Launching a new web server at AWS (Amazon’s cloud service) can be a daunting and confusing process. There are many things to consider, from choosing the right platform to configuring security settings.

We’re going to explain what is EC2 and cloud computing. Then we’re going to show you how to launch a web server in Amazon Web Services(AWS cloud services) in just 10 minutes. We’ll walk you through the steps, and provide tips for optimizing your setup.  We’ve removed all the noise and provided you with the core details so you can have your own server set up correctly in a very short time.

What is Amazon EC2?

Amazon EC2 stands for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. It’s the service on Amazon Web Services that allows you to “create and rent” a virtual server (or Virtual Machine).  AWS cloud allows you to create, replicate, update, and delete server instances in minutes. Through your AWS account, you can create on-demand instances using scalable computing capacity. You can scale your entire organization’s infrastructure with a simplicity that did not exist just a few short years ago.

Perhaps you’d like to create a new AI tool that utilizes OpenAI’s GPT-3 engine. Then creating an Amazon EC2 instance is a good place to start.

Amazon EC2 Pricing

For this demonstration, we’ll be using the Free-Tier setup for most options, so the cost will be near zero. Please understand that “Free-tier” doesn’t always mean absolutely free. There are limits to what is free and these limits are set pretty low. From the Amazon EC2 website:

If you need to “guesstimate” your costs for your server instances, Amazon has an AWS Pricing Calculator that will help you. Obviously, overall costs will depend on the horsepower of the virtual machine you set up and for how long you keep it running.

Features of Amazon EC2

• Scalable computing capacity – Amazon EC2 allows you to increase or decrease capacity in minutes
• You have complete control – you have complete control of your instances
• Reliability – You are using Amazon’s cloud computing experience and their virtual servers architecture.
• Secure – Amazon’s infrastructure is one of the most secure systems in the world.
• Inexpensive – You can create an Amazon EC2 server instance and only use it (and be charged) for one hour per day. Perhaps you want to create a proof of concept server instance for a few days and then delete it. It’s simple, quick, and cheap to do that.
• Easy to begin – There’s no lengthy installation of software and manual handling of a server. Everything is done via the Amazon Management Console website and takes minutes to complete.

So there are numerous benefits to creating a cloud computing server instance in Amazon EC2. Are you ready to get one set up quickly? Let’s do this!

Step 1: What Are Key Pairs

Technical Answer: Key pairs are used to authenticate SSH connections to your instances. A key pair, also known as a “.pem” file on Linux and Unix systems, consists of a private key and a public key. The private key is kept on your local computer and should be securely protected. The public key is uploaded to AWS cloud and placed on your Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) instance. When you connect to your instance using SSH, the client software presents the private key for authentication. If the server recognizes the public key that corresponds to the private key, it authenticates the connection.

Simpler Answer: AWS uses a “Key Pair” combination that is unique to you for security access to pretty much everything AWS. You need to create this combination (which we show you first) in order to control your web server.

The Key Pair is completely separate from your username/password combination that you use to log in to the AWS web portal.  AWS defines a Key Pair as so: “A key pair, consisting of a public key and a private key, is a set of security credentials that you use to prove your identity when connecting to an Amazon EC2 instance.”

The Key Pairs is how AWS makes sure you are who you say you are.  It allows you root access to your servers, which means full administrative access.  Do not lose these or share them with strangers.

Create Your Key Pairs

1. Sign up for an AWS account using the AWS Management Console(or sign in if you already have an AWS account) at https://aws.amazon.com
2. In the Search Bar at the top of the page, search for “EC2” or “Elastic Compute Cloud”.  Click on the result that says “Virtual Servers in the Cloud”.  It should be the top result.  Click on it.  Currently, it’s located at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/

1. In the left navigation column, under “Network & Security”, click on Key Pairs.

1. Click on the “Create key pair” button on the top right.
2. Use the following information:
   1. Name: “My AWS Super Secret Key Pair”
   2. Key pair type: “RSA”
   3. Private key file format: “.pem”
3. Hit the “Create key pair” button.

