A step-by-step "how-to" that enables setting up a Drupal instance using Amazon Web Services (AWS).

1. Moving Drupal to the Cloud:
A step-by-step guide and reference document for
hosting a Drupal web site on Amazon Web Services
MCN 2009: Cloud Computing Primer Workshop
Charles Moad <cmoad@imamuseum.org>
Robert Stein <rstein@imamuseum.org>
Ari Davidow <adavidow@jwa.org>
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 2
CONVENTIONS USED IN THIS DOCUMENT ................................................................................................... 2
EC2 CONSOLE ............................................................................................................................................ 3
PREREQUISITES TO LAUNCHING AN EC2 INSTANCE .................................................................. 4
CREATING A KEY PAIR ............................................................................................................................... 4
CREATING A SECURITY GROUP .................................................................................................................. 5
SELECTING A STARTER AMI ...................................................................................................................... 6
LAUNCHING AND CONNECTING TO YOUR EC2 INSTANCE........................................................ 7
STARTING YOUR EC2 INSTANCE ................................................................................................................ 7
CONNECTING TO YOUR EC2 INSTANCE ...................................................................................................... 8
Preparing Your SSH Key Pair for Putty ............................................................................................... 8
CONFIGURING YOUR EC2 INSTANCE ................................................................................................ 9
INSTALLING PREREQUISITES ....................................................................................................................... 9
CREATING AN EBS VOLUME .................................................................................................................... 10
ATTACHING YOUR EBS VOLUME............................................................................................................. 11
FORMATTING AND MOUNTING YOUR EBS VOLUME ................................................................................ 11
CONFIGURING MYSQL............................................................................................................................. 12
CONFIGURING APACHE............................................................................................................................. 13
INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING DRUPAL.................................................................................... 14
APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................................. 15
CONFIGURING CRON FOR DRUPAL .......................................................................................................... 15
ASSIGNING A STATIC IP TO YOUR EC2 INSTANCE.................................................................................... 16
SNAPSHOTTING YOUR EBS ...................................................................................................................... 17
BUNDLING YOUR EC2 INSTANCE INTO AN AMI....................................................................................... 18
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2. Introduction
This document aims to give attendees a step-by-step guide on how to host a Drupal
website using the Amazon Web Services. It should also serve as a valuable reference
document. The Drupal instance will be hosted on a LAMP stack and steps will be shown
on how to backup and snapshot your EC2 instance.
Conventions Used in this Document
• Normal text
• Filename or itemname
• Command line
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3. EC2 Console
This guide uses the EC2 Console, a web interface provided by Amazon which allows
complete control of running and managing EC2 instances in the cloud.
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4. Prerequisites to Launching an EC2 Instance
Creating a Key Pair
You must specify a security key pair to use when launching EC2 instances. A key pair is
actually used as your SSH key pair for connecting to your instance. There is no password
access. You can technically launch an instance without a key pair, but then you would
have no means to log into the running instance.
In the EC2 console, select Key Pairs from the Navigation section. Click the Create Key
Pair button to create a new key pair. In this example we will name our key pair, mcn09.
Once you create your key pair, your browser will download the actual private key file. In
this example the file will be named, mcn09.pem. Keep this file secure.
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5. Creating a Security Group
Think of security groups simply as your firewall rules for EC2 instances. You use it to
say which ports are open, and who they are open to. You must specify a security group
when launching an EC2 instance. At a minimum, you will want to allow access on port
22 so you can SSH and port 80 to serve web pages.
In the EC2 console, select Security Groups from the Navigation section. Click the Create
Security Group button to create a new group. In this example we will name our security
group, mcn09. Optionally enter a description for the group.
Configure the ports as shown in the image below. Fill in each line and click Save. The
Source item should be set to 0.0.0.0/0 to allow access to allow machines. Reference
CIDR Notation to learn more about this setting or click the Help button seen in the
interface below.
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6. Selecting a Starter AMI
You’ll need to select an Amazon Machine Image to use as a basis for your EC2 instance.
