Amazon LightSail 101

What is a Lightsail instance? (4)

1) A Lightsail instance is a virtual private server (VPS) that lives in the AWS Cloud. 2) Use your Lightsail instances to store your data, run your code, and build web-based applications or websites. 3) Your instances can connect to each other and to other AWS resources through both public (Internet) and private (VPC) networking. 4) You can create, manage, and connect easily to instances right from the Lightsail console.

What is a static IP? (2)

1) A static IP is a fixed, public IP that is dedicated to your Lightsail account. You can assign a static IP to an instance, replacing its public IP. 2) If you decide to replace your instance with another one, you can reassign the static IP to the new instance. In this way, you don't have to reconfigure any external systems (like DNS records) to point to a new IP every time you want to replace your instance.

What are tags? (3)

1) A tag is a label that you assign to a Lightsail resource. 2) Each tag consists of a key and a value, both of which you define. 3) A tag value is optional, so you can choose to create "key-only" tags for filtering resources in the Lightsail console.

How do I create a Lightsail instance? (4)

1) After logging in to Lightsail, you can use the Lightsail console, command line interface (CLI), or API to create and manage instances. 2) The first time you log in to the console, choose Create Instance. 3) The create instance page is where you can choose the software, location, and name for your instance. 4) Once you choose Create, your new instance will spin up automatically within minutes.

What is a Lightsail plan? (3)

1) Also referred to as a bundle, a Lightsail plan includes a virtual server with a fixed amount of memory (RAM) and compute (vCPUs), SSD-based storage (disks), and a free data transfer allowance. 2) Lightsail plans also offer static IP addresses (5 per account) and DNS management (3 domain zones per account). 3) Lightsail plans are charged on an hourly, on-demand basis, so you only pay for a plan when you're using it.

What is Amazon Lightsail? (3)

1) Amazon Lightsail is the easiest way to get started with AWS for developers, small businesses, students, and other users who need a simple virtual private server (VPS) solution. 2) Lightsail provides developers compute, storage, and networking capacity and capabilities to deploy and manage websites and web applications in the cloud. 3) Lightsail includes everything you need to launch your project quickly - a virtual machine, SSD-based storage, data transfer, DNS management, and a static IP - for a low, predictable monthly price.

What are automatic snapshots? (3)

1) Automatic snapshots are a way to schedule daily snapshots of your Linux/Unix instances in Amazon Lightsail. 2) You can pick a time of the day, and Lightsail will automatically take a snapshot for you each day at the time you chose and always keep your seven most recent automatic snapshots. 3) Enabling snapshots is free - you only pay for the actual storage used by your snapshots.

What are the differences between manual snapshots and automatic snapshots? (3)

1) Automatic snapshots cannot be tagged or exported directly to Amazon EC2. 2) However, automatic snapshots can be copied and converted into manual snapshots. 3) To copy an automatic snapshot into a manual one, choose Keep from the automatic snapshot's context menu to copy it as a manual snapshot.

What are Availability Zones? (3)

1) Availability Zones are collections of data centers that run on physically distinct, independent infrastructure and are engineered to be highly reliable. 2) Common points of failure such as generators and cooling equipment are not shared between Availability Zones. 3) Additionally, Availability Zones are physically separate, so that even extremely uncommon disasters such as fires, tornados, or flooding can affect only a single Availability Zone.

What are DNS records? (3)

1) DNS is a globally distributed service that translates human readable names like www.example.com into numeric IP addresses, like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to each other. 2) With Lightsail, you can easily map your registered domain names such as photos.example.com to the public IPs of your Lightsail instances. In this way, when users type human readable names like example.com into their browsers, Lightsail automatically translates the address into the IP of the instance you want to direct your users to. Each of these translations is referred to as a DNS query. 3) It's important to know that in order to use a domain in Lightsail, you must first register it. You can register new domains using Amazon Route 53, or your preferred DNS registrar.

How does Lightsail know if my target instances are healthy?

1) During load balancer creation, you will be asked to specify a path (a common file or webpage URL) for Lightsail to ping. 2) If the target instance can be reached using this path, then Lightsail will route traffic there. 3) If one of your target instances is unresponsive, Lightsail will not route traffic to that instance. 4) You can update the Health check path if needed in the load balancer management screens.

