Register for AWS services: RDS, EC2, S3

[Emily-Kang77]

What is the problem/context:

• RCS is a database server thing that's really easy to set up, but there's less learning.
• EC2 is an industry standard for backend stuff and it's harder to set up than RCS
• S3 is an industry standard for frontend stuff and it's harder to set up than Amplify (which is specifically for web apps, and makes it super easy to set up)

These services have free tiers that last until the account has existed for 12 months. I just made mine a week ago, so no problem there. HCP tech team recommended separate backend and frontend.

By "register / set up", I mean just doing the required configuration to connect a service to my account. I don't mean setting up the web app in them in this issue.

Why medium (or possibly high) priority?

• This will help us see how the app changes and interact with it without someone sharing their screen or running it locally. But I don't think it should be updated with every change of code . . .
• Yes we are making a web app but as of now, we just want to focus on the frontend and we don't urgently need a database.

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Other info:

Time expected:

• Research: 3+ hours to learn about the AWS system and avoid extra fees from using resources too much.
• Configure: 2 hours?

Skills required: Just research AWS.

Dificulty / people needed: Hard. AWS is complicated. I don't know if I can share this part of the process with other users so it might just be me, even if we get more backend people.

Tasks:

• Research AWS
• Configure the servers but don't start adding the web app there yet. That's for another issue.

[Emily-Kang77]

I set up AWS S3. Enabled static web hosting with this troubleshooting guide and got the HTML html-with-scripts.js to show up. This has all of the script stuff within the HTML so it works locally, but when I put it on AWS, it says it doesn't recognize the FullCalendar object. Blank page.

Also DO NOT use AWS encryption. That can cost a lot. Best to stay away from versioning to since it'll probably take more resources.

[Emily-Kang77]

I also set up EC2 last week with no problems. It's Ubuntu and easy to connect to the terminal with a key file. Just remember to turn off the VM after use to not make it eat resources. This can be a problem when making lots of changes to the database...