I installed Umbraco on an Amazon EC2 instance for the first time, it was kind of a challenging process. To help anyone else who needs to do it, I'd like to share an AMI of the instance so you can just pop up a fresh Umbraco install easily. I have NO idea what the security risks of this are, being that my instance is running an actual website, not a demo. Does anyone have any insight on how I can share this AMI safely? I think it would be really useful for people...
Sorry for the late response. I'm creating a fresh Umbraco install with a generic user/pass, I'll share the AMI when I'm done, may be a couple days depending on other work. All of my current AMI's have sensitive passwords in them.
I didn't really run into any issues other than the normal issues when provisioning a fresh server.
Here's what I suggest:
Grab the basic Windows 2008 / SQL Server / IIS ami
Disable IE Enhanced Security Mode
Download the Windows Web Platform Installer (you can do this via the download page on umbraco.org)
Install Umbraco via the web platform installer (make sure you leave the part where it asks you for the site name blank so it installs in the root level of the folder)
WPI takes care of everything for you.
Download Chrome or Opera so you have a workable browser if needed.
Re-enable Enhanced Security mode.
Pretty easy process with the Web Platform Installer and Umbraco 4.5.x.
One thing to look out for. Make sure you have .NET 4.x installed (integrated or classic depending on which config file you want to use), you can do this in "Turn Windows Features on or off."
Also have to open some ports on the EC2 instance so you can access via FTP and install the latest FTP stuff from Microsoft, don't forget to add FTP to the site via IIS so you can get to root from your client: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771012(WS.10).aspx
I'll try to get an AMI packaged with most of this stuff, so busy with work right now...
That all sounds pretty standard - nothing specific to EC2. I'll run through and build a fresh server soon.
Have you set up an EBS (Elastic Block Store) for website files, so they can be maintained separately from the actual server? i'm interested in doing this, so that the server can be easily restored, and the data remain intact.
Interested to know how that'd work with SQL Server data too... but thinking a daily backup to EBS would be better than storing the actual data files on EBS.
The interesting thing about EBS is that you can mount it to your EC2 instance like a hard drive. So really you can use any backup software / system you like and just store it on the EBS volume. As far as bare-metal backup. I'd take a snapshot of your install with everything running so all you have to do to bring up a new instance is copy files and restore the database.
Let me know if you get something reliable working, I've been struggling with a "bulletproof" EC2 backup strategy for a while.
yeah i like that about EBS.. really if you set it up right, to launch a new instance, just gotta restore the AMI, and attach the EBS. If its mounted as the same drive letter as the AMI is expecting, that's all you gotta do... oh and restore the DB from the backup on the EBS if the DB files are not on the EBS itself.
Seems pretty bullet proof to me.. i'll keep you posted how i progress.. might take a while, got higher priorities atm, but i'll get there.
EC2 Instance / AMI
I installed Umbraco on an Amazon EC2 instance for the first time, it was kind of a challenging process. To help anyone else who needs to do it, I'd like to share an AMI of the instance so you can just pop up a fresh Umbraco install easily. I have NO idea what the security risks of this are, being that my instance is running an actual website, not a demo. Does anyone have any insight on how I can share this AMI safely? I think it would be really useful for people...
So did you end up sharing your AMI anywhere? I'd be interested as i'm considering moving me hosting to a EC2 Micro Instance...
Try getting hold of Alex Norcliffe. I believe he created a public AMI for this.
Sorry for the late response. I'm creating a fresh Umbraco install with a generic user/pass, I'll share the AMI when I'm done, may be a couple days depending on other work. All of my current AMI's have sensitive passwords in them.
Just messaged alex on his site (http://boxbinary.com/2010/06/talk-on-easy-hosting-in-the-cloud-with-ec2-and-umbraco/comment-page-1/#comment-375)
Amir, i'm interested to know what sort of issues you came across? Have you got your AMI to a shareable state yet?
Greg,
I didn't really run into any issues other than the normal issues when provisioning a fresh server.
Here's what I suggest:
hey Amir,
That all sounds pretty standard - nothing specific to EC2. I'll run through and build a fresh server soon.
Have you set up an EBS (Elastic Block Store) for website files, so they can be maintained separately from the actual server? i'm interested in doing this, so that the server can be easily restored, and the data remain intact.
Interested to know how that'd work with SQL Server data too... but thinking a daily backup to EBS would be better than storing the actual data files on EBS.
Thanks for the info
GB
Greg,
The interesting thing about EBS is that you can mount it to your EC2 instance like a hard drive. So really you can use any backup software / system you like and just store it on the EBS volume. As far as bare-metal backup. I'd take a snapshot of your install with everything running so all you have to do to bring up a new instance is copy files and restore the database.
Let me know if you get something reliable working, I've been struggling with a "bulletproof" EC2 backup strategy for a while.
-Amir
yeah i like that about EBS.. really if you set it up right, to launch a new instance, just gotta restore the AMI, and attach the EBS. If its mounted as the same drive letter as the AMI is expecting, that's all you gotta do... oh and restore the DB from the backup on the EBS if the DB files are not on the EBS itself.
Seems pretty bullet proof to me.. i'll keep you posted how i progress.. might take a while, got higher priorities atm, but i'll get there.
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