I keep seen these images for Django or MovableType or whatever - does anyone see value in an AMI for Drupal? I'm not sure if it would be valuable enough or not. I just setup a site based on the Gutsy Public Base Image and on Victor's guide to taking a base Ubuntu server to Drupal host. It wasn't impossible, but it was harder than I'd like someone using ec2 to try out a system to have to endure.
But there's the real question for me - is it all that common for someone to use an ec2 image to try out something like Drupal? Do you think those public images from other web-app projects really help anyone?
And, final question - if you're interested in seeing this would you be interested in helping to build/maintain an image? Does anyone already have such an image they'd be willing to make public?
Comments
Klaas Bals' Drupal AMI
Hey Greg, you might look into Klaas Bals' FC4 + Drupal 5.1 image (also here).
I've been using EC2 on a couple of development projects that require specific server configurations (i.e. won't work on shared hosting) or software installed (like FFmpeg). I could also imagine one loading up the AMI with some contributed modules (CCK & Views to start) and use it as a rapid prototyping tool. In terms of using it to demo Drupal, it might be a bit overkill - but I guess it depends on the scenario.
The other issue is versioning. Once you create an AMI, you're locked into the software that you've installed on it by hand. Ideally, a good AMI would run a boot-script to download the latest version of Drupal and do some database configuration, etc.
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Matt Koglin, Antinomia Solutions
I can confirm this image
I can confirm this image worked for me as well. But as mentioned, a boot-script would be the best solution.
very cool
Nice! I browse the public AMIs mostly from the firefox ec2 extension and had just never seen it, but that's pretty cool. That will teach me to search before spouting. FC4 seems kind of old, though.
I mostly agree about it being overkill for the demo, I just saw the AMIs for other software projects and thought that I might be more likely to try out MovableType (for example) if I see an AMI that is preconfigured for it.
I would certainly use update_status module to make sure people were well aware of the image hadn't been rebundled after a security release, but I think that having a boot script would be just too much pain. The idea is the same as Klaas site says: Launch the AMI, Visit the public DNS in your favorite browser. Play.
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Knaddisons Denver Life | mmm Chipotle Log | The Big Spanish Tour
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
ami-5e2bce37
Using the Gutsy image Victor's guide mentioned above, I created a basic Drupal ec2 AMI. I'll probably write up the details later, but the ID is ami-5e2bce37 (and it should be publicly available) and it consists Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy with Apache2, MySQL 5.0, PHP 5.2.3 (with common, GD, mcrypt, mysql, and xmlrpc modules). I'm calling it version 0.1.
Root's password is 'drupal', same with MySQL root. I also created a database 'drupal' and a user 'drupal' with password 'drupal'. Seeing a theme yet? It should go without saying that you should change these.
To use the AMI, fire it up and put the host name in your browser. You should land on the install page. Enter 'drupal' for all three database fields and click submit, and you should have a fresh Drupal 5.6 installation to play with.
For discussion: will this actually benefit anyone? Who, and why?
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Matt Koglin, Antinomia Solutions
works great!
Matt,
I'm using the ec2 AMI that you created and it works great, thank you! You asked who and why - I'm not a programmer and I understand barely enough to sign up to EC2 and fire up your AMI (that's who), and I'll use Drupal to power up a business I'm launching that may require scaling using EC2 in the future (that's why) - a big thanks from us mere mortal amateurs who benefit from this type of development. Now this may be a silly question but, how can I install or access phpMyAdmin once I have this image up and running?
keep the good work!
Boot script
How did I miss this group?? Anyways, found it now.
I'm very interested in using EC2 for mass Drupal hosting. I've written some deployment scripts to turn the Rightscale Centos AMI into a Drupal install. I didn't want to manage my own base image, only the postinstall.
It's still experimental as I'm using it to find the best approach to solve some of the hurdles of using EC2. Data is backed up to S3 every 15 minutes. It runs a master/slave MySQL setup, with the master being backed up using filesystem snapshots, and the slave using the traditional stop & dump. If you kill server xyz.com and start a new one with the same name it restores everything.
The Drupal install bit is still a bit weak as I've not used an install profile. I'm going to start on a module for the admin interface which will hopefully tie into Adrian's hostmaster2 work.
Code and instructions at: http://croome.org/content/first-steps-toward-drupal-automation-amazon-ec2
Feel free to email me bugs or suggestions.
Simon
Simon, that's interesting
Simon, that's interesting work you're doing there! Thanks for sharing... Your qualms about the EC2 service are about the same as mine (and many others): no persistent storage, dynamic IP, etc. I'll be watching to see what more you come up with!
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Matt Koglin, Antinomia Solutions
Enhancments for EC2
A service called WeoCEO http://weoceo.weogeo.com provides fault tolerance for Amazon EC2. The service is still in beta but has had some good reviews.
EC2 AMI that lets you choose the version of drupal
Hi,
We put up an AMI that allows you to choose the version of drupal it runs which it grabs from d.o. cvs, hope people find it useful. Full details here http://www.io1.biz/blogs/drupal-amazon-ec2-developers-testing-ami
Fin
access denied.....
We had an issue with rights overnight, dont know yet what caused it yet but it meant anon could not see the blogs, should be ok now.
New AMI (and more)
Just for the record (and for people who may find this thread later), I'm working on a new high-performance AMI that's purpose-built for Drupal utilizing the Varnish HTTP accelerator, APC, Pressflow and a number of other enhancements to make Drupal scale in the cloud.
I'm calling the public AMI Project Mercury, and you can read about it in more recent posts on this group, as well as on by blog.
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com