Server & Infrastructure Reference Guide

Quick reference notes for AWS Lightsail, EC2, S3, and DNS — the infrastructure behind a deployed app.

These notes cover the AWS services this site (and most small Laravel apps) actually runs on: a Lightsail or EC2 instance to serve the app, S3 for file storage, and DNS to point a domain at it. Each page sticks to what comes up running a real app in production — not a full AWS certification syllabus.

Infrastructure

Lightsail vs EC2 vs a bare server

Lightsail is AWS's simplified hosting product — fixed monthly pricing, a bundled static IP, and a much smaller set of decisions than raw EC2. It's the natural starting point for a single app on a single instance, and is what this site itself runs on. EC2 is the underlying compute service Lightsail is built on top of, exposed directly: pay-as-you-go pricing, a much larger range of instance types, and full control over networking, security groups, and storage. Reach for EC2 once a project needs autoscaling, spot pricing, custom networking (VPC peering, multiple subnets), or an instance type Lightsail doesn't offer.

Both are "just a server" underneath — a Lightsail instance is really an EC2 instance with a friendlier dashboard. Migrating from one to the other later is possible but not trivial (they're separate services with separate consoles), so it's worth picking based on where a project is expected to end up, not just where it starts.

Lightsail

Spinning up an instance, static IP, firewall rules, and snapshots.

EC2

Instance types, security groups, key pairs, EBS volumes, and IAM roles.

S3

Buckets, bucket policies, storage classes, and the AWS CLI.

DNS

Route 53 hosted zones, record types, TTL, and pointing a domain at a server.

Tools

CIDR Calculator

Network/broadcast address, subnet mask, and usable host range for a CIDR block.

Cron Scheduler

Turn a cron expression into a crontab line, a Laravel Schedule call, and where to install it.

Nginx Config Generator

A ready-to-paste server block for a PHP app or reverse proxy, with optional SSL.

What's My IP

Your current public IP, for locking down a security group or firewall rule.

HTTP Status Codes

A reference for what each status code actually means.

Social & Structured Data

Check a page's Open Graph, Twitter card, and structured data, then build and copy improved tags.

SPF Record Checker

Expand a domain's SPF record and count its DNS lookups against the limit of 10.