Drupal on Virtualised Infrastructure - AWS - Generic VPS - etc.

1. Drupal on Virtualised Infrastructure- AWS- Generic VPS- etc. Charles CorrigaN – 19th March 2013

2. It started with a KICKSTARTER campaign • http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/the-guide-to-glorantha • Wild success, raised much more than expected! • Attracted a lot of traffic to the website • Shared hosting provider told us we were using too much CPU • After warnings, provider cut our service for 24 hours • We needed an alternative. Quickly!

3. Rescued by Drupal planet • Just before that happened, I flagged a blog posting by Randall Knutson • http://www.leveltendesign.com/blog/randall-knutson/create-high-performance-drupal-server-just-30-month • I ended up not following his recipe exactly 

4. What I will cover • Choosing a provider • Creating a server in AWS • Choosing an operating system • Installing and configuring the software stack on Ubuntu

5. Definitions • Virtualisation • Partitioning a ‘large’ physical resource in such a way that a user of a virtual partition appears to have full access to and control of a smaller physical resource. • Computer – CPU + Memory • Storage • and much more, outside the scope of this discussion • VPS – Virtual Private Server • AWS – Amazon Web Services

6. providerS • Acquia– https://www.acquia.com/products-services/acquia-cloud – Drupal specialists, value add layered on AWS • AWS (Amazon Web Services) – http://aws.amazon.com/– datacenter in Singapore • Softlayer– http://www.softlayer.com/cloudlayer/ – datacenter in Singapore • Azure (Microsoft) – http://www.windowsazure.com/ – Windows, datacenter in Singapore • Rackspace – http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/overview/ • many more

7. What we decided • We ended up choosing a cheap provider, local to my friend’s business and home • A2 Hosting – http://www.a2hosting.com/

8. AWS – Amazon Web Services • Amazon provide a number of different virtualisation services via the web • The base virtual computing service is EC2 or Elastic Cloud Compute • Can create configurations from basic up to multiple load-balanced servers • A basic EC2 instance can service a moderately loaded Drupal site • costs around US$30 / SG$40 per month • the first month should be free • Getting started documentation • http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EC2_GetStarted.html

9. Creating a VPS with AWS • Sign up to AWS at http://aws.amazon.com/ – have your credit card ready! • Go to the EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home • Choose a region by price (USA regions can be slightly cheaper);or by location (close to users for performance or legal reasons) • Click on the “Launch Instance” button • Name the virtual server (important if you will have multiple servers) • Create (or re-use) an SSH key pair to allow you to login to the server • Choose the base operating system image (the Launch Configuration) • Click Continue • Optionally click Edit Details for advanced settings • Click Launch

10. EC2 – Create Instance

11. EC2 – Create Instance

12. Your new Virtual Server • A short while later (half a minute), your new server should be up and running. • More to do, more to do… • Set up and assign a fire-wall policy, through Security Groups • If you want a publicly accessible server, create and assign an Elastic IPs address • If you want additional ‘disks’, create and assign volume(s) in Elastic Block Store • Connect to the new server, using SSH and the Key Pair generated earlier • Install the additional packages and configure services

13. Choosing an Operating system

14. AMI – Pre-configured application stacks

15. Setting up An Ubuntu server – Basics

16. Setting up An Ubuntu server – Basics 2

17. Ubuntu 12.04 “LAMP” stack packages

18. Advice: Setting up AN UBUNTU Server • Try to locate Ubuntu packages rather than installing software from other sources • Installing from other sources may compromise your ability to cleanly upgrade the operating system in future, with potential security implications • Exceptions: Drupal  and other web-facing packages written in scripting languages • Try to avoid directly updating the settings files created by Ubuntu • For major packages, Ubuntu provides simple ways to safely override settings • Directly updating settings files may compromise your ability to cleanly upgrade the operating system in future, possibly leading to your important changed settings being lost during an upgrade

19. Ubuntu Possible packages - 1

20. Ubuntu possible packages - 2

21. Ubuntu Possible packages - 3

22. PHP • Create files with settings overrides in /etc/php5/conf.d • Typical PHP overrides – exact values depend on your requirements • upload_max_filesize = 4M • memory_limit = 256M • include_path = ".:/usr/share/php“ • APC settings • apc.shm_size = 64M ; add 48 - 64M per additional Drupal site • apc.apc.stat = 0 • Memcache settings • memcache.hash_strategy="consistent"

23. Apache • Enable modules by adding symbolic links in /etc/apache2/mods-enabledto the required file(s) from /etc/apache2/mods-available • There may be 2 settings files for 1 module: eg. alias.load and alias.conf • Remove unwanted modules by removing the link(s) in/etc/apache2/mods-enabled • Create your site definitions in /etc/apache2/sites-availableand enable the site by creating a symbolic link in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled • Particularly useful when creating several virtual hosts • Create files with settings overrides in /etc/apache2/conf.d

24. Nearly there • Install uploadprogress; type the following commands • pecl install uploadprogress • echo 'extension=uploadprogress.so' > /etc/php5/conf.d/uploadprogress.ini • I haven’t found an Ubuntu package for this • The 2nd line is an example of how to cleanly set up a PHP override • Reboot the server • Start setting up Drupal in the default location of /var/www • After Drupal is set up and confirmed working…

25. Enable memcache • Drupal 6: add the following lines to sites/default/settings.php • $conf['cache_inc'] = 'sites/all/modules/memcache/memcache.inc'; • $conf['memcache_key_prefix'] = 'something_unique'; • Drupal 7: add the following lines to sites/default/settings.php • $conf['cache_backends'][] = 'sites/all/modules/memcache/memcache.inc'; • $conf['cache_default_class'] = 'MemCacheDrupal'; • $conf['memcache_key_prefix'] = 'something_unique'; Only important if you are hosting multiple sites

26. Web administration • Webmin– http://webmin.com/ • Not packaged • Moderately complex to install • More focused on server administration • ISPConfig – http://www.ispconfig.org/ • Not packaged • Difficult to work out and install all dependencies • Very complex to install, required a lot of research and hand editing to complete • Easier to use for common tasks, such as to create virtualised email and websites within the virtual server

27. Back-ups • I have yet to do this correctly! • I am currently only backing up database and keeping the backups on the virtual server! • Drupal Planet and Randall Knutson to the rescue again • http://www.leveltendesign.com/blog/randall-knutson/yet-another-simple-amazon-s3-backup-script-drupal

28. Questions and Discussion

29. apt-get install apache2 mysql-client mysql-server libapache2-mod-php5 php5-cli php5-mysql memcacheddrush php5-curl php5-gd php5-geoip php5-imagick php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-memcached php-apcawstats curl diff geoip-database git-core less patch make phpmyadminphp-pear unzip vim webalizerwget