The file should automatically be downloaded to your computer.  This is the only time that you’ll have access to this file.  It will never be created again.  Store it someplace safe.

Step 2: Create an Amazon EC2 Instance

Now the fun part. We get to create our own server and have it ready in a matter of minutes. Let’s do this.

Select the Region That Your Server Will Reside

Select a region at the top right.  This is the location that your Web Server will actually reside.  In North America, just choose N. Virginia for this example. Once we select the region, we don’t want to change it again during this tutorial.

A few things about AWS regions:

1. Each AWS region is built to be isolated from all other AWS regions.  This allows for the greatest possible fault tolerance and a high level of stability in the region.
2. If you have a majority cluster of end-users in a particular geographic location, you might choose to have your server close to them.
3. It’s also important to know that not all resources and functionality exist in every region.  The isolation that exists means that AWS rolls out functionality to regions separately.
4. Also, your Console Home is specific to a Region.

Select an Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

Let’s go back to the main Amazon EC2 page. Search for EC2 in the search bar at the top of the page.

Select “Instances” in the left-hand navigation. This is the area where you will maintain all of your on-demand instances once they’re set up. Go ahead and click on “Launch Instances” in the top right corner.

This next screen is where you will select the size and power of your server.

Start by naming your new server. This is a name for display purposes, so make it easy. I might name it: “Ubuntu with PHP #1”, or “Windows for C# Development”. The name is actually a “tag”, and it can be altered later if you desire.

The next area is where you’ll be presented with AMI options.  AMI stands for Amazon’s Machine Image, and these are basically pre-configured servers with various operating systems.  Do you want a Microsoft Windows server or Linux or something else? This is when you make that decision.

We’ll stick with the “Quick Start” tab and click the box that represents the operating system you want running your server. The drop-down box immediately below will change and give you the list of AMIs that Amazon recommends. Free Tier is what we’ll use for this example. These are great for development purposes or for simply learning AWS services.

I use both Windows-based servers and Linux-based servers.  If you’re planning on running applications that need PHP and MySQL, then consider choosing one that has that pre-installed.  But you can always install it afterward also…just trying to save you some time.  When you’ve located the server AMI you want, select it in the drop-down.

Be Careful!

If you search for a different AMI or click on “Browse more AMIs”, you’ll see a lot of configurations submitted by outside companies.  They typically have a price associated with them that can be quite steep.

Select your Amazon EC2 Instance Type

The next area is where you choose an Instance Type.  This is the power behind the server. Since we’re going for Free Tier, select “t1.micro” or “t2.micro” in the drop-down.

Assign Your Key Pair

Remember that Key Pair you created first? You will need to assign to this instance at this point.  Select the key pair from the drop-down that you just created.  You’re almost done.

Adjust Network Settings

Checkmark the two bottom boxes that say “Allow HTTPs traffic from the internet” and “Allow HTTP traffic from the internet”.

Finally, click on the orange “Launch Instance” button on the right. Boom!  Your server is being created!  This will take a couple of minutes but we can continue with the configuration at the same time.

Step 3: Add an Elastic IP to Your Server

Let’s assign an Elastic IP address to your server instance.

1. In the left navigation column, under “Network & Security”, click on Elastic IPs.

OPTION 1

Your screen will probably be blank, but if there are Elastic IP addresses allocated to your account, you’ll see some here.  They won’t have an Associated Instance ID value in that column like below.  If there are no values on this screen or no unassociated Instance IDs, jump to OPTION 2.

You can use those Elastic IPs for your new server.  Just click on the IP address, and then click on the “Associate Elastic IP address” button.

 Select an instance from the dropdown.  The IP address then should populate in that respective field as well.  You shouldn’t have to type anything in these fields.

Click on the “Associate” button at the bottom.  You should be good to go.