How do I use IPs in Lightsail? (3)

1) Each Lightsail instance automatically gets a private IP address and a public IP address. 2) You can use the private IP to transmit data between Lightsail instances and AWS resources privately, for free. You can use the public IP to connect to your instance from the Internet, such as through a registered domain name or through an SSH or RDP connection from your local computer. 3) You can also attach a static IP to the instance, which substitutes the public IP with an IP address that doesn't change even if the instance is stopped and started.

What happens to my target instances when I delete my load balancer? (2)

1) If you delete your load balancer, the attached target instances will continue to run normally and will appear in the Lightsail console as regular Lightsail instances. 2) Please note that you will likely need to update your DNS records to direct traffic to one of your former target instances after you delete the load balancer.

How can I back up my instances?

1) If you want to back up your data, you can use the Lightsail console or API to take a snapshot of your instance. 2) If there is a failure or bad code deployment, you can later use your instance snapshot to create a brand new instance. 3) Amazon recommend stopping your instance temporarily when taking a snapshot, to ensure your data is complete and not corrupted in any way.

What happens to my certificate when I delete my load balancer? (2)

1) If your load balancer is deleted, your certificate is deleted as well. 2) If you need to use a certificate for the same domain(s) in the future, you will need to request and validate a new certificate.

How can I back up my managed database?

1) Lightsail backs up your data automatically and allows restore of this data from a specific point in time to a new database. Automatic backup is a free service for your database but only saves the last 7 days of data. If you delete your database, all automatic backup records are deleted and point in time restore is no longer possible. To retain backups of data after deleting your database or to retain a backup for more than 7 days in the past, use manual snapshots. 2) You can take manual snapshots of your Lightsail managed databases from the database management pages. Manual snapshots contain all the data from your database and can be used as backups for data that you want to store permanently. You can also use manual snapshots to create a new, larger database or to switch between Standard and High Availability plans. Manual snapshots are stored until you delete them and are billed at $0.05 USD/GB-month.

What availability can I expect from Lightsail block storage? (4)

1) Lightsail block storage is designed to be highly available and reliable. 2) Each attached disk is automatically replicated within its Availability Zone to protect you from component failure. 3) Although Lightsail does not guarantee SLAs, Lightsail block storage disks are designed for 99.99% availability and for an annual failure rate of less than 0.2%. 4) Lightsail also supports disk snapshots to allow regular backups of your data.

What can I do with Lightsail block storage? (3)

1) Lightsail block storage provides additional storage volumes (called "attached disks" in Lightsail) that you can attach to your Lightsail instance, similar to an individual hard drive. 2) Attached disks are useful for applications or software that need to separate out specific data from their core service and to protect application data in case of a failure or other issue with your instance and system disk. 3) Attached disks offers consistent performance and low latency needed for applications or software that frequently access their stored data. Lightsail block storage uses solid-state drives (SSD). This type of block storage balances a low price and good performance and is intended to support the vast majority of workloads that run on Lightsail. 3) For customers with applications that require sustained IOPS performance, high amounts of throughput per disk, or that are running large databases like MongoDB, Cassandra, etc., we recommend using EC2 with GP2 or Provisioned IOPS SSD storage instead of Lightsail.

How do I validate my certificate?

1) Lightsail certificates are domain validated, meaning that you need to provide proof of identity by validating that you own or have access to your website's domain before the certificate can be provisioned by the certificate authority. 2) When you request a new certificate, Lightsail will prompt you to add a CNAME to the DNS zone(s) of the domain or domains you are validating. 3) You will add this CNAME wherever you currently manage your DNS zones - either Lightsail DNS management or an external DNS hosting provider (e.g., Route 53, GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.). Once your certificate is validated, you can remove the CNAME record from your DNS zone, if desired.

