This whitepaper is for historical reference only. Some content might be outdated and some links might not be available.
# Amazon Lightsail
Lightsail is the easiest way to get started on AWS for developers, small businesses, students, and other users who need a simple virtual private server (VPS) solution.
The service abstracts many of the more complex elements of infrastructure management away from the user. It is, therefore, an ideal starting point if you have less infrastructure experience, or when you need to focus on running your website and a simplified product is sufficient for your needs.
With Amazon Lightsail, you can choose Windows or Linux/Unix operating systems and popular web applications, including WordPress, and deploy these with a single click from preconfigured templates.
As your needs grow, you have the ability to smoothly step outside of the initial boundaries and connect to additional AWS database, object storage, caching, and content distribution services.
# Selecting an Amazon Lightsail pricing plan
A [Lightsail plan](https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/) defines the monthly cost of the Lightsail resources you use to host your WordPress website. There are a number of plans available to cover a variety of use cases, with varying levels of CPU resource, memory, solid-state drive (SSD) storage, and data transfer. If your website is complex, you may need a larger instance with more resources. You can achieve this by migrating your server to a larger plan [using the web console](https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/docs/how-to/article/lightsail-how-to-create-instance-from-snapshot) or as described in the [Amazon Lightsail CLI documentation](https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/docs/how-to/article/lightsail-how-to-create-larger-instance-from-snapshot-using-aws-cli).
# Installing WordPress
Lightsail provides templates for commonly used applications such as WordPress. This template is a great starting point for running your own WordPress website as it comes pre-installed with most of the software you need. You can install additional software or customize the software configuration by using the in-browser terminal or your own SSH client, or via the WordPress administration web interface.
Amazon Lightsail has a partnership with GoDaddy Pro Sites product to help WordPress customers easily manage their instances for free. Lightsail WordPress virtual servers are preconfigured and optimized for fast performance and security, making it easy to get your WordPress site up and running in no time. Customers running multiple WordPress instances find it challenging and time-consuming to update, maintain and manage all of their sites. With this integration, you can easily manage your multiple WordPress instances in minutes with only a few clicks.
For more information about managing WordPress on Lightsail after you install it, refer to [Getting started using WordPress from your Amazon Lightsail instance](https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/docs/getting-started/article/getting-started-with-wordpress-and-lightsail). Once you are finished customizing your WordPress website, we recommend taking a snapshot of your instance.
A [snapshot](https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/docs/overview/article/understanding-instance-snapshots-in-amazon-lightsail) is a way to create a backup image of your Lightsail instance. It is a copy of the system disk and also stores the original machine configuration (that is, memory, CPU, disk size, and data transfer rate). Snapshots can be used to revert to a known good configuration after a bad deployment or upgrade.
This snapshot allows you to recover your server if needed, but also to launch new instances with the same customizations.
# Recovering from failure
A single web server is a single point of failure, so you must ensure that your website data is backed up. The snapshot mechanism described earlier can also be used for this purpose. To recover from failure, you can restore a new instance from your most recent snapshot. To reduce the amount of data that could be lost during a restore, your snapshots must be as recent as possible.
To minimize the potential for data loss, ensure that snapshots are being taken on a regular basis. You can schedule automatic snapshots of your Lightsail Linux/Unix instances. For steps, refer to [Enabling or disabling automatic snapshots for instances or disks in Amazon Lightsail](https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/docs/en_us/articles/amazon-lightsail-configuring-automatic-snapshots).
AWS recommends that you use a static IP: a fixed, public IP address that is dedicated to your Lightsail account. If you need to replace your instance with another one, you can reassign the static IP to the new instance. In this way, you don’t have to reconfigure any external systems (such as DNS records) to point to a new IP address every time you want to replace your instance.