AWS EC2 and Amazon Linux: Monitoring and Maintaining High Availability WordPress

Ensuring the ongoing performance and reliability of your high availability WordPress site requires continuous monitoring and maintenance. This article covers the tools and best practices for monitoring your AWS infrastructure and maintaining your WordPress site.

Prerequisites:

• High availability WordPress site set up as per the previous articles
• Basic knowledge of AWS monitoring tools

Steps:

1. Set Up CloudWatch Monitoring:
   AWS CloudWatch provides monitoring for AWS resources and applications. Navigate to the CloudWatch dashboard and create alarms for key metrics such as CPU utilization, memory usage, and disk space.
   Configure CloudWatch Logs to collect and monitor log files from your EC2 instances. Install the CloudWatch Logs agent on your instances:

   sudo yum install -y awslogs
   sudo systemctl start awslogsd
   sudo systemctl enable awslogsd

   Edit the /etc/awslogs/awslogs.conf file to configure log file paths and set up the CloudWatch Logs agent to push logs to CloudWatch.

2. Enable AWS CloudTrail:
   AWS CloudTrail records API calls made in your AWS account, providing visibility into user activity and changes made to your AWS resources. Enable CloudTrail in the AWS Management Console to monitor activity related to your WordPress site and infrastructure.
3. Perform Regular Backups:
   Regular backups are crucial for disaster recovery. Use AWS Backup or custom scripts to automate backups of your WordPress database and EC2 instance data. Ensure that backups are stored in a secure, separate location, such as an S3 bucket with versioning enabled.
4. Update and Patch Regularly:
   Keep your Amazon Linux instances and WordPress installation up-to-date with the latest security patches and updates. Regularly run updates on your EC2 instances:

   sudo yum update -y

   Update WordPress and its plugins from the WordPress admin dashboard to ensure you have the latest features and security fixes.

5. Test High Availability Setup:
   Regularly test your high availability setup to ensure it functions as expected. Simulate instance failures to verify that Auto Scaling launches new instances and the Elastic Load Balancer routes traffic correctly.

By following these steps, you can effectively monitor and maintain your high availability WordPress site on AWS. Continuous monitoring, regular backups, and timely updates are essential for ensuring the reliability and performance of your site.

This concludes our tutorial series on deploying a high availability web server on AWS EC2 using Amazon Linux to host WordPress. With these practices, you can provide a robust and reliable hosting environment for your WordPress site.