Hey Guys,
Just wondering if anyone has any experience running Drupal on AWS with at least Aegir. Ideally I'm thinking it would be great to have a setup similar to Pantheon's new service but I'm not sure I can wait that long.
I have one fairly big site that is half launched on a shared server at the moment but I don't want to launch the rest as it has not been performing well. We have a lot more sites planned for the future and all on Drupal. I've been looking at the Aegir system and it would be perfect for what I would like to do, I would also like to make sure it performs well (which is why I mentioned Mercury).
I am more of a Designer/Themer but having been doing all the work on our sites myself. I have done a lot of research, but I am just a bit stuck and need some advise moving forward (even with where/how to host - AWS/Rackspace/Linode etc).
I would like to learn how to do this myself but my work (Citipointe Church) would be happy to pay someone for a few days to go through the process with me and help us set up a good system/workflow. I would also like to setup a good development process using git and a proper development & staging server for each site at some point.
Not sure if this is in the wrong place, but we are based in Brisbane and if someone could help us directly they would need to come to our offices. Hopefully this makes sense (I am constantly learning), you can see some of our recently launched site here: citipointechurch.com. Any advice is welcome, tell me if I have no idea and are better doing something completely different.
Thanks,
Luke Brooker
PS. I was at the last Drupal Brisbane Meetup if any of you guys read this.
Comments
AWS experience
Hi Luke
I have just setup a Ubuntu-based EC2 instance on AWS specifically to run as a pseudo-staging site for Drupal (to increase my understanding of how to use AWS instead of another VPS). So far I have configured Postfix/Dovecot (to handle Drupal's mail requirements as well as a suite of test users for things like workflow) and Drush. I'm still working out a version control workflow model - and whether to go with SVN (due to current integration with Coda and Drush) or look at Git (as the future direction of Drupal.
I haven't done anything with Aegir though, but would be happy to share my experiences to date. I'm no ninja on this stuff, but have managed to muddle through - and deal with some of the unique aspects of AWS. Also, I'm based in Brisbane - but haven't made it to a Drupal meeting yet - I just got back from 6 months overseas.
Let me know if you'd like to talk further.
Cheers
Robert
Aegir setup with pantheon on AWS and Rackspace
Hey Luke,
Awesome that you have discovered Aegir and Pantheon and in fact AWS for that matter. We have been using Aegir in production for over a year now and recently set it all up on the Rackspace cloud with a couple different drupal install platforms with pressflow etc
We've played with all sorts of performance enhancements and all going well. We're running over 50 sites on it now.
If you'd like to contact me through my profile we're happy to talk to you on the phone (we're in Brisbane too) and advise, or if you have specific questions and want to ask here no probs - happy to share our experiences. Josh Koenig from Chapter 3 (Mercury Pantheon) was a great help to our developers on IRC.
Cheers
Bruce
RackSpace Cloud ?
Is that the slicehost.com that is what I am keen to move my shared cPanel stuff to.
how have you found it
Rackspace
Yea, slicehost.com is now owned by rackspace.com
We have found it really good, reasonably straight forward to use, havent needed support yet so cant comment there, but great for easily creating instances for sites, taking server images, backups etc etc
Slicehost support
I've been with slicehost for over 2 year now. I've never really had a problem with them. When I've needed support, they have been excellent. My general support workflow is this, open ticket, jump on IRC ping support team, get response via mail in ~5mins. They're staff on IRC really know their stuff for general server stuff too.
I have a DNS zone hosted by slicehost which has around 130 000 records in it, and they were happy for me to use them for it - well one of the 3 support guys I cleared it with had a few concerns but didn't block it.