Klaas Bals' Blog

I've successfully created a public Amazon EC2 AMI, that allows you to start a Fedora Linux system with Drupal 5.1. When the image is started, you can simply connect to the assigned public DNS Name, and you can configure and play with Drupal. Actually, creating this image wasn't that hard, but I figured some people would want to play with Drupal on EC2, so I decided to make this AMI public.

I haven't solved any of the problems with persistence, meaning that this AMI is only usable for playing around with Drupal, as none of the changes you make or content you add will survive a restart of the virtual machine instance. But you can use this AMI to take a look at the Drupal installation procedure, or get a quick tour of a scratch Drupal installation without needing to install all the prerequisites and configure the database.

How to get started?

To be able to start your own instance of this AMI, perform the following steps:

• Subscribe for the Amazon Web Services. More specifically, subscribe to Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2.
• Install the Firefox Extension for Amazon EC2, launch it, and fill in your account details you received when creating your account.
• Find the AMI with the AMI ID or manifest shown on the AMI's info page, and create a new instance.
• Wait a minute or to, click the 'Your instances -> Refresh' button, and copy the public DNS Name.
• Paste the name in your favorite browser, and you will see the Drupal installation screen.

For a more in depth guide on how to start with Amazon EC2, check out the Getting Started Guide.