SUDO Consultants Serverless WordPress on AWS

Partner Solution Deployment Guide

QS

February 2022
Saif Ali and Hameedullah Khan, SUDO Consultants
Sriram Mohan, AWS Managed Cloud
Dattaprasad Sadwelkar and Vinod Shukla, AWS Integration & Automation team

Refer to the GitHub repository to view source files, report bugs, submit feature ideas, and post feedback about this Partner Solution. To comment on the documentation, refer to Feedback.

This Partner Solution was created by SUDO Consultants Limited in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Partner Solutions are automated reference deployments that help people deploy popular technologies on AWS according to AWS best practices. If you’re unfamiliar with AWS Partner Solutions, refer to the AWS Partner Solution General Information Guide.

Overview

This Partner Solution deploys SUDO Consultants Serverless WordPress in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. It is for organizations that want to deploy highly available and scalable WordPress sites without managing servers.

This Partner Solution uses Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) to build containers with the official WordPress Docker image. AWS Fargate runs, scales, and manages the containerized WordPress workload and an Amazon Aurora serverless database. A container-mounted Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) helps your WordPress sites scale automatically, saving you money during quiet hours and ensuring high availability during peak request times. In addition, you get AWS managed security against SQL injection and common WordPress exploits, helping keep your sites safe.

If you are unfamiliar with AWS Partner Solutions we recommend that you read the AWS Partner Solution General Content Guide.

SUDO Consultants Serverless WordPress includes these security features:

  • AWS WAF to prevent SQL injection and common WordPress exploits.

  • Port-hardened security groups and unnecessary ports closed by default. For more information, see Hardening WordPress.

  • Periodic database backups.

  • A virtual private cloud (VPC) configured with public and private subnets, according to AWS best practices, to provide you with your own virtual network on AWS.

Costs and licenses

There are no additional licenses required to use this Partner Solution. There is no cost to use this Partner Solution; however, you will be billed for the resources deployed. For more information see the AWS Partner Solution General Content Guide.

Architecture

Deploying this Partner Solution for a new virtual private cloud (VPC) with default parameters builds the following Serverless WordPress environment in the AWS Cloud.

Architecture
Figure 1. Partner Solution architecture for Serverless WordPress on AWS

As shown in Figure 1, the Partner Solution sets up the following:

  • A highly available architecture that spans two Availability Zones.*

  • A VPC configured with public and private subnets according to AWS best practices, to provide you with your own virtual network on AWS.*

  • (Optional) An Amazon Route 53 record entry if you enter a hosted zone ID during Partner Solution deployment.

  • AWS WAF for managing rules to protect against SQL injection attacks and common WordPress exploits.

  • In the public subnets:

    • Elastic IP addresses for outbound traffic for AWS Fargate tasks.*

    • Managed network address translation (NAT) gateways to allow outbound internet access for resources in the private subnets.*

  • In the private subnets:

    • AWS Fargate tasks in an Auto Scaling group to launch and manage WordPress containers.

  • An Application Load Balancer to manage traffic to AWS Fargate in the private subnets.

  • Amazon ECS to deploy the WordPress container image to AWS Fargate.

  • (Optional) AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for a public certificate for HTTPS connection.

  • AWS Secrets Manager to store the RDS Aurora database password.

  • Amazon Aurora serverless database connected to containers on AWS Fargate.

  • An Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system for storing WordPress files, themes, and plugins.

* The template that deploys the Partner Solution into an existing VPC skips the components marked by asterisks and prompts you for your existing VPC configuration.

Deployment options

This Partner Solution provides two deployment options:

The Partner Solution provides separate templates for these options. It also lets you configure Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) blocks, instance types, and Serverless WordPress settings.

Predeployment steps

  1. If you don’t have an account, sign up at https://aws.amazon.com.

  2. Choose the Region from the top toolbar where you want to deploy.

  3. To create a Route 53 DNS entry, set up a Route 53 hosted zone, then enter the hosted zone ID during deployment. For more information, see Working with hosted zones.

Important: This Partner Solution includes Amazon EFS and Amazon Aurora Serverless, which are not available in all AWS Regions. For a list of supported Amazon EFS Regions, see Amazon Elastic File System endpoints and quotas. For a list of supported Aurora Serverless Regions, see Aurora Serverless v1.

Deployment steps

  1. Sign in to your AWS account, and launch this Partner Solution, as described under Deployment options. The AWS CloudFormation console opens with a prepopulated template.

  2. Choose the correct AWS Region, and then choose Next.

  3. On the Create stack page, keep the default setting for the template URL, and then choose Next.

  4. On the Specify stack details page, change the stack name if needed. Review the parameters for the template. Provide values for the parameters that require input. For all other parameters, review the default settings and customize them as necessary. When you finish reviewing and customizing the parameters, choose Next.

    Unless you’re customizing the Partner Solution templates or are instructed otherwise in this guide’s Predeployment section, don’t change the default settings for the following parameters: QSS3BucketName, QSS3BucketRegion, and QSS3KeyPrefix. Changing the values of these parameters will modify code references that point to the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket name and key prefix. For more information, refer to the AWS Partner Solutions Contributor’s Guide.

  5. On the Configure stack options page, you can specify tags (key-value pairs) for resources in your stack and set advanced options. When you finish, choose Next.

  6. On the Review page, review and confirm the template settings. Under Capabilities, select all of the check boxes to acknowledge that the template creates AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) resources that might require the ability to automatically expand macros.

  7. Choose Create stack. The stack takes about 15 minutes to deploy.

  8. Monitor the stack’s status, and when the status is CREATE_COMPLETE, the SUDO Consultants Serverless WordPress deployment is ready.

  9. To view the created resources, choose the Outputs tab.

Troubleshooting

For troubleshooting common Partner Solution issues visit the AWS Partner Solution General Content Guide and Troubleshooting CloudFormation.

Customer responsibility

After you deploy a Partner Solution, confirm that your resources and services are updated and configured—including any required patches—to meet your security and other needs. For more information, refer to the Shared Responsibility Model.

Feedback

To submit feature ideas and report bugs, use the Issues section of the GitHub repository for this Partner Solution. To submit code, refer to the Partner Solution Contributor’s Guide. To submit feedback on this deployment guide, use the following GitHub links:

Notices

This document is provided for informational purposes only. It represents current AWS product offerings and practices as of the date of issue of this document, which are subject to change without notice. Customers are responsible for making their own independent assessment of the information in this document and any use of AWS products or services, each of which is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, whether expressed or implied. This document does not create any warranties, representations, contractual commitments, conditions, or assurances from AWS, its affiliates, suppliers, or licensors. The responsibilities and liabilities of AWS to its customers are controlled by AWS agreements, and this document is not part of, nor does it modify, any agreement between AWS and its customers.

The software included with this paper is licensed under the Apache License, version 2.0 (the "License"). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. A copy of the License is located at https://aws.amazon.com/apache2.0/ or in the accompanying "license" file. This code is distributed on an "as is" basis, without warranties or conditions of any kind, either expressed or implied. Refer to the License for specific language governing permissions and limitations.