OPTION 2

1. From the main Elastic IP address screen, click on the “Allocate Elastic IP address” button in the top right corner of the main screen.
2. The next screen will populate with the correct information already.  Use “Amazon’s pool of IPv4 addresses”.
3. Click on the “Allocate” button at the bottom.
4. You should see the screen below.  Select an instance from the dropdown.  The IP address then should populate in that respective field as well.  You shouldn’t have to type anything in these fields.

Click on “Associate” button at the bottom.  You should be good to go.

Step 4: Add Security Groups to Your Server

You actually already added a few Security Groups when you created your server.

Creating a security group is just the first step to securing your instance.  You have to give the security group rules in order for it to do anything.

1. In the left navigation column, under “Network & Security”, click on “Security Groups”.

You probably have a Security Group in your list called launch-wizard-1 or something similar.  Regardless of the name,  click on it.

Two Rule Types – Inbound and Outbound

You’ll need to create inbound rules and outbound rules for your server.

Inbound

Traffic coming INTO your server.  When a person is requesting a webpage on your server, that is INBOUND traffic.  The request is coming IN.  Your server currently has no Inbound rules by default, so nobody can access anything on your server yet.  All traffic will be blocked.  We’ll fix that in a moment.

Outbound

Traffic originating on your server but sending OUT a request to another server for some reason.

We’re going to allow all outbound ports.  Your AWS server should come like this as the default.

Incoming Rules to Set Up

If you have a Linux-based Server, add the following Inbound Rules.  Click on the “Edit inbound rules” button to add them.

If you have a Windows-based Server, add the following Inbound Rules.  Click on the “Edit inbound rules” button to add them.

If you want to include FTP access on your Windows-based server, add it in as well.

Outbound Rules to Setup

The below rules are standard for both Linux-based and Windows-based Servers.  This should already be present, but add it if it’s missing, click on the “Edit outbound rules” button to add this one rule.

Congrats!  People should now be able to access your server!

Step 5: Accessing Your Server

You are now free to add files, install your personal software, and configure your server however you want. But how do you do that? It depends on the operating system you chose when setting up your instance.

From your EC2 Instance screen (found in the left navigation), click on your Instance details, and find the value for “Public IPv4 DNS”.  It should look something like “ec1-23-456-789-555.compute-1.amazonaws.com“.  That is your official server name to use in most situations.

Windows-Based Server

You’ll probably want to set up a Remote Desktop Connection.  For that:

1. Go into your Instance details
2. Click on the “Connect” button at the top of the page
3. Click on the RDP client tab

1. Download the remote desktop file.  You’ll want to take note of your “username”, and you need to generate your password value.  For this, you need to enter your Key Pair and your password will be given to you.

You should be able to now click on your remote desktop file and use your credentials to access your new server!

Linux-Based Server

Your PEM file is fine for OpenSSH access, but for PuTTY use, you’ll need a PPK file.  We can convert the PEM to a PPK file.  Luckily the process is simple and has been documented here.

Step 6: Smart Items To-Do

Create an AMI

This isn’t required but certainly is good to have in case something happens to your server. It’s basically an image of the server that you can use as a restore point or for replication purposes if you want all the servers to be congruent.

The full instructions will be in a later blog post, but if you click on the “EC2 Image Builder” button at the top of the page, it will get you started.

Having an image of your server allows you can restore another server at exactly this point and configuration next time.  Boom!

Setup a Monitoring Service

Go here to set up a free monitoring service. You need something to tell you if your server crashes and becomes unreachable. Trust us… you want this. If you create any scheduled jobs on your new server, you’ll want to monitor all your Cron jobs to make sure they are functioning as expected.

Once your website is up and running, be sure to add some free social proof to it so you can grow your audience!

Conclusion

Congratulations! You now have a fully functioning web server hosted in the cloud at AWS.

Please let me know if you have any questions at all and I will do everything I can to help you out.

Why you absolutely need a Server status page

Most importantly, a status page can help prevent unhappy customers becoming ex-customers.   It keeps a level of open-communication that is critical to great customer service.

If you’re not sure if you need a status page, ask yourself these questions:

• Do we experience outages or downtime that I would like to communicate to our customers?
• Are our customers frequently asking me about our service status?
• Do I need to proactively answer customer questions about our service reliability?

