How do I migrate my website, mySQL, php pages, files, settings etc to Amazon EC2?

Question

Hi I am completely new to EC2 and new to server admin and have been working on a windows 2003 server with our current web application made with PHP pages, mySQL database, and serving image files from a single standalone windows 2003 server.

I would like to know how to go about 'packing up' our server and installing it as an image on Amazon Web Services.

Is there an easy way to do this or do I need to rebuild on amazon. Is there a base Windows image with PHP & MySQL already installed?

I have gone through the process of signing up and have connected to server using Remote Desktop Connection. I am used to working with server files in dreamweaver, how would i go about using dreamweaver to connect to EC2 server?

Anyone know of some good tutorials for this?

many thanks

Answer 1

This is the list of Windows Images. I couldn't find one with what you are asking, so you need to start from an existing one (better to start with one that has IIS already installed) and then install PHP and MySQL yourself. Then you could save this as your base image and use it for all your subsequent deployments.

However, the infrastructure you are describing doesn't fit well with a Cloud environment. At first, MySQL or any other relational database isn't a suitable persistence mechanism. It is not guaranteed that your instance will not go away, and if that does happen, then all data stored in the local file system will be lost. You can only safely use MySQL by employing Elastic Block Storage. This is another consideration for you.

For the same reason, it is not recommended to use a simple image to serve files. Amazon offers S3 service, which is great on this respect.

As a conclusion, deploying in a Cloud environment is different than deploying in dedicated servers. You need a different architecture, not just to reproduce your installations.

Answer 2

You can purchase one of my pre-canned amazon ami's and install what you need on top of it. The pricing is reasonable. I have built out three so far and I have started a company dedicated to migrating people (and companies) into the cloud. Incidentally, because of the small footprint for mysql, apache etc..., you can install these on the sysvol and rebundle the image without the need for an EBS volume. Here are my links. Main site : http://www.officetocloud.com PAID AMI's link: www.officetocloud.com/amiportal.html

My contact information is [email protected]

Take care.