How do Lightsail instances perform? (3)

1) Lightsail instances are specifically engineered by AWS for web servers, developer environments, and small database use cases. Such workloads don't use the full CPU often or consistently, but occasionally need a performance burst. 2) Lightsail uses burstable performance instances that provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the additional ability to burst above the baseline. This design enables you to get the performance you need, when you need it, while protecting you from the variable performance or other common side effects that you might typically experience from over-subscription in other environments. 3) If you need highly configurable environments and instances with consistently high CPU performance for applications such as video encoding or HPC applications, we recommend you use Amazon EC2.

What can I do with Lightsail load balancers? (5)

1) Lightsail load balancers allow you to build highly available websites and applications. 2) By distributing traffic across instances in different Availability Zones and pointing traffic to only healthy target instances, Lightsail load balancers reduce the risk of your application going down due to an issue with your instance or to a datacenter outage. 3) With Lightsail load balancers and multiple target instances, your website or application can also accommodate increases in web traffic and maintain good performance for your visitors during peak load times. 4) In addition, you can use Lightsail load balancers to build secure applications and accept HTTPS traffic. Lightsail takes the complexity out of requesting, provisioning, and maintaining SSL/TLS certificates. 5) The built-in certificate management requests and renews certificates on your behalf and adds the certificate to your load balancer automatically.

How does my Lightsail load balancer deal with traffic spikes? (3)

1) Lightsail load balancers scale automatically to handle traffic spikes to your application without you having to manually adjust them. 2) If your application experiences a transient spike in traffic, your Lightsail load balancer will automatically scale and continue to efficiently direct traffic to your Lightsail instances. 3) While your Lightsail load balancer is designed to easily manage traffic spikes, applications that consistently experience very high volume levels of traffic may experience performance degradation or throttling. 3) If you expect your application consistently to manage more than 5 GB/hour of data or consistently to have a large number of connections (>400k new connections/hour, >15k active, concurrent connections), we recommend using Amazon EC2 with Application Load Balancing instead.

What can I do with Lightsail's managed databases? (2)

1) Lightsail managed databases provide an easy, low maintenance way to store your data in the cloud. You can run Lightsail databases either as a new databases or by migrating from an existing on-premises or hosted database to Lightsail. 2) They can also allow you to scale your application to accept larger amounts of traffic and more intensive loads, by separating out your database into a dedicated instance. Lightsail databases are especially useful for stateful applications - like WordPress and most common CMSs - that need data to be kept in sync when you scale beyond a single instance. Lightsail databases can be paired with a Lightsail load balancer and two or more Lightsail instances to create a powerful, scaled application. By using Lightsail High Availability plans, you can also create add redundancy to your database, helping to ensure high uptime for your application.

How do I connect to a Lightsail instance? (2)

1) Lightsail offers a 1-click secure connection to your instance's terminal right from your browser, supporting SSH access for Linux/Unix-based instances and RDP access for Windows-based instances. To use 1-click connections, launch your instance management screens, click Connect using SSH or Connect using RDP, and a new browser window opens and automatically connects to your instance. 2) If you prefer to connect to your Linux/Unix-based instance using your own client, Lightsail will do the SSH key storing and management work for you, and provide you with a secure key to use in your SSH client.

What software can I run on my instance? (3)

1) Lightsail offers a range of operating system and application templates that are automatically installed when you create a new Lightsail instance. 2) Application templates include WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, Magento, Redmine, LAMP, Nginx (LEMP), MEAN, Node.js, and more. 3) You can install additional software on your instances by using the in-browser SSH or your own SSH client.

Why would I want to upgrade to EC2? (2)

1) Lightsail offers you an easy way to run and scale a wide set of cloud-based applications, at a bundled, predictable, and low price. Lightsail also automatically sets up your cloud environment configurations such as networking and access management. 2) Upgrading to EC2 allows you to run your application on a wider set of instance types, ranging from virtual machines with more CPU power, memory, and networking capabilities, to specialized or accelerated instances with FPGAs and GPUs. In addition, EC2 performs less automatic management and set-up, allowing you more control over how you configure your cloud environment, such as your VPC.

What do Lightsail plans cost?