There exists AMI’s preconfigured with Drupal. This guide however will use a stock,
Amazon provided Fedora 32-bit AMI. Specifically we are using, ami-48aa4921, as
shown below.
EC2 has a variety of instance sizes that you can launch your AMI’s on. They vary in
storage, memory, priority, processing power, and most namely, price. m1.small and
c1.medium instance sizes are 32-bit and can only run 32-bit AMI’s. All remaining
instance sizes are 64-bit. Several studies have shown that the c1.medium instance size is
by far the best bang for your buck. It is strongly recommended that you use this size for
moderate traffic LAMP web sites.
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7. Launching and Connecting to Your EC2 Instance
Starting Your EC2 Instance
You are now ready to launch your EC2 instance. After selecting the AMI (ami-
48aa4921), click the Launch button. Fill in the form as shown in the image below. Most
importantly, select the mcn09 key pair and mcn09 security group that you have already
configured. In this example, we are launching a single m1.small instance.
In the EC2 console, click the Instances link in the Navigation section. Here you can
monitor the progress of your instance. Proceed once the status says, running. In this
example, our launched instance has the identifier, i-58d96330.
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8. Connecting to Your EC2 instance
First you must get the public DNS name assigned to your new instance. You can find
this in the instance details of the EC2 Console. In this example, our public DNS is ec2-
67-202-9-72.compute-1.amazonaws.com.
If you are on a Linux or OSX machine, you can now SSH to your machine using the
following command in a terminal. If you are using Windows, follow the instructions for
preparing your SSH key pair for Putty.
ssh –i mcn09.pem root@ ec2-67-202-9-72.compute-1.amazonaws.com
Preparing Your SSH Key Pair for Putty
If you are using Windows, you must first convert your key pair file to work with Putty. If
you are on a Linux or OSX machine, simply skip this section.
From the Start Menu, launch the PuTTYgen program under the PuTTY menu item. Select
Load private key from the File menu. Navigate and select the private key pair file you
downloaded earlier. In this example, the file name was mcn09.pem. Select Save private
key from the File menu. In this example, we name the new file mcn09.ppk. Now you can
connect to your running EC2 instance from Putty by providing this key pair file under
Connection SSH Auth. Use the username, root.
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9. Configuring Your EC2 Instance
Installing Prerequisites
The AMI you started with have next to nothing installed. You must now install the
traditional LAMP stack as well as a few additional tools for Drupal.
Now you should run the following two commands to install our LAMP stack and some
other useful tools.
yum groupinstall "MySQL Database" "Web Server"
yum install php-gd xfsprogs phpMyAdmin
This will install Apache and MySQL as well as the library php-gd to make Drupal happy.
phpMyAdmin is an extremely useful web interface for administering MySQL.
Additionally we install xfsprogs so we can manipulate XFS file systems. All web and
database files will be hosted on an Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume that you will attach
to your running instance. The XFS file system is an ideal format for this volume since it
can be resized in case you need more space later, and it can be frozen which prevents
corrupt database files when snapshotting the volume. This will be discussed later in the
document.
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10. Creating an EBS Volume
Storage on EC2 instances is considered ephemeral, meaning that it goes away when your
EC2 instance goes away. If for some reason your instance crashed, you would lose all of
your web and database files. To solve this problem, Amazon offers virtual block devices
you can attach to your running EC2 instances. Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes can
range from 1GB to 1TB in size. These volumes are separate from your instance. They
remain persistent if your instance is terminated. You can detach an EBS volume from
one instance and attach it to another. Also, you can attach multiple EBS volumes to one
instance and even setup RAID configurations amongst those volumes.
You must first note which availability zone your instance is running in. EBS volumes
can only be attached to instances running in the same zone. You can find this in the
instance details of the EC2 Console. In this example, our instance is running in zone us-
east-1a. In the EC2 Console, click on Volumes in the Navigation section. Click the
Create Volume button to start the creation process. Make the EBS volume a reasonable
size and in the same zone as your EC2 instance. Leave Snapshot set to No Snapshot.
