✅ Day 15 of My Cloud Journey ☁️ — Launching a Web Server on EC2 (Apache/NGINX)

Today I took my cloud skills up a notch by launching a web server on AWS EC2 — exploring both Apache and NGINX setups. This task blends compute, networking, Linux administration, and cloud security, giving me a real-world feel of how apps are deployed in production.

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🌐 Why This Matters

Learning to deploy a web server on EC2 teaches:

• Basic cloud infrastructure deployment

• Configuring secure and accessible cloud servers

• Working with Linux and web server tools

• Serving public content (static pages, APIs, apps)

It’s the entry point to cloud-native hosting, and it ties together the networking and security concepts I’ve learned in the past few days.

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🧰 What I Used

• Amazon EC2 (Amazon Linux 2)

• VPC + Public Subnet + Route Table

• Security Groups

• SSH access

• Apache & NGINX

• Browser for web access

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🛠️ Step-by-Step Setup

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1️⃣ Create or Use Existing VPC Setup

Ensure:

• You have a VPC with an Internet Gateway attached

• A Public Subnet with auto-assign public IP enabled

• A Route Table routing 0.0.0.0/0 to the IGW

🧠 This ensures your EC2 instance is publicly accessible.

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2️⃣ Launch an EC2 Instance

• AMI: Amazon Linux 2 (Free tier)

• Instance Type: t2.micro

• Network: Choose your VPC and public subnet

• Public IP: Auto-assign = Yes

• Security Group: Create one with:

  • Port 22 (SSH) — your IP only

  • Port 80 (HTTP) — 0.0.0.0/0

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3️⃣ Connect to EC2 via SSH

From your terminal or SSH client:

bashCopyEditssh -i your-key.pem ec2-user@<public-ip>

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4️⃣ Install Apache Web Server

sudo yum update -y
sudo yum install httpd -y
sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl enable httpd

🧪 Test Apache:

• Visit the EC2 Public IP in your browser

• You should see the Apache test page

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5️⃣ (Optional) Install and Test NGINX Instead

If you want to try NGINX:

sudo yum install nginx -y
sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx

Visit your EC2 public IP again — now it should show the NGINX welcome page.

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6️⃣ Customize the Web Page

Let’s personalize it:

For Apache:

bashCopyEditecho "<h1>🚀 Hello from Apache on Day 15!</h1>" | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html

For NGINX:

bashCopyEditecho "<h1>🌐 Hello from NGINX on Day 15!</h1>" | sudo tee /usr/share/nginx/html/index.html

Refresh the browser and your message should appear!

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📸 Architecture Overview

✅ EC2 launched inside a public subnet
✅ Security Group opens ports 22 and 80
✅ Apache or NGINX serves a custom webpage
✅ Route table ensures external access

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🔐 Key Concepts Reinforced

• EC2 Basics: Launch, connect, and manage compute instances

• VPC Routing: Subnet + route table + IGW for internet access

• Security Groups: Allowing HTTP and SSH access

• Web Servers: Apache vs. NGINX setup and file locations

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⚔️ Apache vs NGINX

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🧪 Real-World Use Cases

• Hosting a static or dynamic website

• Deploying monitoring dashboards

• Building a full-stack app later (Node.js, Django, etc.)

• Exploring reverse proxy and load balancing

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📚 What I Learned Today

✅ Apache & NGINX setup on EC2
✅ Working with Linux-based package installs
✅ Routing, public IPs, and firewall configuration
✅ Customizing web pages on a cloud server
✅ Difference between Apache and NGINX architectures

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📅 What’s Next?

Day 16: Deploying a Static Website Using NGINX on EC2 🌐🚀