If you answered yes to any of these, then you need a status page.

You might think… I don’t want someone to know when my site goes down!  That will publicize that I’m having troubles.  But the opposite has actually proven true.  Being forthcoming with this information actually improves customer relations.  Your customers might rely on your application to do business themselves, and helping them understand the situation will go a long way with setting expectations with their own clients.

Creating and maintaining a status page doesn’t have to be difficult. There are many services available that can help you get started. In addition, there are many resources online that can help you create an effective page. Gravyware’s Monitoring free tool provides you an excellent one to use.

If you’re not sure where to start, sign up for a free account and you can get set up quickly and easily.

Successful uses of a Server Status page

There are numerous businesses that have successfully used a status page to improve their customer service. Some notable examples include:

Twitter

In 2011, Twitter was suffering from routine outages that impacted users around the globe. They were able to effectively communicate with their customers through implementing a status page which helped avoid any additional PR disasters.

Twitter’s Status Page

Netflix

Netflix has been known for its poor customer service in the past. However, they turned things around when they implemented a comprehensive status page strategy in 2014. The page was updated regularly with information about outages and other disruptions in service.

Netflix Status Page

Dropbox

Dropbox had an outage in 2013 that affected millions of users worldwide. The stress of the outage was equal to the customer relations nightmare. A simple status page was implemented that would give updates to users and proactively communicated with their users while the outage was corrected.

Dropbox Status Page

A Server Status page shows transparency

Having a status page is essential for maintaining your company’s reputation. Customers value transparency and will appreciate knowing what is happening with your service. A well-maintained status page can even help prevent bad press in the event of an outage.

A well-maintained status page is also pro-active.  It shows your customers that you want them to know about issues so that they have time to prepare for their own customer communications.

A Server Status page can save you money

It will cost you a lot of money to react to customer calls and unplanned events.   A status page can help you prevent these types of events from happening in the first place. Having a page that is always up-to-date with your latest information will let your customers know that you’re reliable and proactive.

A Server status page can drive more business

Of course, a status page can also show potential customers your site reliability.   It should show uptime  and downtime statistics, and information about your service providers.

It gives you some legitimacy

Savvy customers have become use to seeing a link to a status page for the best companies.  They realize the risks of using an outside company for a service and may actually prefer to use a business that is forthcoming with server status information.

What not to include on your Server Status page

There are a few things you should avoid including on your status page. Personal information should not be published. You also don’t want to share any confidential company information that is not already available to the public.

Many companies do not want to include a “contact us” option on their status page.  The reasoning is that you want users to reference the status page as the communication method instead of reverting to email or another means.

Finally, do not include internal system’s status on an external status page.  Outside customers do not need to know that your internal chat program is having issues.  This should be broadcast on a separate “internal only” status page (Gravyware has a password-protection option for you to keep a status page private).  The exception to this is if an internal system failure is impacting an external system.

How to use your Server status page to improve customer service

Once your status page is set up, it’s important to use it effectively. The first step is ensuring that your contact information is correct and easily found.  You should also make sure that all of your social media links are included on the page.

In addition, you’ll want to ensure that outage information is updated as soon as possible. This will help customers avoid any confusion or misinformation.

Finally, be sure to keep an archive of past outages and incidents for future reference. Doing so can help you improve your service going forward.

Setting up a Server Status page for your business

As mentioned previously, there are multiple companies that provide status page options for you.  Some status pages are manually updated and some are automated.  Gravyware Monitoring’s free option is super simple to setup, and connects with the site monitoring service offered (so it’s automated).  We particularly like the automated version as it adds to the transparency impact mentioned above.

Whichever option your decide upon, make sure you choose a good URL for the page itself (typically you choose through the status page admin area), and make it search engine accessible.

You will also want to link to the status page from your main site.  Think of it as another page making up your main application.  Gravyware’s status page is located here.  We include it in the footer throughout all of our sites.

