Introduction To Amazon Lightsail
The users can develop applications or websites using Amazon’s Virtual Private Server (VPS) named Lightsail. This software representation of VPS is also called an instance. It is an entry-level AWS service that can get used with ease. The new individuals and the people moving to the cloud with the AWS infrastructure find it more useful. The users can quickly build, migrate, and grow the applications and websites faster within a few clicks. All of it can get achieved at cost-effective prices. It is better for smaller businesses and users and offers many options for content management. It also offers many options related to instance creation and costs. Here, let’s know What is Amazon Lightsail?
Advantages Of Using Lightsail
The main motive behind the designing of Amazon lightsail was to make the projects easy.
The following are some more advantages:
- Handles Increased workloads
Amazon Lightsail exists to handle heavy traffic and workloads according to the growing ideas of the users. It can get used more efficiently by linking the projects with other AWS services.
- Makes Calculated Decisions
Lightsail makes calculated decisions for launching the server by instinctively configuring the security, networking, and access conditions.
- Provides A Strong API And High Storage
The users may extend their applications or merge them with other external applications using the powerful, flexible, and simple Lightsail API. They may also use the persistent storage backed by the Solid State Drives (SSD) to boost the performance of every project.
- More Advantages
It uses the Digital Signal Processor (DSP) that is ready to work in different embedded real-time projects and a Secure Shell (SSH) that provides security over the unsecured network through cryptography. The static IP address used by Lightsail makes it easier to have more stable and remote access over the VPN. Resource assessment, related notifications, and DNS management are some other advantages provided by Lightsail.
Uses Of Amazon Lightsail
This server exists to get started at a small scale and then grow with time.
Some of its uses include:
- Business Software
Amazon Lightsail allows the users to launch the business software to automate the business processes, make changes, and measure productivity. It may handle all the fundamental business processes in the setup. This business software can be related to finance, accounting, file sharing, storage, backup, and more. The financial and accounting application helps the users in keeping a record of their transactions, while the storage business software helps the users in being accurate with the operations and revenues.
- Web Applications
The pre-configured software stacks are also called development stacks. They provide the biosphere to use the libraries, framework, and other related tools within a few steps. Amazon Lightsail provides the development stacks such as Node.js, LAMP, MEAN, and Nginx.
- Developer And Test Environments
It provides the dev sandboxes that help to keep the tested code away from the changes made in the untested code. They might run the suspicious code for testing without affecting the tested code. These environments can later get demolished quickly after the work gets done.
- Website Creation
The pre-programmed applications provided by Lightsail reside on a noticeable part of the system’s ROM. The bundled software application is already installed and licensed on the system. The users may easily create and optimize personal websites, blogs, and e-commerce websites. Some of the pre-installed applications provided by Lightsail are Joomla, Magento, Plesk, and WordPress.
Amazon Lightsail Features
Lightsail provides all the materials related to the cloud to prove its ease of use. The numerous designed features help the users in quickly developing their projects.
The following are the materials needed to create projects on a VPS under Amazon
Web Services (AWS):
- Organized Databases
The users can launch a complete and constructed database, and Lightsail will be responsible for its maintenance. The databases include the Relational Database Management System called MySQL and the Object-relational Database Management System named Postgre. Thus, the users can have centrally managed independent databases on the cloud and improve the availability of the applications. These databases are the regular ones with extra cloud features. Such a database plan is rich with storage, memory, transfer, and processing facilities. The centrally managed databases help the users in operating the cross-functional projects and have higher security. Their scalability does not depend on the VPS. The users can create multiple instances, and the traffic to these instances gets led through the load balancer.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon light sail provides more than 90 services under AWS. AWS is the Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS). The users can use the AWS console and the Lightsail console simultaneously to get a real-time experience.
- Virtual Servers
The users do not have to run an infrastructure extensively if they use the Lightsail virtual servers. They can fully manage the backups, Windows or .NET applications, operational metrics, and the Domain Name System (DNS) within a few clicks. These virtual servers also come with a Firewall for the users to have total control over the incoming and outgoing traffic by looking at its port, protocol, and source IP address.