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11. Attaching Your EBS Volume
Once the EBS volume is finished creating you will attach it to your running EC2
instance. In the EC2 Console, make sure you are still in the Volumes section. Click the
newly created EBS volume (vol-f5c6399c in this example) then click the Attach Volume
button. Select the EC2 instance you just launched and the device location you want the
volume to be mounted. In this example, we select our instance, i-58d96330, and the
default device location, /dev/sdf.
Formatting and Mounting Your EBS Volume
You will now need to format and mount your EBS volume on your EC2 instance. In this
example, you are mounting the volume at /ebsvol. We will also add an entry to /etc/fstab
so the volume will be automatically mounted in the event of a reboot. Run the following
commands in a terminal connected to your instance.
mkdir /ebsvol
mkfs.xfs /dev/sdf
echo "/dev/sdf /ebsvol xfs noatime 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
mount /ebsvol/
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12. Configuring MySQL
The MySQL database and log files will reside on the EBS volume. You must now
configure MySQL to know where to host these files. First, create the destination
directories on the EBS volume.
mkdir -p /ebsvol/mysql/lib/mysql
mkdir -p /ebsvol/mysql/log/mysql
Edit the file, /etc/my.cnf, to contain the following.
[mysqld]
#datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user=mysql
# Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x
# clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).
old_passwords=1
innodb_file_per_table
datadir = /ebsvol/mysql/lib/mysql
#log_slow_queries = /ebsvol/mysql/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log
#long_query_time = 10
max_connections = 250
max_user_connections = 250
key_buffer = 36M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 64M
join_buffer_size = 2M
read_buffer_size = 2M
sort_buffer_size = 3M
table_cache = 1024
thread_cache_size = 286
interactive_timeout = 25
wait_timeout = 1800
connect_timeout = 10
max_allowed_packet = 1M
max_connect_errors = 999999
query_cache_limit = 1M
query_cache_size = 16M
query_cache_type = 1
tmp_table_size = 16M
[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
Configure MySQL to Start at Boot
chkconfig --level 345 mysqld on
Start the MySQL Service
service mysqld start
Set the MySQL root Password
mysqladmin -u root password 'mcn09demo'
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13. Configuring Apache
The Apache web and log files will also reside on the EBS volume. Create the destination
directories for these files.
mkdir -p /ebsvol/apache/www
mkdir -p /ebsvol/apache/log
You should now create a virtual host entry for your Drupal web site. Create and edit an
apache configuration file (/etc/httpd/conf.d/mcn09.conf in this example). Replace the text
_MCN09_ with your custom values.
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
#ServerAdmin _MCN09_
DocumentRoot /ebsvol/apache/www
#ServerName www._MCN09_.com
#ServerAlias _MCN09_.com
ErrorLog /ebsvol/apache/log/error.log
TransferLog /ebsvol/apache/log/access.log
<Directory /ebsvol/apache/www>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Configure Apache to Start at Boot
chkconfig --level 345 httpd on
Start the Apache Service
service httpd start
You can now visit your EC2 instance in a web browser using the public DNS name. In
this example, http://ec2-67-202-9-72.compute-1.amazonaws.com/. You will see the
Fedora test page for Apache.
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14. Installing and Configuring Drupal
You will now download and extract the latest Drupal release into the Apache web server
directory on the EBS volume. You will also make the apache user the owner of all the
web files, and copy Drupal’s sample settings.
cd /ebsvol/apache/www/
wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-6.14.tar.gz
tar -xzf drupal-6.14.tar.gz
mv drupal-6.14/{*,.htaccess} ./
rm -rf drupal-6.14*
cp sites/default/default.settings.php sites/default/settings.php
chown -R apache:apache .
Create the destination Drupal database. In this example, the database is called mcn09db.
mysql -uroot -pmcn09demo -e "create database mcn09db"
Now visit your EC2 instance in a browser again and follow the typical Drupal installation
process.
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15. Appendix
Configuring CRON for Drupal
Edit the crontab file for the apache user.
crontab –u apache –e
Add the following line to the crontab replacing the URL with the name of your website.
This will cause Drupal’s cron to run at 15 and 45 minutes past each hour.
