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.