- Containers
Containers pack all the materials required for any environment. These materials include libraries, applications, dependencies, code, system tools, configurations, and more. The virtualized operating system for the container is called Docker. Using Docker, the users can ship the isolated and other software applications more frequently and get supported with the distributed microservices architecture.
- Object Storage
According to the concept of Object Storage, the data gets organized in separate units called Objects. The object storage architecture in Lightsail provides low latency with the highest possible durability and availability. It contains videos, images, HTML files, and other vital static content. It is cheaper and can be easily collaborated with the CDN distribution.
- Moving To EC2
More than 250 virtual sizes are present in EC2. EC2 provides far more configurations than Lightsail introduces additional costs. The Lightsail users must take the snapshot of their instances and do as mentioned in the Lightsail console.
- Easy Load Balancing
A typical load balancer lies between the client-server and the remote server. Further, it routes the traffic to the servers that can carefully handle it. Users can manage for free SSL/TLS and other certificates, while Amazon Lightsail is responsible for getting the certificates renewed. The companies generally use load balancers when the traffic increases, irrespective of the number of users.
Provisions In Every Lightsail Plan
Every Amazon Lightsail plan gets included with the following:
- SSD Storage
It is the externally attached storage that automatically gets encrypted and duplicated. The disk operates independently and safeguards the user data even after a server failure.
- IPV4 Address
The users get assigned a new IP address every time they restart the server. A limited number of IPV4 addresses get assigned to the servers. So, the customers might have to contact the supporters to grow their network.
- DNS Management
DNS is a distributed naming convention for the resources within a network. The users may create at most three DNS zones in Lightsail.
- API
Server functions and hosted domains can get managed by the lightsail API. Lightsail provides the REST API for the users to use the web services for accessing the VPS.
- SSH Terminal Access For Unix And Linux
Secure Shell provides cryptography to access the network services over the untrusted medium. It works on the concept of public and private keys. Lightsail allows the administrators to download the key to communicate with every client.
- Intuitive Management Console
It is one of the best user-friendly consoles. The users can access the resources according to their needs and implement multiple servers within minutes.
- RDP Access For Windows
Through the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), any user can access the required host remotely at any time over a network connection. The typical RAM requirement for a Remote Desktop user is 64MB.
- Server Monitoring
Server monitoring means watching the activities of the server. Thus, the users can quickly get notified about the issues in the Lightsail server.
Conclusion
Amazon Lightsail provides efficient documentation for installing the instances while that integrating them lags in making an effect. It provides a cheaper method over EC2 and pre-configured applications. The documentation may fall short of the explanation regarding the free and paid services. A wide variety of stacks, operating systems, and applications allows the users to develop their projects easily. However, it falls behind when it comes to making advanced configurations for large-scale businesses.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What Are The Operating Systems Supported By Amazon Lightsail?
Answer:
Some Operating Systems supported by Lightsail are FreeBSD, Debian, CentOS, Ubuntu, Windows Server, Amazon Linux, and OpenSUSE.
- What Are The Applications Supported By Amazon Lightsail?
Answer:
Some of the applications under Amazon Lightsail are Drupal, Ghost, Joomla!, cPanel & WHM, PrestaShop, Magento, Redmine, and more.
- What Is EC2?
Answer:
It is the Elastic Compute Cloud related to the cloud computing platform provided by Amazon. The Amazon Machine Image (AMI) must get created first to set up EC2. Amazon EC2 offers services to the clients by providing the solutions from Amazon AWS. Thus, it is Software as a Service (Saas). The free tier allows the users to run only one instance of EC2 for free.
- What Is AMI?
Answer:
The Amazon Machine Images (AMI) allows the users to create a virtual machine under EC2 and additional software applications to deliver it. The AMI provides a read-only image of the file system. It gets stored in chunks in Amazon S3, and all the related details to assemble those chunks are present in an XML manifest file.
