Running Drupal on AWS: A Scalable and High-Performance Architecture

🚀 Introduction

Drupal is a powerful content management system (CMS) that can efficiently run on AWS, leveraging various AWS services to provide scalability, reliability, and high availability.

Understanding the Architecture

(P.S. Ignore the old-fashioned look😉)

The architecture makes Drupal scalable, highly available, and resilient.

• Performance Optimization: CloudFront and ElastiCache improve response times and reduce server load. ⚡🔄📈
• Scalability: The infrastructure dynamically scales with user demand. 📈💻🔧
• High Availability: Auto Scaling and Load Balancer ensure Drupal remains accessible during traffic surges. 🌍📊🚀
• Simplified Maintenance: RDS, EFS, and AMI-based deployments streamline operations and reduce administrative overhead. 🛠️🤖📂

AWS Services Used

🔹 Amazon CloudFront: Enhances content delivery for static and dynamic assets.
🔹 Amazon S3: Stores media files and static content efficiently.
🔹 Amazon EC2 & Auto Scaling: Ensures Drupal’s scalability by managing compute resources.
🔹 Elastic Load Balancer (ALB): Distributes traffic across multiple EC2 instances.
🔹 Amazon RDS (Aurora/PostgreSQL): Provides a managed, high-performance database layer.
🔹 Amazon ElastiCache (Memcached): Speeds up performance by caching frequently accessed data.
🔹 Amazon EFS: Supports shared file storage for configurations, themes, and plugins.

Key Takeaways & Learnings

💡 High Availability & Reliability — Using multiple EC2 instances, RDS with failover, and a distributed architecture guarantees minimal downtime.
💡 Scalability is Essential — Leveraging Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancer ensures that Drupal can handle traffic spikes without performance degradation.
💡 Optimized Performance — CloudFront accelerates content delivery, while ElastiCache reduces database load, improving overall responsiveness.
💡 Efficient Storage Management — Amazon S3 and EFS provide scalable and resilient storage solutions for media files and shared resources.

🔍 Final Thoughts

Running Drupal on AWS is not just about hosting — it’s about leveraging cloud-native capabilities to make your CMS scalable, secure, and high-performing. With the right architecture in place, you can ensure a seamless experience for users while reducing administrative complexities. Happy hosting! 🎉

I’d love to hear your thoughts! :) Drop your comments below 💬