One of the hardest parts of learning AWS is understanding how the different moving parts work together. 

In this course, we tackle a real-world project of deploying the blogging platform Ghost to AWS using EC2 (the server where Ghost will run) and RDS (a relational database for Ghost to store data).

This course ties together skills like networking, SSH, and using the command line while getting a realistic full-stack platform up and running. 

Whether you're studying for a certificate like Certified Cloud Practitioner or just learning for fun, this hands-on project will be a great way to dig in and get some practice!

In this course, we will be setting up a server that uses Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) as well as a database through Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). In order for these two services to talk to each other, they will need to live on the same Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Throughout the course, as you build out functionality, the settings for your VPC can be modified or disrupted causing painful errors. This lesson is to give you a tour of the key attributes of a VPC and show you the default settings so that you can revert back if you find yourself in a bad state.

We'll cover what a VPC looks like in the AWS console, Subnets, Internet gateways, route tables, and the Network ACL.


Understand the Default AWS Virtual Private Cloud Network

The first thing that we need to do is set up a linux server for Ghost to run on. We will be using Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) to do just that.

I'll walk you through launching an instance of EC2. To do so we will set the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and instance type, add storage, add tags for organization, create a security group to control who has SSH and HTTP/HTTPS access to the server, and finally create a key pair for that SSH access. 


Create a Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Instance to Run a Ghost Server

The next service that we need to create is a database. If you look at the [Ghost documentation](https://ghost.org/docs/install/ubuntu/) you'll notice that MySQL 5.7 or 8.0 is required to run. This is why we will be using Amazon's Relational Database Service (RDS) which is a relational database that supports SQL.

Most of our install will be the default settings with a few key exceptions. You'll want to make sure you choose MySQL as the database as well as the free tier option or you could incur a non-trivial charge to your AWS account. 


Set up an Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Instance

By default, AWS service instances are created in isolation and can't access other services without your explicit permission. 

We need to give our Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance access to the Relational database service (RDS) we just created. To do so, we will edit the inbound rules of our database to include the security group that we set for EC2. This will allow access for every item in that security group but currently we only have our EC2 instance.


Allow an AWS EC2 Instance Access to an RDS Database

Now that our EC2 and database are set up, we need to actually connect to the server so that we can do what we set out to do: install Ghost!

There are a few ways that EC2 lets you connect but we will be using the SSH client. To do so, you'll need to find your ssh key file, modify the file permissions, and we will use that key file in combination with the public DNS of the EC2 server to SSH into the server. Since our own IP address is explicitly allowed we will be able to do so!


Connect to an AWS EC2 Instance with SSH

Now that we are SSH'ed into our EC2 instance we can start modifying the server to actually run the application that we want to to run. Before we do that we want to switch users because you initially SSH you are the root user.

We will start by adding a `ghost-admin` user that we will give sudo permissions to. Once we are logged into that user we will update the server to ensure we are on the latest and greatest versions before installing additional software.


Add and Log In to an AWS EC2 Instance with a sudo User

Ghost has two hard dependencies which need to be installed before it can run. Those are Nginx and Node.js.

We will start by installing Nginx and set Nginx up to control the traffic coming into the EC2 server. After this, we'll install NVM using the raw install script that they provide on GitHub. With NVM installed we can then install the latest version of Node.js


Install Nginx and Node.js on a AWS EC2 Server

To run Ghost, we first need to install the ghost cli. This can be done with npm now that Node.js is installed on the server.

After installing the CLI we will create a directory `/var/www/ghost` that the actual installation of Ghost will occur in. We'll update the permissions of this file to include the `ghost-admin` user that we are logged in as.


Install Ghost CLI and Create Directory

We have everything ready to finally install Ghost! To do the installation, we will need to write one big command to set up Ghost with our AWS RDS database. 

First, we'll collect all of the config variables that we need and then pass those variables into the ghost install command. After we do that the CLI will ask us a few more questions before Ghost is completely set up.


Install and Start Ghost on an AWS EC2 Instance Connected to AWS RDS

Now that you have Ghost running the steps from here are very dependent on what you specifically want to do with the database.

I'll walk you through some common areas you might find yourself when you need to troubleshoot errors that are happening as you integrate and deploy Ghost in your applications.


Deploy Ghost to AWS using RDS and EC2

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