15,45 * * * * /usr/bin/wget -O - -q http://www.yoursite.org/cron.php
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16. Assigning a Static IP to Your EC2 Instance
Static IP’s in EC2 are called Elastic IP’s. You can request Elastic IP’s for free and only
pay if you do not use it.
In the EC2 Console, select Elastic IPs from the Navigation section. Click the Allocate
New Address button.
Select the new Elastic IP you allocated and then click the Associate button. Select the
EC2 instance that you would like to assign the static IP to.
That’s it. Usually within a few seconds your EC2 instance will have the new IP address
assigned. You can now configure your DNS settings to point a domain name to the IP
address.
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17. Snapshotting Your EBS
As one backup measure, you should periodically snapshot your EBS volumes. You can
create new EBS volumes using these snapshots.
In a terminal, run the following commands to lock MySQL and freeze the volume’s file
system.
mysql -uroot –pmcn09demo
flush tables with read lock;
system xfs_freeze -f /ebsvol
In the EC2 Console, select Volumes in the Navigation section. Select the volume that
you would like to snapshot, and then click the Create Snapshot button.
Select Snapshots in the Navigation section. You must wait for the status of your new
snapshot to say, completed. Once complete return to the terminal, unfreeze the file
system, and unlock the MySQL table.
system xfs_freeze -u /ebsvol
unlock tables;
exit
Note: Your website will be unresponsive during this process.
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18. Bundling Your EC2 Instance into an AMI
All this work would be lost if your instance crashed for some reason. As a way to save
your work, you can bundle your instance into a new AMI. You can then launch this AMI
as many times as you would like to have an EC2 instance that is in the exact same
configuration as when you created the AMI.
Your AWS account has X.509 certificate files available. You must copy these to your
EC2 instance in order to bundle the instance. You can find these files from the Amazon
Web Services web site, under Home Your Account Security Credentials. The file
names should be something like, cert-xxxxxx.pem and pk-xxxxxx.pem. Copy these files to
the /mnt/ directory your EC2 instance. For example, run this command on your local
machine.
scp -i mcn09.pem cert-xxxxxx.pem pk-xxxxxx.pem
root@ec2-174-129-38-75.compute-1.amazonaws.com:/mnt/
You now need to run the AWS bundle command in a terminal on your EC2 instance.
ec2-bundle-vol -e /ebsvol
-p mcn09-ami.img
-d /mnt
-r i386
-s 10240
-c /mnt/cert-xxxxxx.pem
-k /mnt/pk-xxxxxx.pem
-u <Your AWS User ID>
Parameters explained:
• -e Exclude the /ebsvol from your AMI. This was saved in the EBS snapshot.
• -p The name of the output AMI file.
• -d The directory to output the bundled AMI.
• -r This is a 32-bit AMI. (x86_64 for 64-bit AMI’s)
• -s The size of the AMI in KB. (10240 == 10GB)
• -c The path to the public X.509 cert file.
• -k The path to the private X.509 cert file.
• -u Your 12 digit AWS user ID/account #. Include dashes (xxxx-xxxx-xxxx).
Once the bundling process is complete, run the following command to upload your AMI
image.
ec2-upload-bundle -m /mnt/mcn09-ami.img.manifest.xml
-b <Bucket Name>
-a <AWS Access Key>
-s <AWS Secret Key>
Parameters explained:
• -m The name of the manifest file outputted from the bundle process.
• -b The S3 bucket in which to upload the files.
• -a Your AWS access key.
• -s Your AWS secret key.
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19. Finally you must register your AMI file. In the EC2 Console, select AMIs from the
Navigation section. Click the Register New AMI button. Enter the S3 path to your
manifest file in the form of <s3bucket>/<manifest>. For example, if you uploaded your
AMI files to a bucket, mcn09-ami-bucket, and the manifest file was named, mcn09-
ami.img.manifest.xml, you would enter, mcn09-ami-bucket/mcn09-ami.img.manifest.xml.
You should now see this new AMI in the list of available AMI’s that you can launch.
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