Amazon Web Services - Introduction to Amazon Lightsail

Amazon LightSail is an AWS service that provides the a gateway for simplified cloud hosting helping the AWS users. It act as a user-friendly cloud platform that is designed for easy hosting and management of virtual private servers (VPS). With the LightSail service users can quickly develop and manage the VPS instances with options for various operating systems.. It provides a streamlined interface and with predictable pricing.

It is an ideal solution for developers, small businesses and startups for the AWS Cloud without having any complexity association with cloud services.

What is AWS Lightsail?

Amazon Lightsail is a VPS (virtual private server) provisioning service, much like the Amazon EC2. But unlike the Amazon EC2, Lightsail doesn't have as many configurations required to boot up the VPS. Lightsail is the easiest way for developers to get started with aws. It is specifically designed to be a quick and simple solution for small scale applications at fairly low costs. For example, to host a simple small website like blogs and portfolio pages, Lightsail can be a cheap and fairly better solution as compared to EC2. You can obviously do your work in EC2 and have the website deployed from a there but as mentioned before, setting up EC2 is a longer and harder method than AWS Lightsail.

What is Amazon EC2?

Amazon EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud, it is a service by AWS where you can get the instances virtually in rental basis. you will have control of everything from the type of server, number of cpu, capacity of storage, and network configurations. It is great for both busines and developers for easy scale up and for their use case based needs. It is popular for web hosting websites, developing apps and running machine learning tasks.

AWS Lightsail CLI Commands

AWS provides a set of commands that can be run on AWS-CLI (AWS Command Line Interface) to manage your services. Much like you'd manage from your AWS Console. Following is a list of commands that can be run for managing the AWS Lightsail service.

AWS Lightsail CLI commands for Instance Management

Amaozon Lightsail - Disk Management

Amazon Lightsail - Static IP Management

Amazon Lightsail - Load Balancer Management

Amazon Lightsail - Other Operations

How to Launch and Configure Wordpress Instance in Lightsail? A Step-By-Step Guide

Step 1: Sign Up for AWS

First, navigate to the AWS Sign-In Console and log in with your AWS credentials.

• Once logged in, you will be redirected to the AWS Console Home. In the search bar, type "Lightsail" and select the AWS Lightsail service.

Step 2: Create a WordPress instance

• On clicking on the Lightsail service, you will be landed to that page. They you can see create instance button.
• Click on the create instance and choose the Wordpress as your blueprint

• Define the name of the instance and click on the create instance.

Step 3: Configure your WordPress Instance

• Once, your instance is running, click on its access management dashboard.

• Navigate to the networking tab and configure your instance's networking settings including the attaching of static IP if needed.

• Then, as a next step go the Connect tab and use the SSH to connect to your instance if you need to make any manual configurations.

Step 4: Get the admin password for your WordPress website

• On the instance management page, click on the Connect using SSH option to access your instance's command line interface.
• Try on running the command with `cat bitnami_application_password` to retrive the default password for the your wordpress admin user.

Step 5: Sign In to the WordPress Administration Dashboard

• Now, open the browser and try on accessing the wordpress with entering the public IP address or domain name of your Wordpress instance.

• You will be redirected to the Wordpress setup page where you can enter your admin username (default: user ) and the password that is obtaineed in the previous step.

• After once you sign up, you will be redirected to the Wordpress adminstration dashboard where you can start the customization of your website.

Step 6: Delete the WordPress Instance

After once, completing the usage of Wordpress Instance delete the instance, to stop the billing of the AWS Lightsail service.

Features of AWS Lightsail

The following are the features of AWS Lightsail:

• Quick and simple setup: Setting up  AWS Lightsail instance is a fairly simple task as compared to running an ECS or EC2 service.
  • Can be provisioned from AWS console.
  • Can be directly set up from AWS LightSail.
  • Can be managed and set-up from AWS CLI.
• Cheaper: AWS Lightsail is cheaper as compared to EC2 and ECS service. Implying that it won't offer as many features and as much configuration freedom as an EC2 instance.
• Multiple Instances: You can run multiple instances of AWS Lightsail and have them communicate with each other to make a fairly complex use case.
• Connection to other services: AWS Lightsail can connect to other AWS Resources much like any other EC2 instance.
• Less configuration: AWS Lightsail instance can be provisioned from a single page of configurations. It also has some pre-configured settings to support faster deployments. Following are some of the commonly used website configurations provided by AWS Lightsail:
  • WordPress
  • WordPress MultiSite
  • PHP-5 LAMP Server
  • PHP-7 LAMP Server
  • Node.js
  • MEAN
  • Nginx

AWS Lightsail vs Amazon EC2: What are the differences?

The following are the differences of AWS Lightsail and Amazon EC2:

AWS Lightsail vs Beanstalk: What are the differences?

The following are the differences of AWS Lightsail and AWS Beanstalk:

Advantages of Amazon Lightsail

The following are the advantages of Amazon Lightsail:

• Amazon Lightsail is designed to be easy to use, with a simple setup process and a user-friendly interface.
• Amazon Lightsail is a cost-effective option for smaller websites and applications, with low upfront and predictable monthly costs.
• Lightsail provides a secure environment with features like SSL certificates, firewall management, and automatic backups.
• Lightsail provides fast, reliable performance with low latency and high throughput.

Disadvantages of Amazon Lightsail

The following are the disadvantages of Amazon Lightsail:

• Lightsail's preconfigured services may limit customization options for more complex or unique applications.
• The resource limitations of Lightsail may not be suitable for larger or resource-intensive applications.
• Lightsail's managed services may not be as flexible as other AWS services, such as EC2 and EBS.
• Lightsail may not have all the features and functionality available with other AWS services.

AWS Lightsail Pricing

The following is the pricing structure for AWS Lightsail:

Amazon Lightsail Use Cases

The following are the use cases of Amazon Lightsail:

• Small Websites and Applications: Lightsail is ideal for small websites and applications that have low resource requirements and need a cost-effective solution.
• Development and Test Environments: Lightsail can be used as a development and test environment, as it provides preconfigured services and easy setup.
• Database Hosting: Lightsail can host relational databases, like MySQL and PostgreSQL, making it a good option for small databases.
• Static Websites: Lightsail can be used to host static websites, with low resource requirements and fast performance.