Finally, customize it as much as allowed so that it truly looks like your creation.

Conclusion

A status page is an important part of any company’s communication strategy. It can help you with communication during outages, ultimately save you money, and improve your customer service all at the same time.  If you have any questions or comments regarding this blog post please reach out to the Gravyware team.

Good luck!

Cron jobs are a great way to automate routine tasks but can be time-consuming and difficult to manage. If you’re not careful, it’s easy for your Cron job to stop working or forgetful about when it last ran. This blog post will walk you through the process of setting up a system that will monitor Cron jobs so any failures don’t go unnoticed ever again!

What are Cron jobs and what do they do?

Cron Jobs are scripts that allow you to automate certain tasks on your server. They can be used for a variety of things, such as scheduling backups, running data imports, sending emails, or updating your website.  Nearly every site has some sort of scheduled job running behind the scenes.

If one of these jobs fails to run properly, it can have serious consequences for your business. For example, if a backup job fails to run, you could lose important data. Cron job surveillance helps you avoid these problems by ensuring that your cron jobs are running as expected.

Some Examples of Cron Jobs

Scheduled tasks are the background processes that a website uses to perform certain functions automatically. Common examples of these tasks include:

• Updating the site’s content (e.g. adding new blog posts or product descriptions)
• Sending out automated emails (e.g. trigger emails, abandoned cart emails, etc.)
• Generating nightly reports (e.g. website analytics, sales data, etc.)
• Performing maintenance tasks (e.g. database backups or security checks)
• Updating social proof on your website (e.g. recent purchases, number of current users, etc.)

Scheduled tasks are an essential part of any website, as they allow businesses to automate repetitive or time-consuming tasks. This can free up valuable resources that can be better spent on other areas of the business.

What is Cron Job Monitoring?

Cron job monitoring is the process of keeping track of the execution of cron jobs and ensuring that they are running as expected. This can be done manually, by checking the log files for each cron job or by using a tool that automatically monitors cron jobs and alerts you if there are any problems.

Tracking your Cron Jobs is the first step to understanding what they are doing and why. If you don’t keep track of what your jobs do, it can be difficult to determine if everything is running properly or find errors in their execution.

Monitor Cron Jobs & Tracking efficiency

By tracking these scripts for a period of time, you gain a baseline metric that will allow you to compare them to the future. If you have a critical job being run every day, such as website backups, and suddenly it stops working (or takes forever), having an archive of past jobs will allow you to spot errors much more quickly than looking through your code line by line for hours on end.  Comparing metrics to their baseline can allow you to be proactive, rather than reactive when diagnosing potential problems.  This prevents any downtime that you might experience and keeps your business running smoothly.

How Cron job Monitoring can help with your business

Tracking and monitoring Cron jobs is an under-appreciated tool in a system administrator’s belt. If you can’t track your processes, it makes diagnosing problems much more difficult and time-consuming than it has to be. It also puts your business at risk if one of these scheduled tasks becomes stuck or corrupted without anyone noticing until the consequences are dire.

Example 1:

A company has a scheduled job that backs up its database every night.  This job stops working on Monday for some reason, and unfortunately, goes unnoticed until Thursday when they have a major website crash.  They must restore the database and somehow must explain how the restored database is 3-4 days old.

Perhaps they had some internal notification setup, but the Database Administrator was on vacation this week, and nobody else was being notified that this critical Cron job was failing.

Example 2:

A company has a very complex website that relies on outside data to display in a dashboard.  This data is fed to them on a daily basis from an external source at 2am.  The scheduled job that reaches out to retrieve this data stops working, and the company’s website is now incorrect for all users.  Site users are yelling and the investigation begins.

With Cron job monitoring, it would be immediately evident that a vital piece of the workflow failed, minimizing any downtime users might experience.

Job Scheduling and SOC 2 Compliance

If your business maintains SOC 2 Compliance standards, you’ll need to monitor your recurring jobs and all other scheduled tasks and performance. Silent failures (where a failure occurs but nobody knows) are not an option.

