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Introduction
Welcome to Website Hosting and Migration with Amazon Web Services and thank you for picking up this book.
I’m excited to be your guide for this adventure in web hosting in AWS. The adoption rate of cloud services
for startups and enterprises alike has been astounding. It reminds me of another time in my IT career when
a major shift happened to move software architecture from desktop, stand-alone applications to web-based,
interconnected applications. As with other disruptive movements in technology, cloud services offer a way
for more control over resources used and much greater choices of self-service managed services. This shift
means that it is possible for everyone to take control and deliver a highly available, scalable, cost-effective
infrastructure to host their application or websites, which results in a better experience for end users.
As I was thinking about the best format for delivering a book that offered an introduction to hosting in
Amazon Web Services, the leading cloud services provider, I wanted to make sure that the book was both
accessible and interesting for those who perhaps have never managed the hosting of their own website as
well as valuable to those looking at Amazon Web Services as an option for migrating their existing website.
The most effective way for me to deliver on both of these goals was to organize the book into “scenarios”
that offer you the choice of working through from start to finish or using it as a “choose your own adventure”
style book and focusing on the content that is most relevant to you. It should be noted that if you’re new to
AWS, starting with the first scenario and working through to the last will give you a progressive experience
that offers the most exposure to services offered in AWS, and each scenario does build on knowledge gained
in the previous scenario.
This book has three web hosting scenarios. First, in Chapter 1, you’ll look at the simple static website:
a simple, multi-page site that is used by many companies to provide an online presence for their goods and
services, complete with a simple contact form. In Chapter 7, you’ll look at the second scenario where I’ll
show how to host popular content management systems in the AWS platform using dedicated compute,
database, and storage resources. Lastly, in Chapter 14, you’ll take a look at a much more complex website
scenario that will have additional challenges and more complex features to be supported such as staff logins,
email services, and ecommerce requirements. You’ll also look at how to extend your enterprise website with
AWS managed services.
In each scenario, I’ll describe the type of website that you’ll be working with as well as give you sample
files that can be used to follow along and host the content in your very own AWS account. I’ll give you the
tools and knowledge needed to host the sample files that are provided for your use and, wherever possible,
I’ll put in tips that are related to how to migrate existing content that you may have over to AWS.
One of the many benefits of Amazon Web Services is being able to easily set up environments and
resources that allow you to learn the AWS platform and deliver a proof of concept: a functional service
with very little investment upfront. This enables you to use the sample files provided, or your own content
in a functional environment, and to monitor billing costs before committing to AWS as your new hosting
provider. Since the hosting cost is a major factor in most people’s decision to use a given hosting provider,
I’ll provide a section on hosting cost considerations in the summary section of each hosting scenario that
will be based on billing data outside of the free-tier hosting period so that you can make an informed
decision in regard to whether to move to AWS for your web hosting needs.