In 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) began offering IT infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services — now commonly known as cloud computing.    Benefits of AWS include low, pay-as-you-go pricing with no up-front expenses or long-term commitments, a massive global cloud infrastructure as well as a secure, durable technology platform with industry-recognized certifications and audits.

Recently, Amazon released an entry-level “micro-instance” option for their popular EC2 cloud computing product line.  This small, low cost instance is a perfect solution for small WordPress developers needing to host only a handful of sites.   One major challenge of cloud computing is the deep expertise required to set up and efficiently manage the services.  Therefore, AWS has been out of reach for many less-technical WordPress developers.   Here at RipCloud we are working to reduce the complexity and provide simple, turn-key options to deploy and manage  AWS-optimized versions of WordPress on the cloud.   Follow us on Twitter to be the first to know of our announcements!

WordPress Directory Location

It seems that Bitnami is using a standard LAMP setup for all their AMIs then simply adding a directory for each application directory.  Therefore, the default location for the WordPress install was domain.com/wordpress.  Not ideal if you want to actually build a business site or multi-site install of WordPress.  Again, I’m not the apache guru on the team so it it took me a few hours of mucking with apache configurations to get the WordPress directory as my default.

Apache Configuration

It appears that Bitnami uses the same apache configuration for every instance size vs optimizing for micro, small, medium, etc…  I ran into a few issues with Apache starting up too many http processes for a micro instance and had to configure it specifically for a micro instance.

Apache / MySql Contention

The dynamic nature of WordPress requires some significant MySql usage and eventually the contention on the micro instance made it almost unusable with the Bitnami AMI.   Just poking around in the WP-admin tool eventually used all my CPU % and ramped up the CPU ST (steal time) to 80%-90%.  While IBM defines Steal Time as “the percentage of time a virtual CPU waits for a real CPU while the hypervisor is servicing another virtual processor.”   Some users claim this is from other clients on the same machine stealing their CPU, but it’s actually how many cycles were re-claimed by the hyper­vi­sor because the vir­tual machine has reached the max­i­mum allo­cated num­ber of proces­sor units of the under­ly­ing proces­sor core.   Basically, you’ve used up all the processing power allocated.

Keep in mind that this is a load of only a few hundred users per day.  Generally I could resolve the issue by restarting apache and MySql and the load would drop temporarily.    The long term solution here is likely some MySql tweaks and caching to optimize for the heavy load WordPress places on MySyql.  Unfortunately those are beyond my ability so I decided to upgrade from a micro instance to a small instance to see if that resolved it.

Instance Upgrade

Initially the upgrade from the micro instance to  a small instance via the BitNami interface seemed to go smoothly.  It did require me to start paying Bitnami $30/mo as I upgraded from the free micro instance to the 3-server plan that supports the small instance.  Therefore my overall costs (including EC2) jumped from $15/mo to >$80/mo.

Unfortunately when the instance was upgraded it changed the WordPress site locations in MySQL databases so I could no longer access or log in to my WordPress site.  I had to get one of our technical gurus to come in and update all those settings in the MySql database.  I believe this was done via the “updateip” file in the WordPress directory, likely to  resolve any issues in case the IP address had changed during the upgrade process.

Summary

I’ve seen less MySql contention on the small instance but I still believe the micro should have been able to handle sites with a couple hundred users if optimized well.

I am actually a big fan of the Amazon Cloud and the idea of the AWS marketplace to create a simple “WordPress appliance” for non-techies like me.  There is no reason why it should be this difficult nor cost me $80/mo for a simple cloud-based WordPress solution.

As an entrepreneur, I smell an opportunity.  Therefore, we are working on building our own WordPress AMI.  Follow us on Twitter fore more information.

]]> http://www.ripcloud.com/bitnami-wordpress-ami-my-challenges/feed 0 http://www.ripcloud.com/wordpress-amazon-cloud-aws?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-amazon-cloud-aws http://www.ripcloud.com/wordpress-amazon-cloud-aws#comments Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:35:21 +0000 ripcloudBiz http://www.ripcloud.com/?p=72 If you’ve been considering moving your WordPress installation to the cloud, now may be the perfect opportunity. Amazon recently announced a “micro-instance” EC2 option which is a perfect solution for a small wordpress installation. Purchase a 3-year reserved instance and your total hosting could cost less than $10/mo. As a new customer on the Amazon Cloud you may even qualify for one free year of an EC2 micro instance.

Of course you’ll need to have a bit of a technical backgroud if you plan to install WordPress on your own using the famous WordPress 5 minute install but you’ll need to know how to SSH using private keys as well as some basic MySQL commands.   Alternately, choose a WordPress AMI to create your WordPress installation and get you up quickly.

Tired of moving your WordPress install each time you need more processing power or space? Not a problem on the cloud. If you choose a good WordPress Amazon Machine Instance (AMI) provider then you can easily upgrade your AWS instance from a micro to small, medium or large by adjusting with the touch of your mouse.

A WordPress AMI is specially designed to to install WordPress as a “virtual appliance” on an EC2 instance.  Basically, this avoids the requirement for the user to install WordPress.   Our RipCloud WordPress AMI is optimized for the Amazon Cloud for by utilizing caching, nginx and security enhancements.  The install is offers simple hooks into the Amazon cloud such as S3, simple email service (SES), alerting and more.