AWS getting started partner accreditation

Great place to start for business and technical partners new to AWS:

http://aws.amazon.com/partners/training/accreditation/#AWS_Business_Professional

Technical folks can start here before they create there first instance:

http://aws.amazon.com/partners/training/accreditation/#AWS_Technical_Professional

Boot Strap : MySQL

Here is a user data boot strap script for installing and starting Oracle MySQL:

#!/bin/sh 

yum -y install mysql-server 

/etc/init.d/mysqld start 

echo -e '\n\nsudo /etc/init.d/mysqld start' >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local

EC2 instances life cycle

Here is a mapping of server hardware lifecycle to AWS EC2:

1. Start : On AWS - ec2-start-instances  

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/ApiReference-cmd-StartInstances.html

Note: This is different then instantiating an instance for the the first time (from an AMI).  The command for this is ec2-run-instances.

2. Reboot : On AWS - ec2-reboot-instances

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/ApiReference-cmd-RebootInstances.html

(If a Linux/UNIX instance does not cleanly shut down within four minutes, Amazon EC2 will perform a hard reboot)

Note: Instance reboots are reboots of your virtual instance, and are equivalent to an operating system reboot.  You can also reboot your instance from the operating system of your instance. More here: http://serverfault.com/questions/350581/differences-between-reboot-and-ec2-reboot-instances

3. Hard kill : ec2-stop-instances 

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/ApiReference-cmd-StopInstances.html

4.AWS option : ec2-terminate-instances http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/ApiReference-cmd-TerminateInstances.html

Note: This would be like throwing away a machine but keeping the hard drive.

Tagging instances can be done at anytime using the ec2-create-tags command.

User data to install Apache and PHP

One of the most basic components on an EC2 instance is Apache and PHP.  Installing Apache and PHP is made easy with a short shell script, yum, and user data.  Here is all that needs to be placed in the user data section of the EC2 instance:

#!/bin/sh
yum -y install httpd php
chkconfig httpd on
/etc/init.d/httpd start