1) Lightsail plans are billed on an on-demand hourly rate, so you pay only for what you use. 2) For every Lightsail plan you use, we charge you the fixed hourly price, up to the maximum monthly plan cost. 3) The least expensive Lightsail plan starts at $0.0047 USD/hour ($3.50 USD/month). 4) Lightsail plans that include a Windows Server license start at $0.01075 USD/hour ($8 USD/month).

How do I renew my certificate? (3)

1) Lightsail provides managed renewal for your SSL/TLS certificates. 2) This means that Lightsail tries to renew the certificates automatically before they expire with no action required from you. 3) Your Lightsail certificate must be actively associated load balancer before it can be automatically renewed.

What is the difference between key-value and key-only Tags? (3)

1) Lightsail tags are key-value pairs, allowing you to organize resources such as instances across different categories, e.g. project:Blog, project:Game, project:Test. 2) This allows you full control across all use cases such as resource organization, bill reporting, and access management. 3) The Lightsail console also allows you to tag your resources with key-only tags for quick filtering in the console.

What is the difference between key-value and key-only Tags? (3)

1) Lightsail tags are key-value pairs, allowing you to organize resources such as instances across different categories, e.g. project:Blog, project:Game, project:Test. 2) This allows you full conttol across all use cases such as resource organization, bill reporting, and access management. 3) The Lightsail console also allows you to tag your resources with key-only tags for quick filtering in the console.

What are Lightsail's managed databases? (2)

1) Lightsail's managed databases are instances that are dedicated to running databases, instead of other workloads like webserver, mail server, etc. A Lightsail database can contain multiple user-created databases, and you can access it by using the same tools and applications that you use with a stand-alone database. Lightsail maintains the security and health of your database's underlying infrastructure and operating system, so that you can run a database without deep expertise in infrastructure management. 2) Like regular Lightsail instances, Lightsail databases come with a fixed amount of memory, computing power, and SSD based storage in their plans that you can scale up over time. Lightsail will automatically install and configure your chosen database for you upon creation.

Does my disk need to be attached to an instance? (2)

1) No, you can choose not to attach a disk to an instance. The disk will remain in your account in an unattached state. 2) There is no difference in price if your disk is not attached to an instance.

Round-Robin Algorithm? (2)

1) Round-robin is one of the algorithms employed by process and network schedulers in computing. 2) As the term is generally used, time slices are assigned to each process in equal portions and in circular order, handling all processes without priority.

How can I use Lightsail-provisioned certificates?

1) SSL/TLS certificates are used to establish the identity of your website or application and secure connections between browsers and your website. 2) Lightsail provides a signed certificate to use with your load balancer, and the load balancer provides SSL/TLS termination before routing verified traffic to your target instances over the secure AWS network. 3) Lightsail certificates can only be used with Lightsail load balancers, not with individual Lightsail instances.

What is session persistence? (3)

1) Session persistence enables the load balancer to bind a visitor's session to a specific target instance. 2) This ensures that all requests from the user during the session are sent to the same target instance. 3) Lightsail supports session persistence for applications that require visitors to hit the same target instances for data consistency. For example, many applications that require user authentication can benefit from using session persistence. You can turn on session persistence for specific load balancer from the load balancer management screens after creation.

What are snapshots? (5)

1) Snapshots are point-in-time backups of instances, databases, or block storage disks. 2) You can create a snapshot of your resources at any time, or you can enable automatic snapshots on instances and disks to have Lightsail create snapshots for you. 3) You can use snapshots as baselines to create new resources or to back up your data. A snapshot contains all of the data that is needed to restore your resource (from the moment when the snapshot was taken). 4) When you restore a resource by creating it from a snapshot, the new resource begins as an exact replica of the original resource that was used to create the snapshot. 5) You can manually take snapshots of your Lightsail instances, disks, and databases, or you can use automatic snapshots to instruct Lightsail to take daily snapshots of your instances and disks automatically.

How can I tag my Lightsail snapshots? (2)

1) The Lightsail console automatically tags manual snapshots with the same tags as its parent resource. 2) However, tags are not automatically copied over from a resource to its automatic snapshots. If you use the Lightsail API to create a snapshot, you can choose the tags for the snapshot yourself. Important: Database snapshots tags are not currently included in billing reports (cost allocation tags).