Having a monitor in place is what you need to maintain that compliance standard.

How to Become a Cron job Guru

Once you have a few jobs up and running, it becomes necessary to monitor them. You can use special Cron job surveillance services that act as an intermediary between your server and the job itself. They will keep track of when they run (and if they’ve failed), allowing for easy tracking of metrics over time.

These tools are extremely valuable when it comes to debugging issues with your scripts. Without them, you can spend hours trying to determine why a script isn’t working as expected – with the monitoring service, you can have that information in minutes.

With Gravyware Monitoring, you simply add a single line of code to the end of your Cron job, and the monitoring is set up!

The value of using an outside service for Cron Monitoring

Your business is relying on these scripts to run correctly, so it’s important to have multiple layers of monitoring in place.  If something goes wrong with your script, you want to know about it as soon as possible so that you can take corrective action.

Using an outside service for Cron job monitoring gives you redundancy.    If something happens to your server, or the script itself, you’ll know about it and can take appropriate action.  If you were to have the instant alert application on the actual system you were monitoring, and that server failed, your in-house monitoring would fail as well.  Separating out these modules provides multiple layers of protection.

You might have multiple systems each running a different operating system that are each running its own tasks. It’s easier to have one central location with a live updating dashboard where you can monitor all your jobs in one place. An outside vendor allows this and should not care what type of system they are tracking.

Using an outside service for your Cron job monitoring gives you visibility.  You’ll know what script ran, and if any failed.  This provides you with the ability to track trends over time and determine which scripts need more attention than others (and pretty soon, your Cron jobs will be running like clockwork!)  But most importantly, it allows non-IT personnel to be able to see if something failed.  You can set up multiple people to be notified (by email and/or Slack message) that there’s a problem.

It’s important to keep your business running smoothly, and the best way to do this is by providing multiple layers of protection.  With an outside monitor for your Cron jobs, you’ll be able to track what failed (and why), improving future reliability as well.

You will also want to make sure you display your server status on a server status page. Your users will value your transparency and tell others about it.

How to Start Monitoring Cron Jobs

There are multiple services that act as a Cron monitoring tool, but our favorite is Gravyware’s Monitoring service (of course). Effective Cron job monitoring must include good reporting, and instant alerts (and methods) if a Cron job fails.

Gravyware Monitoring refers to scheduled task tracking as heartbeat monitoring. Start by signing up for a free account on Gravyware Monitoring. This will give you access to monitor your websites, domain expirations, and SSL expirations, along with your heartbeat monitoring. This process will allow you to monitor multiple cron jobs at once, providing you with a high level of monitoring coverage.

Step 1 – Create a New Heartbeat

Name your scheduled job and choose how often the cron job runs. The monitoring service will expect to see the scheduled task report a completed process or will alert you of a failure.

In the advanced settings, you will choose the instant alerts you want to use if a cron job fails. An email message and Slack instant message are common choices.

Step 2 – Adding Ping URL to Scheduled Job

Once you create the scheduled job monitor, you will be shown a specific URL to put into your scheduled job (wherever that exists) so that it pings the monitoring service to “tell” it that it is complete. This is typically done via an HTTP request. The coworker that creates and maintains the scheduled task can do this quickly and easily.

That’s it. It’s very simple and effective. The real power comes from the monitoring service to alert you if a problem should occur and the expected ping dates are missed.

Step 3 – Rest Easy and Review Any Performance Issues

Reporting should provide you with a clear display of job success or failure. This will help you be proactive and catch small problems before they become really big problems!

Conclusion

So there you have it.  Cron jobs are an important aspect of monitoring your website. Tracking and monitoring these tasks is vital for ensuring that content is updated, emails get sent out on time, contact forms work properly, etc. When it comes to cronjobs, there’s no such thing as too much information or data—the more you track the better! If you have any questions regarding this blog post please reach out to the Gravyware team.  We’re happy to help answer any questions you may have.

Good luck!

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• What Is EC2 And How To Easily Setup Your Own Web Server In AWS Cloud