Amazon Lightsail is an easy-to-use cloud service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that offers you everything needed to build an application or website, and comes with predictable pricing.
It’s one of the top choices to host your website. If you want to host your site using the AWS infrastructure without having to deal with the complexity of Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Adobe EC2), then Amazon Lightsail is the answer for you.
Amazon Lightsail has a very simple pricing plan, which makes it a direct competitor to Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, and UpCloud – with a similar pricing range and included resources.
Amazon has many data centers spread across different regions, including:
- Ohio
- Virginia
- Montreal
- Oregon
- Ireland
- London
- Paris
- Frankfurt
- Tokyo
- Sydney
- Seoul
- Mumbai
- Singapore.
This gives you the flexibility to either choose a server location that is geographically close to your customers, or a server that’s in a remote location and which is cheaper to run.
In this post, we will discuss how to set up an Amazon Lightsail server to host your websites with the help of RunCloud.
Let’s get started!
Why Use RunCloud?
You don’t need to be a Linux expert to build and manage a website with RunCloud. Here are some of major reasons people use RunCloud:
- RunCloud simplifies the server management experience. Whether you are using Amazon Lightsail or any other cloud provider, you only need to master RunCloud once for all cloud server providers.
- You can easily clone your web application in the same server or to other servers in your RunCloud dashboard.
- For WordPress users, you can use RunCloud Hub to optimize your website with server-side page caching and Redis object cache.
If you don’t have a RunCloud account, You can register for a 7-day free trial – no credit required.
Connecting Amazon Lightsail Server via RunCloud Integration
With our server provisioning feature, you can set up a server in Amazon Lightsail directly from the RunCloud dashboard by providing an API key from Amazon Lightsail to RunCloud.
You’ll only need to leave the RunCloud dashboard once to get this key and add it to RunCloud 3rd Party API Key Settings.
Within the RunCloud dashboard, for any future server creations, you’ll be able to add new servers without having to leave your dashboard.
Creating an Amazon Lightsail API Key
To use RunCloud with Amazon, you’ll need to integrate AWS by adding the necessary API keys to your account. You can generate these keys from your AWS dashboard.
We strongly recommend you don’t use the root account to create your API keys. It’s a good idea to create a separate user account just for RunCloud, and limit its access to your infrastructure.
Log into your AWS Console with a user account and open the security credentials page. You can either search for it in the search bar on the top, or use this link which will redirect you to the necessary page. Once there, scroll down to the “Access Keys” section.
Click on the “Create access key” button to generate your keys. On the next screen, select “Application running outside AWS” and proceed.
Give your API key a descriptive name so that it is easy to identify later on and click “Create”.
Once you create your keys, they will only be displayed once – do not close this tab. Open the RunCloud dashboard in a new browser window to continue the integration process.
Adding the Amazon API Key to RunCloud
Once you have created the API keys, you shouldn’t store them anywhere on your computer. You won’t need them again after you have added them to your RunCloud account and the integration is complete.
To add an API key, go to your RunCloud dashboard. Open the Account Settings and switch to the Integrations tab. Once there, click on “AWS Lightsail” and then “Add Integration”.
Now, you will be presented with the following screen. Give a descriptive label to your API key, if you have more than one AWS account, this label will be helpful to distinguish between them.
Once you’ve done that, copy and paste the “Access Key ID” as well as the “Secret Access Key” that we just generated in the creating an API key step.
After adding the key, you can test the integration using the “Test” button. If you get a success message, you can click “Save Integration” to save the changes. Once your key is integrated, you can close the AWS tab as well.
Deploying Amazon Lightsail Server on RunCloud
To get started, click on the “Connect a Server” button to set up your first server.
A screen will pop up showing you a list of available server providers. Select Amazon Lightsail from the list, and then click the “Deploy Server Automatically” provision type to use RunCloud’s automatic integration.
Now, scroll down to the bottom half of the page and select the installation type as well as your desired server infrastructure. Then select the API key from the dropdown, and click “Continue”.
Note: At the time of writing, RunCloud users will not be able to connect servers running Ubuntu 24 using AWS Lightsail to their RunCloud dashboard.
On the next screen, you will need to specify the operating system, datacenter region and the instance type of your server. Just click on the choice you want, and it will be highlighted.
Now scroll down to the bottom of the page, where you will be asked to provide a name for your server. Give it a suitable name, and check the box to acknowledge that you understand you will be billed for this server. Then click “Add Server”.
After adding the server, RunCloud will take a few minutes to install the necessary software and dependencies on your server. You don’t need to do anything at this point, just sit back and wait for the installation to finish.
Once finished, you will be redirected to the following screen:
Tips – Create a Static IP Address For Amazon Lightsail
When creating an Amazon Lightsail instance, you will get a private IP and public IP for each server. You can use the public IP to connect to your instance from the Internet, including setting up your server using RunCloud.
Unfortunately, it’s not a static IP address. This means that this public IP will be changed automatically when you stop and restart your Amazon Lightsail server.
If you use Amazon Lightsail to host your website, it’s highly recommended that you use the static IP address for your server. This static IP is dedicated to you, and will not be changed when you stop and restart your server. However, you will be charged $0.005 USD/hour fee for static IPs not attached to an instance.
To reserve a static IP, go to your AWS console and open the AWS Lightsail dashboard. Once there, locate the server that you just created via RunCloud.
Go to the Networking tab and click on “Attach static IP” to reserve a static IP address. Follow the instructions to create a new IP address, and save it.
After you have added the new IP address to your AWS Lightsail server, it might change from the one you have previously. If your new IP address is different from your current IP address, you will need to configure RunCloud to use this new address.
Go to your RunCloud dashboard and click on your server. It should give you a message saying “Server information is not available”. If not, just wait for a few minutes and refresh the page. Once RunCloud is no longer able to connect your server, it will ask you to troubleshoot the issue.
Click on the “Update IP address” button to add a new IP address. A prompt will appear asking you to enter the new address. Add the new IP address, and click “Save”.
Next, you will need to run a script in your AWS server. Go to your AWS Lightsail dashboard and click on “Connect using SSH”. This will open an SSH connection in a new browser window. Copy and paste the script from RunCloud into this window and press “Enter”.
Now that RunCloud should be able to connect to your server again, refresh your dashboard. If everything is still working as expected, then you can close the SSH session.
Please check the video below to learn how to set up a static IP address for your Amazon Lightsail server:
After Action Report
Amazon Lightsail is the easiest way to get started with the Amazon Web Service (AWS) infrastructure for developers who need a simple virtual private server (VPS) solution with predictable pricing, starting from $3.50 / month.
RunCloud’s integration for AWS makes it easy to manage servers across multiple AWS accounts. After setting up your server, you can learn How To Install WordPress With RunCloud using our step-by-step guide.
RunCloud is built for developers that want to focus on shipping great work, not on managing their infrastructure. Experience a painless server configuration so you don’t need to spend hours figuring it out.
Get started with RunCloud today & get up and running in minutes.
