In these days of cloud computing, server tasks have become more common.

Faster and simpler cloud solutions are always in demand. That’s where Lightsail AWS solution helps.

AWS Lightsail is one of the easiest ways to start with your own private servers.

At Bobcares, we often receive consultation requests about new cloud solutions as part of our Infrastructure Management Services.

Today, we’ll take a close look on Lightsail AWS solution and how our Support Engineers recommend it to different customers.

Understanding Lightsail AWS solution

In simple words, Lightsail is an easy solution from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to setup a virtual private server. Luckily, the install process involves only few clicks and the server will be readily available for building web applications.

It comes with features like data storage, static IP address, DNS management functions and many more.

Amazon Lightsail derives its compute power from another AWS product called EC2 instance. Basically, it repackages EC2 as smaller units for customers.

Why choose Lightsail AWS?

From our experience in managing servers, our Support Engineers see many customers using AWS Lightsail for their applications. Let’s now take a look on the reasons that made them go for Lightsail solution.

1. Price advantage

Definitely, price is always a major concern when you set up a server. Lightsail AWS comes with a price advantage. That’s why, it is more popular among customers who are new to website hosting. Similarly, it can work as a good platform for web developers who do not wish to invest in high-end servers.

Luckily, AWS allows to create a Lightsail instance with as low as $3.5! Moreover, after launching the first Lightsail server, Amazon will credit one free month to your account.

2. Easy to use

Similarly, ease of use is another attraction that Lightsail offers. To deploy a server, all you have to do is connect to your Amazon account. It requires only few clicks. And, there are ready made templates available for popular server types. Moreover, it supports applications like WordPress, Magento and more.

Usually, in cloud servers, the daily management task can be tedious for new customers. AWS Lightsail comes with a management console that make server management a breeze.

3. Capacity to scale up

Yet another merit that help customers is the ability to scale up. We’ve seen users adding more disk storage to their Lightsail instances as and when need arises. It supports features like managed databases, content delivery network that improves the performance of the application.

4.Location advantage

Again, location can be a concern for some customers when they build an application. But, AWS Lightsail supports many geographical locations. With Amazon data centers in almost all parts of the world, users can host their apps in any part of the world.

5. Integration with other services

The success rate of an application largely depends on its capacity to integrate with other services. It comes with a powerful API that eases integration. From our experience, we see that Lightsail goes well with applications based on Java, Python, PHP, etc.

Challenges in Lightsail

So far, we checked the benefits of AWS Lightsail. Unfortunately, we often see couple of challenges faced by customers while using Lightsail.

1. Single point of failure

First and foremost, AWS Lightsail can become a single point of failure. Here, the Lightsail instance works out of a single server. And, that’s why, if there is a hardware or network problem, the application simply fails. Again, considering the cost factors, there is not much point in going for load balancer solutions in AWS Lightsail.

That explains why our Dedicated Engineers refrain from advising it to customers having critical applications that cannot afford to have downtime at all.

2. Backup

Similarly, there is no built-in backup options in AWS Lightsail management console. But, for data redundancy, backups are really important. Here, our Support Engineers always make it a point to set up manual backups of critical files. Additionally, we recommend customers to keep a snapshot of the instance for data recovery.

3. Scaling up enormously

Though, there are options to scale up AWS Lightsail, it may not work in every scenario.

Lightsail doesn’t spin up additional instances based on app usage. Additionally, there is always a limit to the maximum amount of resource that you can add to a single Lightsail instance. Thus, it may not work if the application is heavy and resource intensive.

That’s why, our Support Engineers never recommends Lightsail for customers with heavy production websites. But, it behaves as one of the best options for low traffic websites.

[Need advise on the best cloud solution? Our experts can help you.]

Conclusion

In short, AWS Lightsail gives promising results on websites at affordable costs. Ease of use, control panel, etc. makes it even more popular. Today, we saw the top benefits of Lightsail and how our Dedicated Engineers help customers to overcome the challenges.