Hosting a CakePHP App with Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2
Hosting a CakePHP App with Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2
CakePHP is an open-source web framework that follows the model-view-controller (MVC) approach. While it’s a powerful tool for building web applications, deploying these applications effectively can sometimes be a challenge.
This guide aims to help you understand how to host a CakePHP app using Amazon Web Services (AWS), particularly the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. By the end of this read, you should be equipped with the knowledge to deploy your CakePHP app on AWS EC2.
What is Amazon EC2?
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon’s cloud-computing platform, AWS. It provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud and is designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier.
EC2 offers a broad set of instance types optimized to fit different use cases. They provide the flexibility to choose the appropriate mix of resources for your applications.
Prerequisites
Before beginning this guide, ensure you have the following:
- An AWS account.
- A CakePHP application ready for deployment.
- Basic familiarity with AWS services and CakePHP.
Step-by-Step Guide
Step 1: Set Up an EC2 Instance
Firstly, log in to your AWS Management Console, go to the EC2 dashboard, and click on “Instances”. Here, you can launch a new instance.
Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) based on your preferred operating system. For CakePHP, an Ubuntu Server is a good choice. Next, choose an instance type. The t2.micro instance is free-tier eligible and is good enough for a basic CakePHP app.
Step 2: Configure Instance Details
Configure the instance to suit your needs. You can leave most settings at their default, but ensure to enable public IP.
Step 3: Add Storage
By default, AWS provides 8GB of storage. If your application requires more, you can increase this.
Step 4: Add Tags
Tags let you categorize your AWS resources in different ways, for example, by purpose or owner. It’s good practice to add at least a ‘Name’ tag to your instances.
Step 5: Configure Security Group
A security group acts as a virtual firewall for your instance. You can add rules to allow specific traffic to reach your instance. For a CakePHP app, you’ll need to allow HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443) traffic.
Step 6: Review and Launch
Review your instance configuration and hit ‘Launch’. You’ll be prompted to create a new key pair or use an existing one. This key pair is used to SSH into your instance.
Step 7: Connect to Your Instance
Once your instance is running, you can connect to it using an SSH client with the key pair you specified earlier.
Step 8: Install a Web Server
After connecting to your instance, install a web server. Nginx and Apache are popular choices. For instance, to install Apache, you would run:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2
Step 9: Install PHP
Next, install PHP along with some necessary extensions. For instance:
sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql
Step 10: Deploy Your CakePHP App
Finally, deploy your CakePHP app. You can copy your app files to the web server’s root directory (/var/www/html for Apache) or use a version control system like Git.
Conclusion
Congratulations! You’ve successfully hosted a CakePHP app on an AWS EC2 instance. By taking advantage of AWS, you can ensure your web applications are resilient, scalable, and easy to maintain. Happy coding!
About Saturn Cloud
Saturn Cloud is your all-in-one solution for data science & ML development, deployment, and data pipelines in the cloud. Spin up a notebook with 4TB of RAM, add a GPU, connect to a distributed cluster of workers, and more. Join today and get 150 hours of free compute per month.
