Architecture Recommendation

Question

Hi,
I am new to AWS. We are a start-up and working on a telehealth application. We don't have any infrastructure expertise in our team. For our test environment, we need a server with 2CPU, 4gb ram and 128gb storage and MySQL database. Can anyone please recommend which AWS service to use and how much it will cost monthly.

Thanks,
Atif

Answer

Hello.

If you want to use a relational database on AWS, you will use EC2 or RDS.  
In the case of EC2, you need to install the database yourself on an OS such as Linux.  
For RDS, simply select the database engine you wish to use and start it.  
RDS is a fully managed database service, where AWS automates tasks related to database management and operation. EC2, on the other hand, is a self-managed service that provides virtual machines, and the user manages the operating system and software.  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/concepts.html  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/Welcome.html  
Basically, we recommend that you choose RDS.

In addition, the following database engines can be used with RDS.  
> MariaDB  
> Microsoft SQL Server  
> MySQL  
> Oracle  
> PostgreSQL

Since it was for testing, we did not consider availability and quoted a single AZ.  
Running it at the specs you want to use for a month would be about 64.36 USD.  
https://calculator.aws/#/estimate?id=8838a2636e71961eeff500ff8535e5a51a67a206
```
Config Summary
Storage for each RDS instance (General Purpose SSD (gp3)), Storage amount (128 GB), 
Quantity (1), 
Instance type (db.t3.medium), 
Utilization (On-Demand only) (100 %Utilized/Month), 
Deployment option (Single-AZ), 
Pricing strategy (OnDemand)
```

Answer

Hey Atif,
I believe this link could be helpful during your AWS Journey https://skillbuilder.aws/roles#devops-engineer, there are several free trainings in related your needs.

Answer

Depending on your requirements I think there's a lot of great AWS services you can leverage on to achieve your business goals!

You mentioned "test" environment and tagged this question with "Devops" so i assume you are setting up a pipeline! you can definitely consider containers (ECS Fargate/ECR) coupled with codepipeline as well as RDS to scale up/down as per your demands. (ie: dynamic test environments)

Some resources that might help you:
**Fargate getting started guide: **https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/getting-started-fargate.html
**ECR documentation**: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECR/latest/userguide/what-is-ecr.html
**CodePipeline quick start**: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/latest/userguide/getting-started-codepipeline.html
**RDS creating a DB instance: **https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_GettingStarted.CreatingConnecting.MySQL.html

Happy to help!
Brian

Answer

Hi,

i'd suggest to choose a serverless architecture with corresponding services:

* AWS Lambda for Compute
* RDS Aurora Serverless for database

Why? Because those fully AWS-managed services will take care of the "undifferentiating heavy-weight lifting" for you: patching, scaling, resilience, etc. is all done by them instead of your team spending time on them.

Additionally, they are based on pay-as-you-use model: so, during the dev and ramp-up period, you will get minimal invoices.

Finally, I think that Lambdas are very key re. security (especially for healthcare industry): you can have lots of them implementing very granular features and you can then apply distinct permissions to them. It's harder to do on a monolithic EC2-based architecture.

See https://aws.amazon.com/serverless/ and https://aws.amazon.com/serverless/faqs/?nc=sn&loc=3 and https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/optimizing-enterprise-economics-with-serverless/understanding-serverless-architectures.html

Best,

DIdier

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