This final section will be considered a “bonus” in the first edition of this book. This is because cloud computing is a new type of solution that remains relatively unproven. There is a significant amount of interest in the potential for scalability with cloud computing, so it is important to explore this topic in these final chapters, while acknowledging that this is a quickly changing landscape.
This chapter will offer a high level overview of what cloud computing is, and how it potentially solves the scalability problem. It looks at the advantages to outsourcing your underlying infrastructure, as well as the limitations this imposes
This chapter will provide details on how to get Drupal up and running with Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service. This chapter will include screenshots, as it will be a high level guide to getting things up and running. It will then examine performance concerns introduced by the high latency often found in a cloud environment. It will provide specific suggestions for improving Drupal's performance while running in the cloud. It will also look at cloud impermanence, and how to provide reliability through redundancy, replication, and backups.
This chapter will take a high level look at the many benefits of scaling Drupal websites in the clouds. It will explore many of the advanced features Amazon is planning for EC2, and how this will continue to make cloud computing a more attractive option.