In this post I will show you how to install LEMP Stack on AWS EC2 Instance

• L = Linux (Ubuntu 18.04)

• E = Engine X / Nginx (1.14)

• M = MySQL (5.7)

• P = PHP (7.2)

Creating AWS EC2 Instance

First of all, you must have an AWS account, you can register here and get 12 months of Free Tier access from Amazon Web Service (AWS).

After registering an AWS account, sign in to AWS Console then choose EC2 Service, Launch new Instance then follow the steps with this options:

• Amazon Machine Image (AMI): Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS

• Instance Type: General purpose | t2.micro

• Instance Details: Leave to default settings

• Storage: Leave to default settings or you can adjust the size (Max of Free Tier is 30GB)

• Tags: Add your tags or you can skip this step

• Security Group: Create a new security group with the rules below

• Review Instance Launch: Verify the settings then click Launch

• • A window pops up will asking you to select an existing key-pair or create a new key-pair. If you haven’t created a key pair before then create a new one, then download it to your local computer. The key-pair is using to connect the Instance via SSH Client.

Connecting to AWS EC2 Instance

To see how to connect to your Instance, go to AWS EC2 Dashboard, navigate to Running Instances, select the Instance of Ubuntu 18.04 that launched before, then click Connect button. You will see a few info about how to connect to AWS EC2 Instance.

In this example, I use terminal on Ubuntu desktop as SSH Client to connect to AWS EC2 Instance.

• Move the key-pair file you download before to ~/.ssh directory

• Open a terminal then apply chmod 400 to the file

chmod 400 ~/.ssh/your-key.pem

• In a terminal, connect to your instance using Public DNS with the key-pair as identify file, Example:

ssh -i "~/.ssh/your-key.pem" ubuntu@ec2-13-229-132-71.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com

To see your Public DNS or Public IP Address, go to AWS EC2 Dashboard, select your instance then see in Description Section.

Installing Nginx Server

After you successfully connect to your instance, now you can managing the instance as you want. To Setup the LEMP Stack, first update your instance packages

sudo apt update

Then install the Nginx Server

sudo apt install nginx

Open a browser then go to your Public DNS or Public IP Address of your instance to check that Nginx successfully installed.

htpps://your-public-DNS-or-IP-address

Installing MySQL

The next thing to do is installing MySQL, use this command to install it

sudo apt install mysql-server

Configure MySQL with this command

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Installing PHP

Install php-fpm, a stands for “fastCGI process manager” to tell Nginx to pass PHP requests to this software for processing

sudo apt install php-fpm

Install php-mysql to allow PHP communicate with database backend

sudo apt install php-mysql

Configuring Nginx to Use PHP

Now the LEMP Stack are installed, but we have to configure Nginx to use PHP processor for dynamic content.

In this example, I will edit the default configuration server block of Nginx

First, backup the default configuration file

sudo cp /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-available/default.bak

Open default configuration file using nano

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Fill with the content bellow

server {
        listen 80;
        root /var/www/html;
        index index.php index.html index.nginx-debian.html;
        server_name _;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

        location ~ \.php{
                include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
        }

        location ~ /\.ht {
                deny all;
        }
}

Create info.php file to test PHP

sudo nano /var/www/html/info.php

Fill with the content bellow

<?php
phpinfo();

Restart Nginx

sudo service nginx restart

Open a browser then go to htpps://your-public-DNS-or-IP-address/info.php

If everything works fine you should see PHP info page like this

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