How are attached disks different than the storage included in my Lightsail plan? (8)

1) The system disk included with your Lightsail plan is your instance's root device. 2) If you terminate your instance, the system disk will be deleted as well. 3) If you experience an instance failure, the system disk could be impacted. 4) You also cannot detach your system disk or back it up separately from your instance. 5) Data stored on an attached disk persists independently of the instance. 6) Attached disks can be detached and moved between instances and can be backed up independently from an instance using disk snapshot. 7) To protect your data, we recommend that you use your Lightsail instance's system disk only for temporary data. 8) For data requiring a higher level of durability, Amazon recommend using attached disks and regularly backing up your disk using disk or instance snapshots.

How can I change the domains associated with my certificate? (2)

1) To change the domains (add/delete) associated with your certificate, you will need to resubmit the certificate and revalidate your ownership of the domain(s). 2) Follow the steps in the certificate management screens to regenerate your certificate and add or remove domains when prompted.

How do I sign up for Lightsail? (2)

1) To start using Lightsail, choose Get Started and log in. 2) You use your Amazon Web Services account to access Lightsail; if you don't already have one, you'll be prompted to create one.

What is Upgrade to EC2? (2)

1) Upgrade to EC2 is a feature that allows you to create a copy of your Lightsail instance in Amazon EC2. 2) When you upgrade to EC2, you can pick among the wide set of instance types, configurations, and pricing models that EC2 offers, and have even more fine-tuned control over your networking, storage, and compute environment.

What is the difference between stopping and deleting my instance? (5)

1) When you stop your instance, it is powered down at its current state and is available for you to start again at any time. 2) Stopping your instance will release its public IP, so it is recommended that you use static IPs for instances that must retain the same IP after they stop. 3) When you delete your instance, you are performing a destructive action. 4) Unless you have taken an instance snapshot, all of your instance data will be lost and you cannot recover it again. 5) The instance's public and private IPs will also be released. If you were using a static IP with that instance, the static IP is detached, but remains in your account.

Does Lightsail block storage offer encryption? (2)

1) Yes, to help keep your data secure, all Lightsail attached disks and disk snapshots are encrypted at rest by default, using keys that Lightsail manages on your behalf. 2) Lightsail also provides encryption of data as it moves between Lightsail instances and attached disks.

Does Lightsail offer an API? (1)

1) Yes. Everything you do in the Lightsail console is backed by a publically available API. Learn how to install and use the Lightsail CLI and API. http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/lightsail/index.html?fid=3BE5EA8FA64943AD-0284EED1954F5F15

Can I manage firewall settings for my instance? (1)

1) Yes. You can control the data traffic for your instances by using the Lightsail firewall. From the Lightsail console, you can set rules about which ports of your instance are publicly accessible for different types of traffic.

How many domains and subdomains can I add to my certificate? (1)

1) You can add up to 10 domains or subdomains per certificate. 2) Lightsail does not currently support wild card domains.

How do I back up my attached disk? (2)

1) You can back up your disk by taking a disk snapshot. 2) You can also backup your entire instance and any attached disks by taking an instance snapshot.

How can I connect Lightsail instances to other resources in my AWS account? (3)

1) You can connect your Lightsail instances to VPC resources in your AWS account privately, by using VPC peering. Just choose Enable VPC peering on your Lightsail account page, and Lightsail does the work for you. 2) Once VPC peering is enabled, you can address other AWS resources in your default AWS VPC by using their private IPs. 3) Note that you need to have a default VPC set up in your AWS account in order for VPC peering with Lightsail to work. AWS accounts created before December 2013 do not have a default VPC, and you will need to set one up.

What are the Lightsail service limits? (3)

1) You can currently create up to 20 Lightsail instances, 5 static IPs, 3 DNS zones, 20 TB of attached block storage, and 5 load balancers in a Lightsail account. 2) You can also generate up to 20 certificates during each calendar year. If you need to increase your account limit for instances, static IPs, block storage, or certificates in your account, please open a case with customer service. 3) Amazon do not currently support increases for DNS zones or load balancers.

