applications are deployed, unravel any black boxes, and enhance your AWS proficiency. While the title suggests deploying a blog on AWS, the core idea is to separate the act of building code from the deployment steps.

Key Steps:

1. AWS Command Line Interface (CLI): This wasn’t my initial step, but configuring it early allowed me to stay in my workflow while interacting with AWS. The AWS CLI is a unified tool to manage your AWS services, offering a streamlined way to control multiple services from the command line.
2. Setting up an EC2 Instance: My instances were Ubuntu t2.micro instances, sufficient for initial setup with minimal traffic. However, for scalability and load balancing, the configuration needed adjustment.
3. Taking Snapshots (AMI’s): Capture your configured EC2 instance as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). This enables the creation of multiple instances with identical setups, crucial for load balancing.
4. Application Load Balancer: Scale your application by handling increased traffic through multiple instances. An Application Load Balancer is designed for applications with HTTP and HTTPS traffic.
5. Setting up an Elastic IP: Ensure a permanent address for your application. Whether load-balanced or a single server, an Elastic IP prevents address changes every time you start/stop an instance, directing traffic to the correct location.
6. Route Your Domain with Route 53: Use Route 53 to route your domain to the appropriate location, following this straightforward tutorial.

Things to Note:

• Code Usage: If employed, avoid using work-related code for your sample application to respect proprietary concerns.
• Tear Down After Fun: If the AWS infrastructure was for learning purposes, remember to tear it down to prevent ongoing expenses. AWS provides detailed expense breakdowns, ensuring you’re aware of your usage.
• Consider Automation: If you utilized the AWS console extensively, contemplate building scripts to streamline and maintain consistency in your system configurations.

Embark on this journey not just to learn AWS but to enrich your understanding of deployment processes. Building your blog becomes a hands-on lesson, making AWS concepts more tangible and applicable to real-world scenarios.

Other fun resources:

IAM Best Practices: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/IAMBestPracticesAndUseCases.html

Security Best Practices AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/getting-started-follow-security-best-practices-as-you-configure-your-aws-resources/