Amazon Lightsail Subdomain Setup

Question

I'm currently moving all of my hosting from a cheap shared hosting provider over to Amazon LightSail. Normally, when sending work over to clients for approval, I create a subdomain through my hosting provider's c-panel and upload the required files through FTP.

I am at a loss when it comes to setting up a subdomain through AWS Lightsail though. I've created a static IP and I've created the A record for the subdomain, but where do I put the directory that the files I want my client review for that subdomain sit and what IP address do I need to point the subdomain at?

Sothena

Lightsail isn't a "hosting" service... it's a virtual private server service. Which image did you install? – Macron

I understand that, but I was hoping that I could use it in a similar way, without needing a new instance for every new client project. I installed the Bitnami LAMP image. – Sothena

You absolutely can do that. By "isn't a hosting service" I mean you are getting a real server, which means no control panel to get in your way. But, sure, if the server has sufficient capacity, you can run as much as you want on it. – Macron

Thanks Michael, would you be able to point me in the right direction of how to do this though? I searched for most of the day Friday and couldn't find any instruction towards doing it. – Sothena

Answer 1

AWS LightSail is different from shared hosting providers, where AWS provides Virtual Private Servers(VPS) with its own IP.

Generally VPS is for a single deployment of an application(e.g Single Wordpress Deployment per VPS). So it is recommended to get multiple VPS for your deployments unless your applications are really light weight and gets less traffic.

There is also a limit where you gets 2 VPS servers per AWS account by default. If you need more VPS, either you can send a support request to Amazon and increase the limit or use multiple AWS accounts (If you own the AWS accounts, you can setup consolidated billing)

In DNS setup, since its single application per VPS, you need to create a A record for each subdomain.

Polygamist

Hi Ashan When you say really lightweight - these will be incredibly lightweight with just one or two people viewing it and saying 'yeah that looks good' - they have no real major use at all. How would I go about setting them up if they are really lightweight? – Sothena

Based on the application server you installed, configuring the web server(Apache or Nginx) virtualhost mappings inside a single VPS. You should be able to map from different DNS. – Polygamist

Answer 2

I had faced the same problem. I had used up 2 Lightsail instances per account as the other answer mentioned. I had no way to setup subdomain for another application I hosted on Elastic Beanstalk.

Solution is - Use Route53 & Create Hosted Zone there. Instead of creating DNS Zone in Lightsail. Then point A record to the Static IP of Lightsail.

Hope this solves your problem.

Uncaredfor