Deploy a 2-Tier Web Application on AWS

#aws #tutorial #beginners #architecture

Hello Techies! 👋
I hope you’re all doing great.

Welcome to my very first blog on DEV! I’m super excited to begin this journey and share my learnings with all of you. Since many of you might not know me yet, let me start with a quick introduction.

I’m a tech enthusiast who genuinely enjoys exploring new technologies. In my free time, you’ll usually find me experimenting with tools, building small projects, or keeping up with the latest trends in the tech world. Recently, I’ve been diving deep into AWS Infrastructure—especially Networking and advanced VPC concepts.

I must say, it has been a fascinating learning experience. Through this blog series, I’ll be documenting everything I’ve learned along the way. If you're just getting started with AWS Networking, you’ll definitely find this helpful. And for me, writing these posts will be a great motivation to keep learning and improving.

Let’s begin this journey together! 🚀

Architecture Overview

We will create:

🔹 VPC CIDR:

10.10.0.0/16

🔹 Public Subnets:

10.10.0.0/24 (AZ a)
10.10.1.0/24 (AZ b)

🔹 Private Subnets:

10.10.11.0/24 (AZ a)
10.10.12.0/24 (AZ b)

🔹 Other Components

EC2 instance in Public Subnet
RDS MySQL DB in Private Subnet
Route tables for public/private traffic
Internet Gateway
Security Groups
Public DNS with Route53

This is what the architecture looks like:

Step 1 — Create VPC, Subnets & Routing

Go to VPC Console → Create VPC → VPC and more.

Configuration

Name: webapp-vpc
IPv4 CIDR: 10.10.0.0/16
Availability Zones: 2
Public Subnets: 2
Private Subnets: 2
NAT Gateway: None
Endpoints: None

Subnet	AZ	CIDR
Public Subnet 1	a	`10.10.0.0/24`
Public Subnet 2	b	`10.10.1.0/24`
Private Subnet 1	a	`10.10.11.0/24`
Private Subnet 2	b	`10.10.12.0/24`

What the wizard creates automatically:

✔ VPC
✔ IGW
✔ Public + private route tables
✔ Subnets
✔ Routing

Step 2 — Launch an EC2 instance and connect

1. Launch EC2 Instance:

Navigate to the EC2 Dashboard and launch a new instance.
Name: Webserver
AMI: Amazon Linux 2023 (Free Tier)
Instance Type: t3.micro
Key Pair: Select your existing key pair or create a new one if unavailable

2. Configure Network & Security:

VPC & Subnet: Select your webapp-vpc and a public subnet
Auto-assign Public IP: Enable

3. Security Group:

Create webapp-ec2-sg allowing SSH (22) and HTTP (80) from all IPs
Storage: Use default 8 GiB gp3 volume

4.Launch & Connect:

Launch the instance, copy the Public IPv4 address, and connect via SSH using your key pair.

Step 3 — Create a RDS Database

1. Create a DB Subnet Group

Go to RDS Console → Subnet Groups → Create DB Subnet Group.
Configure the subnet group:
Name: webapp-db-subnet-group
Description: DB Subnet group
VPC: webapp-vpc
Add subnets for high availability:
AZ a: 10.10.11.0/24
AZ b: 10.10.12.0/24
Click Create.

2. Create the RDS Database

Go to Databases → Create Database → Standard Create.

Select the following options:

Engine: MySQL
Template: Free Tier
DB Cluster Identifier: webapp-db
Set master credentials:
Username: admin
Password: your chosen password
VPC: webapp-vpc
DB Subnet Group: webapp-db-subnet-group
Public Access: No
VPC Security Group: Create new → webapp-db-security-group
Authentication: Password
Initial Database Name: corp

Click Create Database and wait until it’s fully provisioned.

3. Update DB Security Group

Select the newly created database → Connectivity & Security → click the VPC Security Group link.
In the EC2 console, edit inbound rules:
Source: 10.10.0.0/16 (your VPC CIDR)
Save the changes.