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I'm very new to server configurations and Linux in general, so please bear with me:

I have a small EC2 instance running a LAMP server on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

I'm completely baffled as to how I would scale up to meet traffic demands if I need it. Can I change the type of server to large? Or do a create another instance and do some load balancing? I'm not even sure how to get started there. If someone could provide a few tips and point me in the right direction to some documentation, I'd be forever grateful. Thanks!

Calvin
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1 Answers1

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You can change the instance size, but if you have a 32bit instance you can't scale it to a 64bit (if my memory serves me right). And you can always create some other instances and load balance between them.

In general, the latter is the preferred method since scaling with your instance type only helps you so much. After that your only option is adding instances so if you expect large amounts of traffic, than that would be your best option.

As for the load balancing part, Amazon offers a service for that these days: http://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/

And automatically starting new instances as needed can be done with the Auto Scaling feature of Cloudwatch: http://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/

Wolph
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  • When you say "the latter is the preferred method" do you mean creating other instances and load balancing between them? – Calvin Aug 06 '10 at 09:59
  • Yes indeed. You can scale almost infinitely by simply adding more instances as needed. – Wolph Aug 06 '10 at 11:43