Almost every single mobile app needs a “bankend server” which it can use to perform a more complex business logic or to store user data in a database. In these few videos I am going to share with you how to set up a very simple mobile app backend server which will consist of a small Linux server running in Amazon Web Services Cloud(AWS).
Launch Your Own EC2 Linux Instance
In this video I am going to share with you how to launch a small Amazon EC2 instance which can be eligible for free if you are a new customer of Amazon Web Services. Even if you are an existing AWS customer the cost of a micro EC2 instance is very little per month. Checkout this page for Amazon EC2 pricing.
Connect to Your Amazon EC2 instance via SSH
In this video I will share with you how to connect to your Amazon EC2 Linux Server from your local computer via a command line tool called SSH. When connected to your linux server via SSH tool you will be able to install, remove and update software packages that are needed for your backend server. For example, we will need to install Apache 2 web server, MySQL database server, PHP and phpMyAdmin to manage our mobile app backend server database.
Connect to Your Amazon EC2 instance via FTP
You will need to upload files to your mobile app backend server. For example, when you are done writing and testing php scripts on your local computer and are ready to share your mobile app with friends and family(testers), you will need to upload your php scripts on to a backend server. FTP client is a tool to use. You can use any FTP client of your choice. In my video I am going to use FileZilla.
Install MySQL Database Server on Your EC2 Linux Instance
In this video I am showing how to install MySQL database server on your Amazon EC2 Linux Server. MySQL is a very popular database server which we can use to store mobile app user data. For example, if we need to store user profile details, a list of user friends or a list of user’s favourite books we can use MySQL database.
Install Apache Web Server and PHP Programming Language
We will need to use Apache web server to make our php scripts available to our mobile app. In this video we will install Apache 2 web server and PHP programming language itself.
Install phpMyAdmin on Amazon EC2 Linux Instance
Once MySQL database server is installed we can connect to it to create new databases and database tables via a command line tool. But it is much more convenient to manage our databases and their records via a visual tool like phpMyAdmin. In this video we will install phpMyAdmin on our Amazon EC2 micro instance.
I hope the videos above are helpful. Of course, I realize that these videos are a basic set up and there is much more to know to be able professionally manage our Amazon EC2 Linux server. For example, it is good to know how to configure static IP address and how to startup additional linux servers of the same image. I will do my best to keep these post updated with additional videos.
If you are interested to learn more about Amazon Web Servers by listening to Video Tutorials check out these videos courses on Udemy:
AWS Certified Developer – Associate 2016
Amazon Web Services – Web Hosting & Cloud Computing With AWS
and many more
Happy learning! 🙂