What Is Amazon Lightsail? (A Full Guide)

Are you curious about Amazon Lightsail? This article will explain what it is and the features it offers. Learn how to quickly launch and manage a virtual private server with AWS, as well as the different pricing plans available for your project's needs. Discover why this cloud computing platform can be a great solution for hosting applications in the cloud.

Amazon's remarkable accomplishments in the eCommerce industry have enabled it to explore further ventures. The company has included streaming services, grocery delivery, and web services in its portfolio of offerings to cater to all of its customers' needs. If you're curious about AWS, then you may be wondering what is Amazon Lightsail and how it can benefit your business. That's precisely why I took the time to research this topic further. After much investigation, here is everything I discovered!

Table Of Contents

What Is Amazon Lightsail?

Lightsail is an alternative cloud hosting service offered by Amazon that allows you to store your website files, databases, and other data on Amazon's servers. While it doesn't offer all the features or services as its larger competitor, Google Cloud Platform, it is still a great service for bloggers looking to host their own websites or use a platform for their content delivery or marketing efforts.

Amazon Lightsail is intriguing to many business owners and developers because of its pricing. Amazon Lightsail offers a zero percent annual price increase option, making it very attractive for startups and small businesses that may not have much money in their budget. Read for more information on Amazon Lightsail.

What Are Lightsail Instance Plans

Lightsail instance plan or Bundle includes a virtual private server having a fixed amount of memory and computing, SSD-based disks, and data transfer allowance. The following are Lightsail plans that are available for customers.

Memory of 512 MB to 32 GB
One to eight cores on the processor
1 to 7 TB of data transfer space is available.
Solid-state drives can range in size from 20 GB to 640 GB.

All these plans have a static IP address, an intuitive management console, secure shell terminal access, remote desktop access, domain name server management, and server monitoring.

What Are Amazon Lightsail Features?

The following are some of the features that make Amazon's cloud computing platform unique:

Instances

The virtual servers are easy to set up and back up due to the power reliability of Amazon Web Services. With this feature, you’ll launch a website and web application and manage projects without difficulty. When creating the instance with Lightsail, you click to launch an operating system, a pre-configured application, or a development stack. Instances come with a built-in firewall for restricting or allowing traffic based on the IP address, port, and protocol.

Simplified Load Balancers

Amazon Web traffic is distributed among the instances by Amazon's streamlined load balancers. With the distribution, the websites and applications will accommodate traffic and protect against outages, delivering a seamless new experience. Simplified load balancers include integrated certificate management. The certificate provides free SSL/TLS certificates that the developer provisions and adds to a load balancer. The certificate is managed and renewed directly from the Lightsail console.

Containers

Amazon Lightsail provides a better way of running containers in the cloud. With this feature, you can access containerized applications securely from the internet. Thanks to the containers, operators can run Docker containers on the cloud straight from the developer workflow. Lightsail creates the containers from Docker images pushed by the developers. Lightsail ensures the running of container service without managing any underlying infrastructure.

Managed Databases

In Lightsail, there is a fully configured MySQL or PostgreSQL database plan. It includes memory, processing, storage, and a transfer allowance. The managed database allows you to scale your databases independently of your virtual servers, improve application availability, and run a standalone database within the cloud. You can deploy multi-tiered applications connected to a centrally managed database by creating multiple instances.

What Is Lightsail Private Virtual Server (VPS)?

It allows users to run websites and web applications in highly secure environments while being cost-effective. Lightsail Virtual Servers can perform advanced network and configuration configurations on the server. Within the Virtual Server, a feature allows you to install popular applications.

They are also easy to create and delete. You can host static web content, connect your content to a global audience, and get your business up and running with Amazon Lightsail features. Simply, it guides you through the configuration process.

What Is Block and Object Storage?

Amazon Lightsail is loaded with both photo and object storage. It has SSD-backed storage where you can scale your storage from the Windows virtual server. The SSD balances the low price and good performance to support workloads in the Lightsail. Lightsail also allows storage of static content in website storage on websites and applications. You can attach object storage with CDN distribution to accelerate the delivery of your web content globally.

Know the Amazon Lightsail Operating System

Lightsail has some pre-configured operating systems;

Amazon Linux – Amazon Linux is a supported image for the Amazon Elastic Compute cloud. It offers a stable and secure high-performance execution environment for applications.
Ubuntu – It is a powerful, lean, and fast server that reliably offers services. You can use it to build your instances perfectly. Amazon provides Ubuntu freely together with an option of support and Landscape.
Microsoft Window server – Amazon EC2 runs Microsoft Windows Server by deploying applications using the Web Platform. It enables you to run compatible window-based solutions on Amazon Web Services.
CentOS – CentOS builds images with a minimal profile. It is suitable for use in HVM instance types. The print has packages to run within Amazon Web Services that allow users to log in.

With these features, you can easily spin up applications and operating systems like Ubuntu, Debian, WordPress, LAMP, and PrestaShop. The developer can use the Lightsail command-line interface as an alternative to the console.

Who Is Amazon Lightsail For?

Amazon Lightsail is mainly for web developers. As a developer, you can select an image from your Lightsail instance to kick-start your project. It enables you to save time from installing software or frameworks that might take a while. Lightsail will guide you on deploying and managing essential cloud resources when working on a project.

With the Lightsail features mentioned above, you can experiment and learn about cloud services. You can also add block storage disks by attaching them to your Lightsail instance. After taking pictures of the block storage disks that you’ve developed, create new instances. Create simplified load balancers and connect target instances to start a highly available application on your computer device. With the load balancer, you can handle encrypted traffic, session persistence, and health checking.

Amazon Lightsail Use Cases

Below are some use cases of Amazon Lightsail:

Launching web applications – Use the pre-configured development stacks to get online.
Create custom websites – Use it to build and personalize e-commerce blogs with pre-configured applications like WordPress and PrestaShop.
Build small business applications – Launching a line of business software like accounting software and file storage and sharing.
Spinning test environments – You can create or delete development sandboxes and try out new ideas.

Conclusion

Since the containers have become so small and because they can be quickly closed, they are gaining wide popularity. The Amazon Lightsail also has the advantage of security and convenience. Amazon Lightsail is an enhanced version of Amazon EC2. It has similar features but with more limitations and restrictions. It also offers additional features with a new pricing scheme.