How to find the best way to run Wordpress on Amazon Web Services
WordPress is by far the most popular and most widely used CMS platform in the world. Simplicity in the installation and use as well as the “wide range of plugins” make it a universal tool having great possibilities. No matter if we’re talking about small business cards, blogs, company landing pages, ending at websites of companies such as Mercedes-Benz and Sonymusic – they’re all based on WordPress.
Wide use of WordPress influences the requirements for the environment in which it is run. If the site is just emerging in the network and generating small traffic, a small hosting package is sufficient. The problem arises when the site starts generating more traffic or is expanding significantly. That’s when we start to think about the cloud, where these problems are not problems anymore. The flexibility and scalability of the cloud makes it attractive not only for small, but also for medium as well as large websites. However, in order for the transfer to make sense, it has to be effective. We have investigated wordpress maintenance options offered by the Amazon cloud and will explain when and how it pays off to move WordPress to the AWS cloud.
So what options do we have in AWS Cloud?
Option 1
Simple EC2
Option 2
EC2 & EFS
Option 3
EC2 & S3
Option 4
Tameshi WP
Option 1 : EC2
The most common way to host WordPress on AWS’s is to use the EC2 instance. This simple solution, described extensively by both AWS and many publications on the Internet is widely used by most companies that offer moving websites to the cloud.
What are the pros?
- Price
What are the cons?
- no redundancy: there is no option of redundancy on 1 EC2 instance, and thus the solution is risky in terms of website availability
- support: the need of constant EC2 support, to take care of its backup security and to protect against all types of threats to the application itself
For whom?
- small companies / small blogs that do not generate too much traffic
| Price | Test result** | |
|---|---|---|
| Requests per sec | Time per request | |
| $ 560.16* / year
| 3.64
| 275.042
|
*if You want to know what is included in the price – see our price calculation
Option 2 : EC2 + EFS
To compensate the problem in the previous case, the EFS should be used. The implementation of architecture based on EC2 and EFS allows the environments redundancy and risk elimination for our website being unavailable. And that’s it when it comes to pros. This solution does not work, however, for small pages. Below 10GB EFS does not perform effectively – its efficiency increases proportionally with storage.
What are the pros?
- Environment redundancy
- Possibility to use the standard wordpress configuration (simplicity)
What are the cons?
- Higher price
- Low performance on small pages
For whom?
- large companies with large wordpress implementations where size significantly exceeds 10GB to get the right performance on the EFS.
- Companies that have a large number of queries on the site and for which S3 comes out too costly.
| Price | Test result** | |
|---|---|---|
| Requests per sec | Time per request | |
| $ 1,389.62* / year
| 0.88
| 1137.895
|
*if You want to know what is included in the price – see our price calculation
3) EC2 + S3
Another option offered by Amazon is combining of the EC2 installation with storing media resources (images, JS scripts, CSS) on S3. This solution allows to run multiple EC2’s where media placed on S3 are used by each instance started instance. It’s a much more effective and flexible solution, however, it requires continuous backup and security operations. Similarly as in the first case.
What are the pros?
- Environment redundancy
- High performance
What are the cons?
- High price
- Custom wordpress configuration means complicated implementation
For whom?
- Medium and large websites requiring high availability
| Price | Test result** | |
|---|---|---|
| Requests per sec | Time per request | |
| $ 1,389.96* / year
| 3.16
| 316.254
|
*if You want to know what is included in the price – see our price calculation
4) Tameshi WP
The last option is not suitable for everyone. However, for those who can use it, it is definitely the cheapest and most effective from every angle. Only a very few companies use it, because currently it is next to impossible to find companies that offer a ready solution. Why? It is much easier to follow the straight path indicated by the AWS than to complicate your life by going beyond the usual track. The last option is directed to small, medium and large websites. Too good to be true? Where is the catch? This is not a choice for sites with highly developed dynamic elements (such as user registration, dynamic comments, “live” forms), interacting with external users and for sites that are modified or supplemented with content in 24/7 mode.
How exactly does it work?
Tameshi WP hosting is based on the assumption that we generate a static website version through dedicated software (being a WordPress extension) and place it on S3. This way we maximize website’s efficiency and security at several dozen to several hundred $ per year lower prices.
Not every page is suitable for generating a static version. It’s a viable option for typical business cards, landing pages, blogs and many company websites. First of all, the page content is analyzed. If the analysis shows that website is suitable for using this solution, the migration software is run and page is translated to its static version on the AWS user account. Next, the migration tests are carried out and page is re-opened on S3.
What if we want to change the website content, put a new blog entry or edit the graphics? We run the WP’s dynamic version (provided by the migration software to the static version) and perform necessary changes. After saving, we verify on the test/preprod environment and then update the production page.
Why all this? Is it not better to run the site dynamically all the time? What sense does it make?
What are the pros?
- Price
The price we pay for this solution can be 100 times lower than for the previous three options. Tempting?
- High performance
The site is available anytime and anywhere, resistant to all visit peaks and all other “natural disasters”.
- Security
Worpress, like any other system, has its advantages and disadvantages. An advantage, but also a defect at the same time, is the fact that there are thousands of both paid and free plugins. WordPress itself is regularly updated and subsequent security threats are regularly removed, but WordPress is not everything. The probability of a successful attack increases proportionally to the number of security holes in installed WordPress add-ons. The more plugins, the more holes. Plug-ins are the most common element used for attacks on this platform. And all of this can be avoided.
What are the cons?
- Not every page will be worth migrating
For whom?
- Small to large websites, where wordpress is optimized for static hosting and which use external data sources for dynamic content such as comments via facebook, google forms for contact, etc.
- Companies willing to get the amazing performance of their site while not paying high amounts for hosting.
| Price | Test result** | |
|---|---|---|
| Requests per sec | Time per request | |
| $55.14* /year
| 63.14
| 15.838
|
*if You want to know what is included in the price – see our price calculation
Summary
Let’s compare all the options. What result do we have?
Tameshi WP costs least of all, with the highest efficiency same time.
| Price per year | Request per sec | Time per request | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple EC2 | $560.16 | 3.64 | 275.042 |
| $3,198.02 | 0.88 | 1137.895 |
EC2 & S3 | $3,197.68 | 3.16 | 316.254 |
| Tameshi WP | $55.14 | 63.14 | 15.838 |
EC2 & EFS
All the prices have been calculated using OnDemand plan – see our price calculation. WordPress did not have any caching mechanism during tests, to reveal true performance of native WordPress. Software used to perform Requests Per Second tests was Apache Benchmark
TAMESHI is a Certified AWS Consulting Partner (Amazon Web Services). An experienced team with a vast spectrum of knowledge in the scope of cloud technologies.
We can migrate Your WordPress do AWS Cloud easily!
Contact us at contact@tameshi.eu for more details.