DEV Community: Ramaiah Kethana

Cost savings in aws

Ramaiah Kethana — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 09:24:18 +0000

AWS EC2 Cost Optimization Strategies

Check and Terminate Low-Used Instances
- Identify idle or underutilized EC2 instances.
- Terminate or downsize instances to reduce expenses.
- Use AWS Billing and Cost Management tool to detect unused instances.
- Utilize AWS Operations Conductor for automatic right-sizing.
Optimize Spot Instance Usage
- Spot instances offer significant cost savings but can be interrupted.
- EC2 provides two signals for failover:
  - Spot Instance Interruption Notice (2-minute warning before termination).
  - EC2 Instance Rebalancing Suggestion (proactive notification before the 2-minute warning).
- Configure spot instances to stop or hibernate instead of terminating.
- Rebalance workloads to

Setting Up a Node.js Server on AWS EC2 with Nginx and SSL

Ramaiah Kethana — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 09:22:50 +0000

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is widely used for hosting applications because it is scalable and flexible. In this tutorial, we will install a Node.js server on an EC2 instance, configure a static IP address, install Nginx as a reverse proxy, configure security groups, and install an SSL certificate with Certbot.

Step 1: Launch an EC2 Instance

Go to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the EC2 dashboard.
Click Launch Instance and choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), such as Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
Select an instance type (e.g., t2.micro, which is free-tier eligible).
Configure instance details and select Create new key pair for SSH access.
Launch the instance and download the key file (.pem).

Step 2: Assign a Static IP (Elastic IP)

In the AWS EC2 dashboard, navigate to Elastic IPs under Network & Security.
Allocate a new Elastic IP and associate it with your running instance.
Update your domain’s DNS settings if needed to point to the static IP.

Step 3: Connect to Your EC2 Instance

Use SSH to connect to the instance:

ssh -i your-key.pem ubuntu@your-ec2-ip

Step 4: Install Node.js and PM2

Update the system and install Node.js:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs

Verify installation:

node -v
npm -v

Install PM2 for managing Node.js processes:

npm install -g pm2

Step 5: Deploy Your Node.js Application

Clone or copy your Node.js project into the instance:

git clone https://github.com/your-repo.git
cd your-repo
npm install

Start the Node.js server using PM2:

pm start
# OR
pm run start:prod
# To keep it running in the background
pm2 start app.js --name "node-server"
pm2 save

Step 6: Configure Security Groups

In the AWS EC2 dashboard, go to Security Groups.
Edit inbound rules to allow:
- SSH (port 22) – only for your IP.
- HTTP (port 80) – open to the world.
- HTTPS (port 443) – open to the world.
- Custom (port 3000) – if your Node.js app runs on port 3000 (for internal access only).

Step 7: Install and Configure Nginx as a Reverse Proxy

Install Nginx:

sudo apt install nginx -y

Configure Nginx:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Replace the contents with:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name your-domain.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }
}

Restart Nginx:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Step 8: Install SSL Certificate using Certbot

Install Certbot:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx -y

Generate and install an SSL certificate:

sudo certbot --nginx -d your-domain.com -d www.your-domain.com

Auto-renew SSL:

sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Conclusion

You have successfully installed a Node.js server on AWS EC2 with Nginx as the reverse proxy and SSL encryption through Certbot. This installation provides a secure and scalable deployment for your application. Happy coding!

Cost savings in AWS EC2

Ramaiah Kethana — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 06:48:06 +0000

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud.

Below are the few cost saving techniques in EC2.

Identify running EC2 instances that are idle or underutilized. You can then reduce your costs by stopping or reducing them.
Use Compute Savings Plans to reduce EC2, Fargate and Lambda costs.
Use Spot Instances based on to get discounts of up to 90%.
Use Spot Fleet to combine spot instances with on-demand or reserved instances.
Downgrade or upgrade the instance type based on CPU usage.
Use AWS Billing and Cost Management tools to find out underused instances.

When to choose AWS lambda

Ramaiah Kethana — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 06:07:10 +0000

AWS Lambda is a compute service that can be used for many applications. Few of the examples are mentioned below.

To build serverless backend services
IoT backend related applications
Convert or processing uploaded S3 Objects
Stream processing
Convert files on demand
Backup, automated and cron related jobs
Mobile backend
Email Service
App authentication
Chatbot
Cleaning backend server

What is lambda and when to use lambda

Ramaiah Kethana — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 05:46:29 +0000

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing platform provided by Amazon. It is a part of AWS. Lambda is like a compute engine. It will take care of resources assigning and help to build applications quickly.

Advantages:

Cost efficiency: Because you only pay for the compute time you consume, using AWS Lambda can be more cost-effective than running your own servers.
Scalability: Lambda take care of resource planning and spin up new resources based on incoming requests. Reduced cost of execution: One of the biggest strengths of - AWS Lambda functions is the reduced cost of execution.

Drawbacks:

Issue of Cold start: If the function called first time or being idle for some time, cold start will come into existence. It includes spin up a new server to run the code. This will cause the extra latency.
Limited runtime options: Lambda supports only a limited runtime.

Sample Use cases:

Email service - Lambda can be used to send emails
Serverless website: AWS Lambda can be used to build serverless websites that are scalable and cost-effective
App authentication: Lambda can be used to write authentication related services
Real-time data transformation: AWS Lambda can be used to transform data in real-time
Chatbot: Lambda can be used to build chatbot related applications
IoT applications: Lambda can be used for developing IoT related applications