What can I do with Lightsail? (3)

1) You can get preconfigured virtual private server plans that include everything to easily deploy and manage your application. 2) Lightsail is best suited to projects that require a few virtual private servers and users who prefer a simple management interface. 3) Common use cases for Lightsail include running websites, web applications, blogs, e-commerce sites, simple software, and more.

How do I scale up or down my managed database? (2)

1) You can scale up your database by taking a snapshot of your database and creating a new, larger database plan from snapshot or by creating a new, larger database using the emergency restore feature. 2) You can also switch from Standard to High Availability plans and vice versa using either method. You cannot scale down your database.

Can I use load balancers with instances in different AWS Regions or different Availability Zones? (3)

1) You cannot use load balancers with instances running in different AWS Regions. 2) You can, however, use target instances across different Availability Zones with your load balancer. 3) In fact, we recommend that you distribute your target instances across Availability Zones to maximize the availability of your application.

How large can I make my attached disk? (1)

Each attached disk can be up to 16 TB.

What resources can be tagged? (7)

Lightsail current supports tagging for the following resources: 1) Instances (Linux and Windows) 2) Block storage disks 3) Load balancers 4) Databases 5) DNS zones 6) Instance, disk, and 7) database snapshots Manual snapshots also support tags and are automatically given the same tags as the source resource. You can edit these tags when you use a snapshot to create a new instance, disk, or database.

What operating systems can I use with Amazon Lightsail? (6)

Lightsail currently supports 6 Linux or Unix-like distributions - 1) Amazon Linux, 2) Debian, 3) FreeBSD, 4) OpenSUSE, and 5) Ubuntu - and 6) 2 Windows Server versions - 2012 R2 and 2016.

In which regions is Lightsail available? (13)

Lightsail is currently available in all the Availability Zones in the following AWS Regions: 1) US East (N. Virginia) 2) US East (Ohio) 3) US West (Oregon) 4) Canada (Central) 5) Europe (Frankfurt) 6) Europe (Ireland) 7) Europe (London) 8) Europe (Paris) 9) Asia Pacific (Mumbai) 10) Asia Pacific (Singapore) 11) Asia Pacific (Sydney) 12) Asia Pacific (Tokyo) 13) Asia Pacific (Seoul)

How do Lightsail load balancers route traffic to my target instances? (1)

Lightsail load balancers direct traffic to your healthy target instances based on a round robin algorithm.

What kind of connections do Lightsail load balancers support? (2)

Lightsail load balancers support 1) HTTP and 2) HTTPS connections.

Can I download my certificate provided by Lightsail? (1)

No, Lightsail certificates are bound to your Lightsail account and cannot be removed and used outside of Lightsail.

Can I attach a disk to more than 1 instance? (1)

No, disks can only be attached to one instance at a time.

What can I use tags to do in Lightsail? (3)

Tags have multiple use cases - they enable you to group and filter your resources in the Lightsail console and API, track and organize your costs in your bill, and regulate who can see or modify your resources through access management rules. By tagging your resources you can: 1) Organize - use the Lightsail console and API filters to view and manage resources based on their tags you have assigned them. This is useful when you have many resources of the same type—you can quickly identify a specific resource based on the tags you've assigned to it. 2) Cost-allocate - track and allocate costs across different projects or users by tagging your resources and creating "cost allocation tags" in the billing console. For instance, you can split out your bill and understand your costs by project or by client. 3) Manage access - control how users with access to your AWS account can edit, create, and delete Lightsail resources by using AWS Identity and Access Management policies. This allows you to more easily collaborate with others without needing to give them full access to your Lightsail resources.

Can I assign one instance to multiple load balancers? (1)

Yes, Lightsail supports adding instances as target instances for more than one load balancer, if desired.

Can I increase the size of my attached disk? (1)

Yes, you can increase the size of a disk by taking a disk snapshot and then creating a new, larger disk from snapshot.

Can I upgrade my plan? (1)

Yes. You can take a snapshot of your instance, and use the API to launch a new, larger size instance. You can launch new instances from snapshot using the Lightsail console or the CLI.

How many disks can I attach per Lightsail instance? (1)

You can attach up to 15 disks per Lightsail instance.